[continued from Part 1...]

All fairly standard stuff there really. Quite varied, but standard. I believe so anyway.
The biggest surprise, however, came when, on the greatest holiday ever in the North West American States I was fed country music. At first I was completely shocked and horrified by this sound, demanding that it be turned off immediately. It wasn’t my car and I wasn’t doing the driving, from Massachusetts to Maine, so I didn’t really have a say.

I was later more shocked to find that I ended up singing along to Kenny Rogers’ ‘The Gambler’, ‘Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy’ by Big & Rich, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Jimmy Buffet, and Jo Dee Messina. Then there was the song which would come to mean a lot to me, one which will always bring back many great memories of those few weeks in America in 2005; Toby Keith, “I Love This Bar’.

I liked Country music. I couldn’t believe it had actually happened. I knew the words to all of these songs. I insisted Amy make me a copy of the CD that was playing in the car which I promptly burned to MP3 when I got home and listened to regularly in an attempt to prevent normality from setting in and take me back . I listened to a lot more of Tim McGraw, George Strait, Wilie Nelson, Alan Jackson, Brooks & Dunn, Dixie Chicks and Brad Paisley. I loved it. I was able to associate it with a time and a friend.

That Summer changed a lot about my musical tastes, my friends there are just so much more relaxed, and as such I developed a taste for music I hadn’t thought about as much before. Folk music was another; Buffalo Springfield and Paul Simon, lyrical geniuses. The Traveling Wilburys and Tom Petty led to The Band, Bruce Springsteen, The Postal Service, Iron and Wine, Elliot Smith, Ryan Adams and Sufjan Stevens.

Alt-Rock-Indie are huge favourites with bands such as Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, Interpol, Eels, The Shins, Tegan and Sara, Muse, Bell X1 and so so many others, though I don’t know if this will always remain my ‘primary’ interest. What has been almost worrying me lately has been my recent insane fondness of dance music. Yes, lots of loud dance music with heavy bass driven beats.

The majority does have a bit of an alternative feel to it, but some does sound like it’s straight out of a nite-club in the 90s: Roysöpp in particular with those brilliant vocals, and Friendly Fires which are almost more dance than Rock. But I love them all; Ratatat, Moby, MGMT, Passion Pit, Hockey, Oomiaq, Holy Fuck, Boards of Canada, Shpongle, Fuck Buttons, The Future Sounds of London, Thievery Corporation, Mindless Self Indulgence, Mylo, Crystal Castles et al.

Though not strictly dance music, certainly a variant of the genre, my love of which I put down to a love of exciting instrumental music as a whole, such as Liquid Tension Experiment, Sigur Rós, Vangelis, Yann Tiersen, Enya, Jean-Michel Jarre as well as a lot of Classical music from Beethoven and Mozart to Chopin and Vivaldi.

This post, though quite long and list-esque, is something I’ve been thinking about for quite a while. Music is the one thing which has kept me going through the good times and bad, ups and downs. I have songs and artists I can listen to depending on my mood and songs and artists that totally change my mood when listening. There’s a lot of music I don’t like, but I am open to anything and enjoy trying new music. Hip-Hop and Rap were the two genres I previously claimed to despise, though I eventually found some very respectable artists who didn’t verbalise constantly of misogyny, materialism, celebrating crime, and bitching about other artists etc: A Tribe Called Quest, Eminem and The Game. So far this list is limited.

However, I have found a great likeness towards Trip-Hop and Downtempo in recent months with artists such as Gorillaz, Thievery Corporation, Future Sound of London, Zero 7, though most of this I get from Dave’s Lounge weekly podcast of such music, or by entering the tag to LastFM.

Also Nina Simone, whose music I could listen to for day’s on end, and have done. Or Miles Davis or Keb’ Mo’ for the times when I just want to chill out.

Like so many things – I try not to restrict myself. No limits. There is reason to say no. I have nothing holding me back. I make my own choices. Informed choices.

I Love the music, and one of the most important things to me has always been to listen to new music. I rarely listen to the radio, so using friends’ recommendations, and LastFM have been great sources for me in finding new music. Experimenting, and not being afraid to branch out to different genres. At the same time I must stress that I rarely like music just ‘because’ others do – that may be how I find it, it being popular, though I generally base my opinion on the music in the solitary confinement of my own listening environment. Track by track deciding whether I like something or not.

I try my best also not to forget the bands and songs I previously enjoyed, going back to them when I can, this has been helped by my favourite social network/online tool, LastFM which has been recording my listening habits on since 27 Mar 2003, while it was still the Computer Science Dissertation project of Richard Jones.

What sort of music am I into? All sorts.

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