Where I'm coming from

Probably good to showcase my bias:

I don't pretend to have "taste". Not in film or music. More than anything, I've been thirsty to consume and experience it all. I've always been fascinated with what can be done with instruments and just what journeys, textures, soundscapes, and such people can craft. Some times i like it poppy, sometimes its about nostalgia, sometimes it exploits a certain range of human emotion and perspectives, sometimes it's high art. I trend to aggressive or dark music, but have always been fairly ecclectic. I'd say 70%. of my taste is fairly low brow, 20% is fairly pretentious, and 10% sits somewhere in between.

My parents raised me on Conway Twitty, some 90s country, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, 60s Motown, Elvis, The Beatles, oddly enough little splashes of Dr Hook, and Jimi Hendrix. They took me to my first concerts, usually lead by the Statler Bros, often featuring guests like Reba McEntire. My first concerts were local ska bands (Fighting Gravity), and the annual tours of The Wailers, with a sprinkling of local punk bands often by kids my age but sometimes a little bigger than that (Avail).

I'm a suburban kid and was a 90s teen.

My first love, musically, was Michael Jackson. Getting into music on my own and buying my own tapes, I was embarrassingly into Kriss Kross, MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice. Early 90s pop-rap is where I first ventured out on my own. I had lots of singles tapes from the likes of Shai, Phil Collins (Two Hearts) and Joe Public. My first CDs were Mary J Blige, Fresh Prince, Bel Biv Divoe, Boys II Men, and Guns n Roses (Use Your Illusion I). Increasingly gangster rap would be a mainstay in my life. My next loves were Grunge and largely Epitaph-label pop punk. I had all kinds of phases as a youth - 90s EDM (mostly BigBeat stuff, trance/house, etc.. Prodigy, Chem Bros, Crystal Method) and ska (save ferris, bosstones, reel big fish) and Dave Matthews all became parallel phases. In between were splashes of Bjork, Tricky, random classic rock mainstays like The Doors. My hip hop taste grew to be consumed by Wu-tang, Outkast, Dre/Snoop, Ice Cube, Warren G, and eventually Eminem.

Where I felt most at home though, through most of my youth and extending far longer into adulthood than one should admit? Marilyn Manson, Eminem, Korn, Rage Against the Machine, Tool, NIN, Limp Bizkit, Rob/White Zombie, and when nu-metal/rap-metal exploded I was all in. with everything in the radius of that movement - from Staind to Orgy, from Deadsy to Powerman 5000, from Deftones and Kittie to Kid Rock. I cringe at most of it today.

I suppose I'm like many 90s music nuts in that I had a 'core' of what I would listen to and I tended on the aggressive-but-accessible side of things, but I was always getting into something else. Grateful Dead, Tom Waits, Opeth.

My hip hop taste grew to be Rhymesayers/DefJux/ImmortalTechnique based and eventually sputter out all together. There's be little flirtations with Run the Jewels, Danny Brown, Kendrick, Hopsin, Tom MacDonald, RA The Rugged Man, and so forth, but for the most part I checked out. I didn't like trap or 'mumble rap'. I don't dig "lo-fi beats". I liked lyricism, turntablism, songs that actually stayed on topic. Being a parent, and being unable to listen to most of it... or it starting to hit home about how destructive it mostly is, and I checked out all together.

In the 05-'14 era, I had mainly accepted that "rock/metal" was dead. The world shifted to Bandcamp and I didn't know where to look. Instead, i jumped on the indie-rock, synthpop, dreamwave, Pitchfork stuff a couple days late - Animal Collective, Arcade Fire, MGMT, Chvrches, Washed Out, and so forth. And i dunno, it was all so chill and poptimist and one day I woke up with Lilly Allen albums and just gave up on it all. It was never me. I discovered some cool songs and acts along the way but i always just felt like a big fake and pretender in this sphere. The only thing to really survive this phase was Lana Del Rey, who wasn't ever really part of that scene anyways.

Just before I had a kid, my "mid-life crisis" was coupled with a "rock is dead" rebellion. Somewhere between the rise of Ghost (BC), re-discovering Mastodon and it really sticking this time, and the bravery of Opeth dropping the last remnants of death metal and going all 70s prog rock - it really all just opened me to the exploding doom metal scene (electric wizard, windhand, monolord, chelsea wolfe - sorta), stoner rock stuff (ruby the hatchet, uncle acid), blackgaze (deafheaven, alcest, myrkur). There were so many nostaliga revival scenes - prog rock (mondo drag), blues rock (black keys had been going for a while, but it was Blues Pills that really grabbed me), or just 70s rock nostalgia like Blood Ceremony, Asteroid, among others.

It felt like rock and metal were alive again - and it got me doing some deep dives with Sabbath, Type o Negative and it seemed so many acts I grew up with were having comebacks - Alice In Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, A Perfect Circle, Rob Zombie, eventually Tool.

I was actively going to shows again - even when my kid was 1-3 years old. But paying for it dearly the next day in ways my younger self never did.

When the pandemic hit... all the dark, dreary, melancholy, depressing crap from metal, grunge, industrial, stoner rock, all the stuff signaling the occult with a nod and a wink, it wasn't entertaining anymore.

I was coming more into being a father, the world seemed to increasingly turn inside out and upside down - be it b/c of COVID or culture wars and I had some personal issues, and just all the grimey sex, drug, rock n roll, and flirtation with death, depression as depth, and such - it just stopped resonating. It lost it's mystique.

And ever since then I've been sort of 'lost' with music.

I get little blips of getting into something, but the passion just isn't there like it was the first time I heard Tool or Opeth or Eminem or just came across a sound that was totally new...without sounding horrid to my now 40 year old ears.

I've started to dig backwards, almost schizophrenically. Trying on the Grateful Dead with serious effort (still doing so), digging into Motown, old country, old blues, jazz crooners, old surf rock, 80s hair metal, 80s pop and synthpop, deeper dives into Michael Jackson/Jacksons/Jackson5, deeper dives into Tom Waits and tip toeing back into prog rock with Pink Floyd, Camel, Rush (who i can't get past Geddy's voice), King Crimson and Yes.

10 years ago, I started a record collection. It's swelled to over 600 records and encompasses much of what I've described above. I plan to review all of them, one at a time, and see if I can spark my adoration for music, at least to a level it was 5 years ago. And who knows, maybe go somewhere new.