Basically, my mother acts tolerant when I play hard rock, usually extremely happy when I play my jazz or blues, but worried/upset/scared when I start playing anything heavier/more experimental/punk.

My dad just doesn't care that much, but I try to share any good new blues rock bands with him, since that's usually what he likes. He also really liked Apocalyptica when we saw them live.

My only sibling old enough to really appreciate music likes a lot of the same stuff I do, but when I start listening to bands that are too experimental/mix too many genres at once/or pretty much anything punk he starts getting annoyed. He himself listens to mostly jazz and a handful of thrash metal bands, so we usually get along with music.

My best friend likes some of the same stuff, but if you start getting too underground/old/new/different from really generic hard rock he just starts to laugh at you. One of my biggest accomplishments in life is getting him to like Alice Cooper and Clutch.

And my other friends just don't care that much. Pretty much the common thread of music is jazz. Almost everyone I know will listen to that and be content, but aside from that, I'm pretty out there. I'm probably most musically different from my mom, but we both agree on soul, old rock, jazz, and Motown stuff.

People I know don't really like the music that I do, friends in particular. My parents have actually been quite tolerant of what I listen to, even when I was going through the discogs of the Residents and Negativland, who they really, really hate (I asked once, that's how I know). At least they were nice enough not to comment, right? However, if I even mention something like The Soft Bulletin or Takk... or Quatermass or something, I usually get mild backlash from said friends -- people who usually gravitate towards Kings Of Leon and Jimmy Eat World and the Foo Fighters. So... I dunno.

So I'm apparently some musical outcast or something. >.>

50% of my friends: Anything after 1989 (some exceptions included) sounds the same and sucks.

"Is this modern?"
"Is this mainstream?"
"Is this popular?"

First questions out of their mouth whenever they hear something after 1989 that they even remotely like, so they can make a quick judgment to hate it or not. (ie, if it's popular, they stay far away)

Of course, this is coming from the same people that adore certain albums by The Offspring and The Fray.

Ugh no offense to your friends but I can't stand people like that...people who talk like that make me :banghead:

Oh, trust me. I know. I get the same feeling around them. It's not enjoyable to listen to music around them from after that year.

Then they get all indignant when myself and our other friends are discussing a band and we're like, "It's a band, you wouldn't like them." "OH! How do you know what I'd like??? You're really c**ky, you know that???"

Then we tell them about the band and they go, "Yeahhh....I don't know who that is. I've never heard of them."

Then we play them the band. "Yeah, I don't like that production style. It sounds too modern. I'm not into this. It sounds like everything else today."

They often refer to the stuff I listen to as... Funeral music.

They only react when it's loud. :band:

When I first started listening to punk my Dad pretty much thought I was crazy because he hated punk with a passion when he was in high school. Then after playing him some of the Clash and he realized they did Rock the Casbah, he gained a whole new respect for punk. So, that was a win.

When I got into stuff like PJ Harvey, one of my friends listened to her and was like, "Oh my god, what is this? It's creepy!" I've tried to introduce her to new stuff but it's a lost cause. She'll only listen to top 40.

My boyfriend's takes on:



"Is this the Sex Pistols???"


"This guy's voice is terrible. They should let the chick sing"

Listening to Babyshambles
"I can't tell the difference between the **** you listen to. It all sounds like the Smiths"


I think he's just trollling

Hahahahaha, he would say stuff like that. What does he listen to?

After a month or so after my post here, my mom just calls my music "weird". Nothing else. But that's probably due to her seeing some band names. :/

My classmates at school seem to be ignorant as well. My algebra class was dead silent excluding the usual talking. Cue me playing some Mars Volta (and at a pretty loud volume as well to drown out their talking. Not too loud, but it should still be audible). Not a single comment.

Honestly I don't think he's much of a recreational music listener, but if he sends me a youtube link, it's ****ing bagpipes

I played João Gilberto for a friend today. She liked it. I also showed another friend some Curtis Mayfield, and he said it made him feel very happy. My other friend asked me if he could get all of the Belle and Sebastian off of my computer onto his iPod, because I showed him a YouTube link to one of their songs and he's been into them ever since. Then again, another girl said that old Disney Film music was better than anything related to 'metal', but you know, that's just the nostalgia talking.

Kind of an anti-climactic set of anecdotes, but frankly I feel as though you can get people into plenty of good music if you don't choose a ridiculous pathway. Getting the pop-obsessed listener into Merzbow is the longest of long shots, so I always try to take something familiar yet angular and then show it to them. Then, everybody's happy.