the ides is: "Our Parents are uncool" so "what our parents listen to is uncool"
the first one is genuinely true there's a few bands that my parents listen to that i can stand but most of it is crap.

What bands do your parents listen to?

my dad listens to everything older than me (only mainstream rock), my mom listens to everything mainstream between 1965 - 1999 excluding the following genres: world, folk, and rap

Sweet, I LOVE Def Leppard. I don't get why people make fun of them, they have awesome songs. Bringing on the Heartbreak and Photograph are amazing!

Even growing up I never had that attitude because (a) both my parents have very broad tastes in music and (b) I've always appreciated music history. My mom always surprises me by what music of mine she actually likes (Kid Koala is an example that comes to mind) and my dad is as big a music fan as I am with a gigantic record collection spanning all kinds genres and eras. He's responsible for introducing me to Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, The Animals, The Stones, The Beach Boys, Warren Zevon, CCR, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, Ike Turner, Johnny Cash, Dick Dale, The Ventures, The Trashman, Grover Washington Jr. and Keith Jarrett, as well as boatloads of obscure early rock n roll and doo wop. To this day we still trade music with each other. I can't imagine ever not being interested in that.

Although my dad likes a lot of crap, it was definitely because of him that I have an interest in music. There was always music on in our house and tons of records and tapes and he was into stuff like The Beatles, The Stones, Queen, E.L.O and my love of Reggae comes from him as he likes Reggae a lot. He has seen tons of bands too. I only recently found out that he has seen Muddy Waters which shocked me but in a good way.

That's cool! You actually just reminded me that my dad also introduced me Bob Marley and Gregory Isaacs.

i don't think my father listens to awful music. a lot of it is safe dad rock stuff but he's also responsible for introducing me to Beck, Robyn Hitchcock, Talking Heads, Frank Zappa, The Flaming Lips, and quite a few others. thankfully he steered me well clear of listening to the Eagles, the Beach Boys, Rush or any of those other turds for the '60s and '70s.

on the other hand my mother's record collection consists of Bette Midler and ELP albums. :shudder:

The Beach Boys are turds? :soapbox:

**** that! My folks are the main reasons that music is such a big part of my life. My dad played in a band when I was a kid, and we didn't watch a whole lot of TV; we mostly listened to music.

And I'll do you all one better. On a road trip in 2005, my brothers and I stopped in Cleveland, OH to see our grandfather who introduced us to ****in' AWESOME music. I don't know if anybody on this thread knows who Billy Cobham is - he was a big session musician in the 60s and 70s, and played drums for the Mahavishnu Orchestra. But he played Billy Cobham's Spectrum, and we were all blown away.

I think the whole stigma about not liking what your parents like has always been a large nuance of the generation gaps that have been going on since forever. So anybody that thinks they are "standing out" or "starting something" by throwing away what their parents dig, they are mistaken.