I used to make fun of people who listened to country music. Then in USAFHG training I had a roommate from Kentucly for 6 weeks…. 24 hours a day country music. I got hooked, not on the old twangy stuff, but on the new can-barely-be-called-country stuff. My first country CD was Montgomery Gentry.

Through all of that, I have retained my enjoyment of my dad’s favorites… the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel.

Now, I pretty much just flip through stations on my XM radio and listen to whatever gets the blood flowing. That does NOT include rap, metal, hip hop or any other fake music.

Bottom Line…. U2… no one like ‘em before or after. Can’t be touched.

First music I remember liking was M.C. Hammer in elementary school. Then mom took me to Joy christian music and let me listen to a bunch of christian cds.

Christian music was a major influence in my life from Jr. High through College. I was huge into D.C. Talk in jr high. I remember listening to mxpx in junior high and thinking it sounded like garbage, but by 9th grade it was awesome (zoom ’95!).

Since then my tastes haven’t evolved much. I found the ataris, new found glory, yellowcard, fall out boy, starting line. somewhere along the line I got bored with Kroq music.

Latest “new” music I’ve been listening to is the band “Jack’s Mannequin.” I watch One Tree Hill, and they’ve actually got some pretty good music on there.

There are my music tastes in a nutshell. Catchy beat and lyrics strung together with some sweet guitar and a fast tempo.

Also my cousin was heavy into 80′s pop / synth… so from this I listened to Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Oingo Boingo then later NIN and others…

When I got my first boom box I found myself also listening to the whatever was on KIIS (this was the mid to late 80s, in hindsight it still sucked!) so I was into more pop music, Madonna and crap and I also liked the beats of Hip Hop / Rap or what was being played on power 106 at the time…

After getting into Middle school I got over the KIIS fad (and later the hip hop fad) and began to return to my roots… listening to more metal and classic rock… when I made it to High school I was fully into the earliest bands I was first exposed to… I wore Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin T-shirts (and often was made fun of for them and my cool 70s rocker sideburns… or so i thought they were)… it never phased me… I also became heavy into Primus (which went along with my john bohnam / drummer fascination)

Also meeting Richard in my freshman year he exposed me to SKA / Punk and all that fun stuff…

College years were filled with concerts and recording them with my tape deck and later minidisc… I began exploring bands like Dave Matthews and other similar sounding artists (although dave seemed to stick) and jazz…

Recently I’ve been fascinated with garage bands and indie rock / folk…

Somewhere in the equation talk radio fit… oh yeah that came from riding in the red ford with my grandpa who listened to a mix of KNX 1070 news radio along with the greatest hits of AA speakers on tape…

Musical taste is funny when you look back on it… I have a H-U-G-E mp3 collection now and I listen to probably 5%.

Music exploration is good, just don’t take things so seriously… that’s why people who listen to Emo are so damn lame!