All a matter of taste

I was talking to someone recently about music, I've bought am MP3 player and have taken to listening whenever and to whatever I can. This is quite a change for me. I am listening right now.

Up to about 2 years ago I had no interest in music, in fact I will go so far as to say that I avoided anything to do with music. It was alien, beyond my understanding, incomprehensible, distracting noise and I had no need for it in my life. I would listen to talk radio in the car, Radio 4, but whenever that distraction turned up I would switch off, Desert Island Disks being particularly annoying. I would claim to be tone deaf, or that music was trivia not worthy of my attention. I had an awareness that maybe this was a little odd, some 5 years ago when on a counselling course we were all asked to bring in a favorite piece, and after much soul searching I had brought nothing. Friends found this odd, that during 47 years, no song or instrumental had formed an emotional attachment in my brain. "What about your first dance" I didn't; "Mums favorite" she didn't, "Your children's favorite" I didn't listen.

Home was a non music zone for my childhood (apart from the Archers signature tune), at school I dimly recollect banging a drum and tapping on a triangle (is playing the triangle called tapping?). In my teens I had the ubiquitous guitar (something to do with the opposite sex) which became dusty and binned. I had stared at my "Bert Weedon" Play with Yourself in a Day book for months but nothing resembling Music had emerged. A few years ago my wife bought me a harmonica starter set which met the same fate as Bert and Co..

What did I want music for, I had R4, it was all I wanted.

So what has changed? Certainly I can no longer imagine a life without music, it no longer distracts; it enriches and colours my life. I greedily consume, devour, digest and am nourished by music. It would be great to point to some event or turn in my life, there isn't one; but gradually over 2 years music has become very important to me.

So what music do I like?

Well there hangs the tale. I have missed 50 years; almost like a man wakening from a coma; the world is a strange place . Add to those 50 several hundred more that preceeded my birth which I label mostly as classical (sorry for the generalisation and a lot of the 20th century).

So what music do I like?

This is what is in my MP3 player

Adam Faith, Amimals, Arctic Monkeys, Beethoven, Billy Idol, Blondie, Carlos Santana, Cream, Dogs Die in Hot Cars, Eagles, Fear Factory (blame a friendly beaver!!!), Kaiser Cheifs, Lonnie Donegan, Michael Crawford, Pavarotti, Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, Robbie Williams, Sinaed O'Connor, The Streets, Talking Heads and The Verve.

I have to try it all. Hope I don't find a genre, what might I miss if I do?