Like many of the Gen-X generation, music is an important part of my life. To people like my parents who grew up before "Rock-and-Roll" (1950's) "music" is just music. Its like, "Oh yeah, I think I hear music playing from the radio." Listening to music ranks somewhere near reading the newspaper on the entertainment scale. I've met other people who've had similar observations.

Frequently I'll come across other people on the internet who also identify as being really into music, but when we try to chat it doesn't usually work out. They're either really into a genre that I have little exposure too (i.e. indie, garage bands, local live scenes) or when I mention who I like, they'll try to test my knowledge with trivia questions. I don't collect musical trivia. REM is one of my favorite bands, but I can't tell you much if anything about the title tracks on all their albums, their background, etc. Actually REM isn't a great example. I know their first album is called "Murmur" (also one of the easiest words to pronounce in the English language), and they're from Athens Georgia (also the birthplace of The B-52's, how did a place like Athens make them?) but that's it. I love their two most recent albums, even though they're different from their earlier music.

Up until I started college, the only music I knew about was Top 40, Classical, and Jazz. Guess what kind of music I listened to then. Yeah, I was into classical. I liked Gershwin, Beethoven, Rossini, Holst, Vaughan-Williams, and some of the well known composers of concert band music like Vincent Persichetti, John Barnes Chance. Concert band music? Yeah well, I played saxophone, which isn't a standard instrument of the symphony orchestra, so my musical choices were limited. I really tried to get into jazz, but just couldn't do it. Since I played Bari sax I collected some Gerry Mulligan records, and he seemed pretty cool. Maynard Ferguson was definitely cool in my book too. For pop music, I liked The Police a lot, and had a appreciation for Def Leppard, Van Halen, Rush, The Pretenders, Bryan Adams, and a few other hard rock bands of the time. I never liked the boy band of that era, Duran Duran.

When I got to college, I was exposed to a whole new world of music. My first roommate and his friends were into punk, hard core, new wave, and progessive. Groups like Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Surf Punks, Minor Threat, U2, Depeche Mode, Oingo Boingo, etc. Later I met up with people who introduced me to artists whom I enjoy to this day: King Crimson, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, Genesis, Moody Blues, Talking Heads, and Frank Zappa.

I'm pretty happy with the music scene these days. I finally got cable tv (Digital Cable no less) and am getting into MTV2. They actually show videos if you can belive that. We also have commercial free music channels. I usually listen to the Alternative, Progressive, Heavy Metal, and sometimes Classic Rock settings. In December I had it on "Sounds of the Seasons" and they were playing good xmas music. That was nice.

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