How have your tastes changed?

[Feadoggie]

Remember in the 70's when grownups first discovered FM radio

I'm gonna disagree with that observation, chas. As I remember it, the "grownups" actually invented and evangelized FM radio ... and hifi audio and stereo broadcasts and LPs. We merely hijacked those technologies. But yeah, lots of beautiful music. Mantovani forevah!

and damned if one day I don't hear 50 violins and a group of women and emasculated men singing "Purple haze or is it my brain. . ." I was pretty young, but even I knew there was something hilariously wrong with that.

The sins of our fathers are destined to be repeated in many ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYuOZnAqQCY

I have not changed my tastes over the years. I have grown though.

Feadoggie

[ytliek]

Food tastes have changed to a healthier feasting.

I listen to more world music, I always listened, but, more so now.

BTW, it is snowing here heavy wet stuff, five inches so far, and on top of the twelve frozen inches we already have on the ground. Back in the teenage days I'd be out hussling shoveling jobs... cash only! My taste for snow and shoveling are long gone, keep the cash and shovel your own. Moreover, there are teenagers living in the neighborhood, but, you aren't going to hear any of them knocking on the door to shovel you out.

[chas]

Remember in the 70's when grownups first discovered FM radio

I'm gonna disagree with that observation, chas. As I remember it, the "grownups" actually invented and evangelized FM radio ... and hifi audio and stereo broadcasts and LPs. We merely hijacked those technologies. But yeah, lots of beautiful music. Mantovani forevah!

I concur with what you said. After all, it's not like some stoner invented FM broadcasting at a love-in on Haight Street during the Summer of Love, nor did he own a radio station that he promoted.

But I and each of my siblings had FM radios long before my parents ever got one, and the same was true of all my friends. We listened to underground and college stations.* But around the mid-70's, the beautiful-music station format got a head of steam going, and suddenly all our parents got FM radios and listened to said stations. The same may not be true in other parts of the country.

My father resisted LPs for a long time, too. Something about being able to have a song longer than would fit on a 78 really bugged him.

*An interesting note, I was back in my home stomping ground last weekend for a funeral, and I put on the progressive station I listened to growing up. They were playing the same stuff they played 40 years ago.

[Feadoggie]

But I and each of my siblings had FM radios long before my parents ever got one, and the same was true of all my friends. We listened to underground and college stations.* But around the mid-70's, the beautiful-music station format got a head of steam going, and suddenly all our parents got FM radios and listened to said stations. The same may not be true in other parts of the country.

So we probably have a difference of personal perspective then. I may also be a little older than you.

My Dad was into audio, his only crass self-indulgence really. We built or bought HiFi gear and early stereo stuff as it became available. He bought several Fisher audio systems back when the company was still Avery Fisher's. He had FM stereo MPX capability in the very early 1960's - for beautiful music.

So yes, beautiful music stations were the rage from the late 50's onward. That was what my mother filled the air in our house with all day long. My brothers and I would rebel when we could. We had to wait until 1968 to get real "progressive" FM broadcasts out of Philadelphia through the person of Dave Herman. And that made evenings pretty sweet. No more staying up late trying to pull in Joey Reynolds and his compadres on WKBW 1520 on AM radio.

Feadoggie

[MTGuru]

Remember in the 70's when grownups first discovered FM radio

Like Feadoggie, my experience was very different from yours. When multiplex FM stereo hit in the late 50s and early 60s, along with microgroove LPs, every middle class family I knew got a home stereo. from a big Fisher/Gerard console like ours to smaller self-contained systems. And most table radios were AM/FM. FM programming was oriented to classical and the pop music of the day - Montovani, Enoch Light, Ray Conniff, bossa nova, big bands, show tunes. When the album rock stations began invading FM in the late 60s, such as WNEW and WPLJ in New York, they were the intruders. And it was the kids who then "discovered" FM and who were gradually weaned away from AM and the ubiquitious AM transistor radios. I don't know when the "beautiful music" moniker came in, but adults kept listening to the same FM programming that was there all along.

[chas]

Well, I've learned something new the last day or two. It's always a good day when that happens.

[mutepointe]

This is the only way to listen to old people music. I've had a few offered to me that were in excellent condition but we do not have the space. I could cry.

[Nanohedron]

Holy cow, hook up your iTunes to it.

[MTGuru]

This is the only way to listen to old people music.

Yep. Stretch that out to about twice the length and make it front-loading, and you have more or less what sat in my parents' living room. Fisher T-600 receiver (tuner-amp), Gerard turntable, and Jensen speakers. A very warm and sweet system, and I really regret having to leave it behind when I moved cross-country.

[Feadoggie]

Yep. Stretch that out to about twice the length and make it front-loading, and you have more or less what sat in my parents' living room. Fisher T-600 receiver (tuner-amp), Gerard turntable, and Jensen speakers.

Sounds like the one at my parents house. I do not remember the model numbers of the components in the cabinet.

This is the only way to listen to old people music. I've had a few offered to me that were in excellent condition but we do not have the space. I could cry.

Both of my parents passed away on the same day not long back. There was an expansive Fisher system in the living room of their house sitting front and center and out-competing the Lester piano for attention. It still worked rather well. I brought the piano to my home. I had no room for the Fisher. None of the other family members wanted it either. I tried every way I could think of to sell the whole system. When that failed I tried to sell the individual components piece by piece. No Takers.

I ended up giving it to the young man who eventually bought the house. He was quite pleased.

Holy cow, hook up your iTunes to it.

Yes, in the end I did have an MP3 player and a CD deck playing through the Fisher. My Dad never quite got the hang of that stuff though.

Feadoggie

[Tor]

I was thinking about this during a long run the other day. It was mostly in the context of music -- someone once told me that most people's taste in music is pretty much set by the age of 20 or 25.

I don't agree with the someone, it's not true in my experience, not with myself and not with others either as far as I can tell. For the most part. But I think it's true that *at some point* people may stop acquiring new tastes in music.

I remember that my musical taste (definitely singular, not plural) was extremely narrow at the start.. when I was a small boy I *only* liked rock'n roll, and it had to be *right*. No rockabilly, for example (it didn't have the rock'n roll groove, I suppose. Not bluesy enough). That slowly expanded over the years and seems to have continued so. Maybe it's stopped now.. not sure. There are three particular kinds of music I never liked (two are old, one is newer), and that never changed. But almost everything else goes. And it's much more varied now than when I was 20 or 25 for sure.

Food? Sure, I eat basically anything and everything now, wherever I am in the world. Except raw onion, which I lost the ability to digest when I was in my thirties. But I still like it.. just can't eat it. And I don't drink sweet sodas anymore, just water and some juice. Coka-Cola etc. is too sweet. But I drank far too much of that stuff when I was younger anyway.

Books.. that hasn't changed too much I guess. But then again I've been reading a lot since I was very young, I still do.. a book a week on average I should think. When I was young (I always went to the library after school when in elementary school) it was nearly only science fiction. Now it's a bit wider, but I never really cared for 'pure' crime stories (as in: "Someone's murdered, who dunnit"). Only if it's a part of something else. I remember some of the Isaac Asimov stories I used to read had a 'crime mystery' theme baked into a science fiction story.

[mutepointe]

How many people come to this board to say that they just heard celtic music and they want to learn how to play that flutey thing? Taste change as people grow. Some folks may not grow.

[I.D.10-t]

I think that for the most part I need to find the correct sub group in each field of music. For the most part I dislike popular country music, there seems to be a self selection of sorts that people that like country music, so most of the country music I heard was consistent with that identity. Same with rap, and same with heavy metal though it is primarily what I listened to in my school days of music. I think that the Dixie Chick's incident shows just how much identity baggage goes with some types of music.

Over all I find that music that doesn't take itself too seriously, has a sense of humor, maybe has some social commentary, and is played in earnest is usually something I can listen to. I do find that my tolerance for some processing and autotune to be diminishing.

[ytliek]

For the most part I dislike popular country music, there seems to be a self selection of sorts that people that like country music, so most of the country music I heard was consistent with that identity.

For me it all started when they stopped wearing the cowboy hats and began wearing baseball caps... and then, turned the ballcap 180°.

Sorry for reposting this one, but, it works for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGTW35jWh7A

And, American Idol sends'em down the country road ta boot.

[Brus]

... began wearing baseball caps... and then, turned the ballcap 180°.

I can remember when a backwards baseball cap meant you played catcher.