What a great thread!
I'm like everyone else, tastes have changed over time, and what I like to listen to has vestiges of this or that genre.
Popular music started from me in junior high, with my first clock radio, and I was able to tune in to FM for the first time. Before then, it was only AM-Top 40, especially in cars-my father wouldn't spring for AM/FM radio, which cost more, only AM. So I know all the words to all of Cher's songs, and (*shudder*) Neil Diamond, and all of the other Monsters of Soft Rock from the late 60s and early 70s.
But with that FM radio, I discovered Led Zeppelin, the Who, Boston, Genesis, and everything that we'd now call classic rock.
First record albums purchased were the Beatles-"Rubber Soul", "Revolver", the blue and red anthology albums, the White Album, Sgt Pepper. Now I can't stand 'em.
Discovered punk and
real, original new wave in 1980 in high school, the Sex Pistols, and Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, Stray Cats, Devo, Joe Jackson, all in reaction to that horrible, horrible disco. After all of that soulless, polyester platform-shoed, leisure-suited syntho-pop, a stripped-down combo of a guitar, bass and drums was a breath of fresh air. But I also discovered southern rock-Skynyrd, the Outlaws, .38 Special, Marshall Tucker. I still remember the tour that came to old JFK down in Philly.
A little bit of proto-metal and metal in the 80's and 90's, Richie Blackmore and Rainbow, Iron Maiden, Motorhead, Metallica (though my brother, who was a Metallica fan from the very beginning, told that if I liked them, they were no longer cool
), never liked G&R, though, they were posers and treated the fans like crap.
A little grunge in the 90's, Soundgarden was cool, I shed a manly tear, when I heard they broke up, Pearl Jam was OK (but no longer think they're as deep as they want us to believe).
But in the last few years, rock has finally left me behind. Now, when I hear the old elevator-music station in Philly playing "Stairway to Heaven", I feel like Homer Simpson in the "Homerpalooza" episode. "I used to rock and roll all night, and party ev-ery day. Then it was every other day. Now I'm lucky if I can find one day a week on which to get down".
I've started getting into country, which was not too big a leap from my old southern rock favorites, and finding that the musicianship is lightyears ahead of anything on the rock stations now. And polkas, too, which you can't avoid here in PA, where the polka is the state dance.
But I also have classical music loaded in the changer, and Sinatra. Comes from having played trumpet for many years.
So, I guess I'm all over the place.
