Have Your Musical Tastes Changed?

[Mr. Toad]

Not really. I know it may sound rather stiff but I can't make myself like a song.

[Socrates]

I've been intrigued by this question since this thread started. I couldn't make up my mind what the right answer was in my case - which is why I am only chipping in rather late in the day.

I think there is a constant: I've always been attracted to the challenging, the music and sounds that you don't quite get the first time around, but feel intrigued enough to persevere with. This adventurousness has always been there.

But the actual music, which has delivered this buzz has changed over time. Progressive rock was an important part of that trajectory in my teens and twenties, leading me from mainstream pop and rock through to experimental rock, avantgarde jazz and contemporary classical music. There has been quite few responses earlier in the thread in a similar vein, so it seems a common experience that prog is a gateway drug to the more hard-core experimental stuff.

I pretty much left the "big-six" progressive rock behind during the 80s and 90s, only beginning to listen again in the last 20 years or so. I find that there is some of it I still dig, e.g. most of King Crimson and early Floyd, but a lot of the other bands don't really do it for me anymore - to the point that in some cases I can't hear why I ever bothered with them in the first place. So from that point of view my tastes have definitely changed, quite unlike some of the other posters.

[adewolf]

From hour to hour.

[Jerjo]

Prog metal (except for Riverside) and fusion (except for the Dregs) bore me now. Even a few years ago I couldn't get enough of the stuff.

[AncientChord]

To me it's the burn out factor. If I listen too much to music I have liked since childhood, I lose interest. Grew up with The British invasion, then psychedelia, then prog, classical and jazz. Later I got into the vast Celtic music scene, and the world of movie soundtracks, especially Ennio Morricone. Still like everything, but I have to be in the mood for nostalgia. Some things are so drilled into my head I find listening to it is hard to stomach. The Doors is an example. Loved then but FM radio in America still over does it, as as soon as I hear them, I shut it off. Love the Beatles too, but even if I get Altzheimers and/or Dementia, I bet I won't forget any of their lyrics. Another aspect of not listening is due to what I hear as dated music that has not stood the test of time, only IMO I guess? I do find that kind of music laughable. And there is plenty of old prog in that vein too. That's my wacky brain!

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

setting aside the bubblegum Pop I liked as a child

as an adolescent I used to listen only to radio Rock cause I didn't know anything else

then in my teens I got exposed to the Symphonic Rock and Jazz Rock styles of Prog music and ran with that until the 80s when I got into the underground Hardcore Punk scene and clubbing

by the 90s I revisited Symph Rock and Jazz Rock and started checking out the new Prog artists like Ozrix, Tribal Tech, Djam Karet, Minimum Vital, etc.

sometime around the turn of the millennium I began to get into a bit of the Avant Rock and Electronic Rock styles of Prog and started to have very little patience for vocalists who did not write lyrics I could relate to

nowadays, I rarely buy anything new if it has a vocalist even though I still like the old vocal stuff I was fond of before the millennium

so... I suppose my tastes have evolved over the past 50 years or so