On The Trail Of Musical Taste

   Fairly certain it was the British twist on American Rock & Roll that first grabbed my ears. Merseybeat was what the scribes labeled it, music created by English kids who lived in and around the river Mersey on which banks the city of Liverpool was built. 

   That was mostly due to those bands being favorites of my older brother and sisters, so I heard them a lot.

   My ears were drenched in the music my siblings listened to - Motown (Supremes, Temptations, Four Tops), Surf music (Beach Boys harmonies and Dick Dale's surf guitar are still favs), a little Folk (Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Peter, Paul & Mary, Donovan, the Byrds - the 60's Folk revivalists), Psychedelic Rock (Vanilla Fudge, Blues Magoos, Iron Butterfly, Jefferson Airplane), Swamp Rock (Creedence, The Band) - even experimental stuff like Frank Zappa (my older brother loved Frank) and pretty much anything else that was part of the musical landscape particular to Southern California back then.

   Older brother MJL also had an affection for Garage Rock that he passed on to me, for which I am eternally grateful.

   My Mom's musical taste had a lingering influence that I can't deny - she sang religious hymns in the kitchen after we were all in bed, and loved old Appalachian Hillbilly music & what I learned later is known as Coal Miner's music (my Mom was a coal miner's daughter, raised in the highest town in the Appalachian mountains). She listened to and sang along with recordings by the Carter family, Clarence Ashley, Al Hopkins, Tex Ritter, Hank Snow & of course Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn. 

   My Mom also loved listening to Lou Rawls, Bobby Goldsboro, and Frank Sinatra. Dean Martin as well. 

   She never liked Elvis though.

   There was also the influence of the musical taste of friends and neighbors, which I used to discount as being uninteresting but which I have grown to realize is spectacular. That music ran the gamut from Blues (old Blues such as the songs of Big Bill Broonzy & Bessie Smith up to more contemporary Blues from performers like Jimmy Reed, B.B. King & Taj Mahal) to the Soul of Ray Charles & James Brown, along with Country & Western sounds created by everyone from Gene Autry & Patsy Kline to Del Reeves & Roy Clark).

   As I got older my musical horizons continued to expand, thanks to becoming old enough to leave the neighborhood on my own and gaining a broader circle of friends. Jack Dickens (he was the second owner of the Comic Kingdom in North Park) introduced me to Prog & Art rock bands such as King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and Jethro Tull, and photographer Ralph Hulett jr added to that with his eclectic tastes (don't know if I would have ever heard anything by John Fahey or Klaatu if it wasn't for Ralph). Various fellow Comic-Con attendees and committee members introduced me to glam rock acts such as The Sweet, David Bowie, and T Rex - and, if memory serves correctly, my first exposure to Punk Rock was at the 1976 con, where I heard the Dead Boys and the Ramones.

   The various schools I attended (Boone Elementary, Bell Jr High, and Morse High) exposed me to more popular contemporary sounds - everything from the Average White Band to Parliament/Funkadelic to KC & the Sunshine Band. Not music I was ever much into then, but which I wax nostalgic for nowadays.

   Which brings me to a sidebar. There were a number of bands that were extremely popular in my youth that I absolutely could not get into - acts such as the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, The Jackson 5, KISS, Aerosmith, Earth, Wind & Fire, Led Zeppelin, Donna Summer, Van Halen, and too many more to list - that I can now appreciate. 

   Weird that, especially how much I really love early Van Halen and KISS now.

   Still don't care for the Eagles much though.

   Enough with the sidebar. 

   From the end of my teens until my early thirties my musical tastes continued to evolve. Power pop, New Wave, Ska, Cowpunk, Two-Tone, Paisley Underground, the Minneapolis sound, Rap, Sunshine Pop, Hip Hop, College Rock, Grunge, Hard Rock & Metal, Alternative, Rave, Indie, Americana, EDM - heck, even Classical can now be found in my musical library.

   I would like to think my musical tastes will continue to expand/evolve, but lately I have found myself not hearing anything on the radio or other sources of music exposure that really sparks my interest. 

   Everything I've been listening to lately now falls under the heading Oldies, or worse yet is labeled "Neo" or "Nu" or something revivalist. 

   I don't know if it's because there is nothing new on the musical front that is actually any good, or if I've just succumbed to curmudgeonly thinking.

   It's probably the curmudgeonly thinking, which kinda bums me out.