A lot of people on here pride themselves on listening to "REAL" music. Often times, we talk about the new generation and how they only like commercial garbage and cant appreciate what we call "REAL" music. With that said, what/who influenced your taste in music?

Personally, my father played a HUGE role in my musical tastes. I basically like all music except for hip hop. (Cant stomach the rhythymic speaking for long legnths of time).

I'm 25, and growing up, my dad played EVERYTHING. From Led Zepplin to Prince to Christopher Cross to Chuck Mangione, etc. My dad's favorite group was(and still is) Earth Wind And Fire. I can remember listening to their song "I Wanna Be With You" and my dad giving us $$ according to us knowing the names of the band members and what instruments they played...LOL....

LoveAlive said:

bublebath said:

huh??

i got my musical tastes from my mom. i grew up with her playing the beatles, hendrix, zappa, even some parliament and bootsy. she listened to george duke because of his involvement with zappa, and she was always interested in trying new music that looked interesting to her. she taught me that there was no such thing as music that was too "weird" - that there was either music you like or music you don't like, but not to limit yourself from what's new or different.

Anx said:

That's cool - I just feel fortunate that my Dad was in to music at all...he got me listening to Elton John, The Beatles, Queen, Zeppelin, Bowie. I was pretty young when his friend lent him a bunch of Zappa albums, so that was my first exposure. Most of my friends had parents that were a little older, who just never listened to music. It never crossed my mind then to feel sorry for them, though they thought my pop's taste was better than mine.

Jesus.

GangstaFam said:

Jesus?

Jesus Jones?

My parents had the albums--including Stevie Wonder, Beatles, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Dylan--but my brother helped me sort them out and find what was good.

My mom was more likely to listen to Anne Murray or showtunes than Dylan, and my dad put on Rumours once a year and that was about it.

Parents - Police, U2, Madonna, Peter Gabriel, Springsteen, Elton John, Depeche Mode

Aunts and Uncles - Beatles, Madonna, B-52's, Talking Heads, Prince, Zeppelin

Yes, I'm aware that I have Madonna twice. When I was growing up, both my mom and dad, and my aunts and uncles played tons of Madonna music.

I got my love of Motown: Junior Walker, Mary Wells, The Temps,etc., from my mom. Everything else came from my uncle, the DJ. He bought music every single week for years, 70s and 80s R&B. In the late 90s, I got into rock and alternative music by listening to my favorite radio talk show host who spun NIN, Tool, Manson, Fall Out Boy, etc. Good music is good music, whatever genre.

My own volition.

Going beyond what society and the radio tells you is music.

Not from my parents, I know that. We are pretty much at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of music, that is for sure. I guess my tastes come from a combination of other people and reading music magazines (of which I have many subscriptions). I pick and choose what I want from them to add to my stew and then discard the rest. My tastes are a big sloppy bowl of gumbo.

my mom. when i was little she stayed playin music 4 me. (man me and my grandma stayed listenin to that aretha franklin church record). she got me n2 jimi, nina simone, santana, sade, bette midler, barbra streisand. u name it my mom listens to and usually got me listenin 2 it. she'll always say come here, check this out when she thinks she got somethin i'll like

Some of Miles Davis his Rebirth Of Cool-sessions which i used to hear a lot as a kid at home , besides some hip Brasil bossa .
A few years later i borrowed and taped some jazz-funk records from my brother and after that i started to get into early rap ( Sugar Hill ) and electro-funk .
From that point , i dug deep in the crates for collecting funk , soul and latin-funk albums/singles.

Although i have to add that in some between years , i was focussed on strong image-related groups ( Kiss ) or music-styles ( Ska : Madness / Selecter / etc ) on first hand , purely for that image .
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[Edited 4/27/06 13:28pm]

LoveAlive said:

My parents...
My dad listens mostly to his old Jazz collection (mostly Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis) and his huge Zappa archive and sometimes he just funks it up with the usual James Brown, Parliament/Funkadelic, Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield and all the "black heroes" (as he calls them) of the 1960's and 1970's... Pops has a pretty impressive record collection (if only for his mint condition first pressing of all of Zappa's albums...)
My mom listens to everything from (the crap ass) The Beatles and all that other hippie nonsense from those days to the amazing Marvin Gaye, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell and The Rolling Stones and a lot of 1960's 1970's Soul and Motown stuff...
She eventually hipped me to Prince with her brand new magical "Sexy Dancer" 12" at the tender age of 2 (she still insists that despite I cringe at most of her music collection she made me Prince fan...)

Neversin.

The one and only Electrifying Mojo!!

Neversin said:

I have Frank's live-joint @ The Roxy , in which the Mother's Of Inventiuon band includes keyboardist George Duke ... another hero of mine .
I still have to explore some Zappa-treasures from a devoted collector i know .
Frank had so much brilliant musicians in his band which could translate his absurdly well arranged & orchestrated chaos .
Drummer Terry Bozzio was one of them , and another great anecdote is when guitarist Steve Vai went to a hiring-session of Zappa , he had written out some material of Frank in notes ... Frank responded : "That's impossible ... i can't even do that myself"

I'm glad to have found that "Sexy Dancer" eventually on extended 12" ... IT BUMPS !!!!! ... PERIOD.
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[Edited 4/27/06 13:41pm]

Radio

Probably my friend Victor(RIP).It was around 1983, I was in my junior year in High School.I remember being clueless to modern music before we met, I thought the Village People & Judas Priest were punk(just kidding). We were in his bedroom listening to records.He had gone through his punk phase, his boy george phase & at the time he considered himself a goth.I even remember the records we were listening to that day that for ever changed my outlook on musical tastes:

Crass-Feeding of the 5,000
Joy Division-Closer
Culture Club-Kissing to Be Clever
Madonna-Everybody 12"

Over the years, we lost touch & I heard in the early 90s, he passed away from AIDs complications ..
[Edited 4/27/06 13:55pm]

Apparently the org has a bit of sway in my buying choices.

Check out the 3 CDs I bought today:



Thanks everyone.

I got my musical taste from being born in THE MOTOR CITY and being exposed to many different types of music. I love it all if it's good-if it's garbage then it will be very noticeable to me. I try to instill in my son to listen to all kinds of music whether R&B, Country, Hip-Hop, etc because if a song is good it doesn't matter what genre it's from. It's all about having an open mind and just loving music. Much respect due to MOTOWN!

my mom sorta got me into the artist i enjoy today on accient really..at a garage sell she bought these 3 cd for 4 bucks..they just happend to be..cocteau's twin treasure and garlands and bowie's lets dance(sure its not the best album,but this were i got a taste from his voice)...the other musicans i found them by curiousity basically any musican who gave me a rush,becuase they are either good,unique,etc..

From my parents, to a point...the rest is just what I hear and decide I like.

Actually, I got all my musical tastes from my alter ego Herman. I like that story better; it's so much more unique. Especially if I say he wrapped them up for me.

my mom -- she used to play music almost every night when I went to bed... ray charles, buddy holly, elvis presley, tina turner, janis joplin, etc. she also played a lot of country and classical, but mostly R&B which is still her favorite style of music. after i finally got hip to Prince in 1983, i went looking for everything and anything that he's ever been associated with -- all the "mpls sound" artists, then p-funk, james, joni, etc.

My traditional taste in instrumental jazz came from my dad, he stuied music under W.C. Handy as a young man, and in his adulthood was friends with musicians like Sonny Stitt and Buddy Rich. So there's an old skool purist approach to jazz that he definitely instilled in me, although I didn't quite "get" it until I was about 18...

My mom, as a contrast, was a TRUE FUNK & SOUL SOLDIER, who in addition to her love of Motown from her younger days, or the blues of Joe Tex and Bobby Bland, would be the one to purchase the Issac Hayes, Sly Stone and Parliament albums. She was also definitely into singularly rythym&blues singers like Dorothy Moore, Bobby Womack and a host of others whose names I can't remember (looks like I need a shot of Ginko Biloba, haha)..., but the very surprising thing about my urban, middle class, full-time working black American mother is that she embraced ALOT of music that would be considered out of step with her contemporaries when we were growing up...I mean, as Aretha, and Patti, and Diana, and Marvin all grew older, she stayed a devoted supporter of their music and purchased their 45's by rote, but, she could also hang in the 80's with my sister and me as we went through our obsessions with groups like DeBarge and so on.

Whereas my Dad couldn't (AND STILL CANNOT) stand to hear anything that doesn't fit into the jazz catagory (without having a "coniption"), Mom's record collection was chock full of the whole spectrum of rythym & blues, from Betty Wright to LTD to the Jacksons to Rufus to Kurtis Blow... to a neat selection of pop/rock offerings: case in point being that the first song I ever learned was at 3 years old- by Elton John, "Benny and The Jets"; the first song she ever recorded of my sister and I singing was Leo Sayer's "Lou Make Me Feel Like Dancing", and the 2 damn records she WORE OUT on Saturday mornings when we were cleaning the house in 1980 were David Bowie's "Let's Dance" and any of the songs from Steely Dan's "Gaucho"...she was trip, that old lady..and still is...as has been shown by her recent interest in Mariah Carey's "EOM" record and Shakira's last Spanish offering...AT 60 SOMETHING years old !!!! Apparently, GRAN-MAW likes to listen to "Shake It Off" and "La Tortura" in the car on the way to the grocery store and back!

The interweb, inexorably. There is no other forum for the kind of music that I mostly like to listen to these days. My Mom surely did not listen to Propergol.

And you'll most likely end up getting into the electronic goth thing because nobody likes you and the bunch of people nobody likes like you neither, basically.

Mostly myself. I guess you could say I got them from the skating rinks. My mother used to drop me off during the disco era and that was the music that was popular. When disco "died", I turned to funk myself because it was the closest thing to disco. I began loving funk even more than I loved disco. Then there was house music, which was a more modern reincarnation of disco. When stripped down midtempo hip hop took over, then I turned to rock.

My parents. Both my mom and dad had a wide taste. And everyone in my family learned how to play and read music at a young age. So there was exposure and an appreciation for various styles early on. I could listen to the popular music for my demographic but I think I had mature taste even for a teenager.

both of my parents and highschool. my dad likes all of the dusties and soul/funk and a little bit of rock. hes really into marvin gaye, roy ayers, mandrill, slave, george duke,steely dan. etc. my mom is classic rock. she's the one got who got me into led zeppelin and Queen and Chicago, rod stewart, yes, david bowie and stuff. she turned my father on to billy joel's italian restaurant Highschool put on to rock music like metallica, guns n roses etc. it also was my intro to public enemy, boogie down productions, doug e. fresh, and especially too short and nwa, mc lyte, jungle brothers. then you had the house music and groups like nitzerebb(sp) so much music going around
[Edited 4/28/06 10:50am]