On My Taste in Music

Boston is a haven for music people, or at least that’s how it seems. I need two hands to count the number of friends I have here who play an instrument (with high school band not counting), or are “avid” fans. Avid meaning obsessively concerned with quality or owning more CDs than I’ve got movies. Anyways, “what kind of music do you like?” has become an increasingly common ice breaker question; one that I’m not to prepared to answer, and I’ve always found my taste in music to be very wishy washy.

But now I have my answer, I like exclusively music that I’ve heard before. This has really become much more noticeable now that I’ve stopped listing to the radio all together. That of course eliminates a large source of music which I’ve heard before and makes smaller, easier to track sources like movies, and iPods at house parties, ect… more noticeable. This increase in traceability has allowed me to use some pseudo science to arrive at this conlcusion. Lets say I like the movie (Almost Famous) a song (Elton John – Tiny Dancer) is in. I don’t run out and find the sound track. Some time later I hear a song from it at a party, I instantly think, oh this is a good song, without recalling consciously that I’ve heard it before. Subconsciously though it has been attached to something I like, the movie, and so I like it. Movies of course are just one example, it happens with people, and events as well.

Now, this isn’t entirely uncommon and strange, but I think that I am an extreme case. I’ve seen this happen where a CD, in this case by Radiohead, happens to get played in the background of a dinner party, twice, non consecutively in one night. I thought nothing of the music the first time around, but the second time I again had that wow this is good thought. Now the real test would be if that same thing happened to a really awful CD. This of course makes me a record studio’s dream customer as I’ll like pretty much anything they can associate with something else I like. Luckily I’ve never been too enamored with any particular pop radio station, and now I’ve got all these musicy friends to keep me a socially acceptable music taste track.

Comments are closed.