Your IRL Friends and Their Musical Preferences

Inspired by an imago zing.

For whatever reason, I've only rarely been friends with people whose musical tastes significantly matched my own (does my wife count? didn't think so). The fact that I stopped going to concerts on a regular basis almost 15 years ago probably doesn't help (then again, that shit's expensive).

Anyhow, part of the reason I haunt ILM is because none of my irl friends are passionate about music. Most of them are into pop, r&b and mainstream hip-hop, many of them like to reminisce about alt-rock's heyday, some enjoy electronic music to a timid degree, some like a couple of 90s indie acts that are still more or less around, others only listen to oldies. Others still don't listen to music at all but don't mind the occasional landfill New Age record playing in the background. Also of note are the 'I only listen to classical music but Mahler is my cut-off point'-types and the guy who solely lights up at the mention of folk and/or sacred music from his parents' country of birth. All of them actively loathe metal (except the latter guy, when it's a metal band from his parents' country of birth). Most of them like the idea of jazz and classical but stop short at actual exposure. In my professional entourage, music is consistently among the least popular hobbies, lagging sorely behind film and TV. Lastly, there are those with whom I've lost touch, but such is life.

I realize that this question is bound to appear absurd to ILM's musicians and music critics in particular, as well as to ILXors who already happen to be IRL friends, but from my perspective people don't give much of a shit about music most of the time, it's just pleasantly *there* (unless it's metal or unintelligible avant noize, in which case it's unbearably *there*).

So, where do you situate yourself in this regard?

not counting anyone i live with...

main friend 1: my age but has the music taste of a 60 year-old classical snob. interest more or less ceases at 1970. plays a mean chopin

main friend 2: extremely big ghost box/folkish uk ephemera fan that by sheer force of will i converted to the cardiacs faith (it wasn't that hard tbf) - would probably be able to hold his own on ILM

main friend 3: was an enormous music nerd with indie/folk specialism in his youth, freakish ability to predict the mercury prize winner, brilliant if extremely shy musician himself, does love a real instrument played by a real musician (as before, usually indie-folk) but has also definitely enjoyed his fair share of hip-hop and electro, would definitely be fine here if a little abrasively rigid about certain aesthetic preferences

One of my friends is an older guy who is a real serious jazz buff, doesn't have any interest in rock music really, we often go to gigs together - usually at his suggestion. He has a habit of talking as if you know as much about jazz as he does - which I find quite endearing and I've always been a very adept bluffer anyway. Oh and he's a musician too, a lot of his more technical chat goes way over my head and I just nod along.

I'd say my best friend is as much of a music nerd as I am and his tastes are similarly all over the map.

Jelly so far tbh.

what irl friends

Good friend at work is an insane record collector, he told me literally the first thing he does every morning is check discogs.com. He deejays and buys and sells vinyl and will show up at work and pull out a Croatian punk single from 1978 and say, "This is best song I've ever heard in my life". He lives and breathes music and will talk about it all day long and I'm the only person at work who has the faintest clue what he's on about and, even then, I sometimes have to try very hard to steer the conversation on to other areas 'cos I don't want to feel like I'm 19 again.

Genuinely amazed that such living, breathing specimens exist.

most of my close friends in nyc are pop-punk/emo fanatics, and of course part of why i met them was because i followed them all on tumblr right before i moved to new york. we used to go to the fest in gainesville every year but the 2017(?) one with against me! playing reinventing axl rose was too perfect to repeat so we haven't been since

but also one of my best friends from high school and i still basically share the same taste, and we've kept in touch

he told me literally the first thing he does every morning is check discogs.com.

that honestly sounds like "people who have figured out how to live" shit right now, I am genuinely jealous

very few irl music friends in my city right now, but old friends are still into it. For the past couple years I've been doing this "game" with an old friend whose taste is different from mine in a couple of interesting ways: we assign each other an album that the other must listen to at least 3 times before moving on. It's been nice, though it's all over text

Most of my friends I met through musical theater, and most of them listen to lots of musicals. (Ironically, I almost never like listening to a cast recording of a musical, but that's irrelevant.) But every friend I've spoken to, individually, has surprised me with one (1) unforeseen musical interest. Someone was into musicals and German romantic lieder. Someone was into musicals and the Mountain Goats. Someone was into musicals and prog metal.

My friends from high school seem to all still be listening to what we listened to together in high school. That, I can't understand.

I have metal friends, but I earned them going to metal shows. in the wild, one of my best friends is a metal guy in a metal band, but IMO his taste kinda sucks. my best friend is into yacht rock and 90s hip hop. my second best friend likes metal, but more of the black metal/stoner variety (I took her to Slayer as my treat).

other than that, my friends tease me for my tastes, as few of them are into the hip-hop I like, fewer like metal, but lots of them like music, just...not shit I care about.

weirdly I'm like Tom, my other friends are theatre people that love musicals and quote Hamilton all the time, and goddddd I'm so tired of it but I love them just the same.

A couple of my friends invited me to a private FB group where they post about their favorite metal bands and it's all like, Sevendust and Incubus. Every once in a while I post Inter Arma or Imperial Triumphant and a couple of them say they'll have to check that out but you know what, I don't think they ever do?

a couple of them say they'll have to check that out but you know what, I don't think they ever do?

Story of my life.

I think all my irl friends are musicians or music fans. It was not always thus.

opposite for me, wish I had friends who were more interested in music

i have some friends that i met when they were all in the music program at a local university (i was not). my closest friend from that era played me a lot of bill evans and cool-era miles. other adjacent friends were into lots of like ecm jazz, fusion rock and "brainy" jam music, pretty typical for university music types in this area (intermountain west).

i got into dance music on my own 5-6 years ago. most of the kids (they are all 10-15 years younger than me) in that scene here are into dance artists i've never heard of, sometimes i get curious and check a few out but they're pretty much all hot garbage who look like runaway rich burner douchebags.

i go further out on experimental music than anyone i know and embrace pure pop more than anyone i know.

my boyfriend has low-key listened to a lot of music. he was an aspiring concert pianist at one point but got burned out pretty quickly. he has a very open mind, loves pop from other countries, but definitely does not share my passion for post-punk derived diy experimentalism lol, you can tell that that sort of thing tends to grate on him. it's ok, it feels easier to be in a relationship with someone whose tastes are different enough from mine that we don't compete with each other. i'm kind of egotistical and alpha when it comes to music which has not worked well with boyfriends past.

i've realized most people listen to the music they listen to for sort of dumb reasons. i used to be really proud of how eclectic my tastes were but now i realize that is a dumb reason in its own way. music is gold, i love it (the name of this board).

my friends (all of whom i know from work) are mostly content with pop radio. of the two i'm closest with (both female) one really likes r+b, especially sade, so we've had some good discussions and i successfully hipped her to maxwell. the other i don't work with anymore, but we still keep in touch and when we initially started working together we bonded over our love of fiona apple and 90s r+b (and contemporary hiphop that we find ridiculous and make fun of, but also sort of like).

funny side anecdote: i thought i was alone in the office one time and was listening to king krule. a coworker came in and said, "why are you listening to music that yells at you?" lol, fair assessment.

my boss —who i wouldn't really say is a personal friend, but a person i'm in communication with a lot and subsequently get on with pretty well— is a guy who's maybe a few years older than me really likes low rider / art laboe oldies. like that's all he listens to. whenever he's finishing up reports on friday afternoons and gearing up for the weekend, it's not uncommon to hear 'tighten up' or similar jams coming from his office. always makes me smile. he hipped me to james and bobby purify.

good thread.

One of my friends is really into music, plays in a band, and has actually posted here a few times. We have some tastes in common (the Fall, Led Zep, various indie stuff), but he’s heavily into punk and rap, while I lean more toward pop and R&B these days. (We exchanged our personal 2019 best-of lists, and noted how well they complemented each other; we each covered genres the other didn’t.)

Another friend is also really into music, but we have almost nothing in common, taste-wise. (He’s a big rock guy.)

I occasionally correspond with a high school friend; we were both huge R.E.M. nerds, and while I’ve largely moved on, he still seems to be super into them. Nothing wrong with that!

Good thread. In short: I've long resigned myself to the fact that irl I am entirely solitary when it comes to my musical taste. And that's ok, we all die alone. With my handful of best friends my own music taste is scattered among them. There's the krautrock-but-little-else loving male friend, the folk/60s/classical female friend, my brother who I strongly bond with over some artists/genres but def not all. Some areas are covered w/ my partner. No best friends irl share my love of electronica/drone/experimental music/metal/outthere stuff.

Most of them like the idea of jazz and classical but stop short at actual exposure.

This is very otm :) It's posturing: well-meant, trying to take an interest into what I like, but really, it's not for them. When friends come over I do make an effort to pick music that we'd mutually enjoy (without being too intrusive, since we come together to talk). I don't have friends with whom I put on a record and nod my head going 'oh yeahhh, dat bass man!' till the record needs to be turned over. Once I put on 'On the Corner' for a friend visiting who'd said he recently "got into Miles Davis". Turned out - ofcourse - he meant he liked to hear 'Kind of Blue' in the background, didn't recognize 'On the Corner' as being Miles Davis and asked me to change the music because it made him nervous :)

From the latter primary school years up to and including university this was all very different, but we all branched out, got into different things, at times lost sight of each other while musical tastes deepened in directions more and more away from a shared taste. And as I said, that's entirely fine. This too, like pom, is the reason I haunt ilm.

lol I had the exact same experience trying to turn a purported Miles fan on to On the Corner.

I have always tended to gravitate to friends who have at least exploratory views of music:

My best friend is in love with US indie and we're regularly swapping links for things we think the other would like. He's as likely to buy a Swirlies 7" as Judy Garland At Carnegie Hall. We were supposed to see Stereolab last month.

Another friend is a massive LP collector. He's a music omnivore and has helped introduce me to tons of jazz - we went to the Newport Jazz Festival last year. He's a brit so we have the John Peel punk/post-punk artists in common. Other artists he's hipped me to: Kevin Ayers, Soft Machine, Miles' electric period (On The Corner!), and gave me the push to fully embrace Captain Beefheart. He, the first guy I mentioned and I regularly do record crawls in New England.

Another friend took me to Wilco's Solid Sound last year. He's on the smoother side of indie but every now and then we'll connect on something new.

Two friends I've been constantly texting during quarantine knew each other first in college, then I met her when she dated a musician friend of mine. Her perseverance that I get into The Fall ultimately triumphed. When she lived closer we went to all sorts of gigs together - she's a massive Wire fan, that's another gig that got the kibosh due to this damn virus. Her college friend moved to the area, became my friend and we've also been seeing bands now and then (last one was Wye Oak).

All of these folks are on a Corona Partytime Spotify playlist we've been collaborating on.

I think guys in my demo (late 30s white-collar straight white dudes) have a pretty set expected listening diet that consists of 90s alt-rock and hip-hop nostalgia, classic rock, and maybe a smattering of jazz. so with my work friends, any talk from me about listening to anything outside of those parameters is usually met with bemusement or confusion. the women I work with seem to find it fairly charming that I love Taylor Swift, the guys perhaps less so haha.

I have a friend from middle school, we talk online about music pretty much every day. but I've moved such long distances so many times that what makes a friend IRL isn't clear to me any longer. Anyway I too came to ILM to talk about music, because my IRL experiences were that people didn't want to talk about the music I liked: they mostly listened to classical & opera, and I don't know that music well yet (there's still time!). That's still my experience: I don't think anyone I spend IRL time with these days, except my kids, cares about music outside of the classical sphere.

Are French universities really like that??

Not in my admittedly limited experience as an MA student. The classmates I was buddies with at the time were mainly into old blues dudes and reggae (they also smoked a lot of weed). There's more highbrow posturing going on than in the anglosphere, though, that's for sure, and faculty is something else entirely.

xp hmm I mean we never talk about music when we're out, so I guess I don't really know! & yeah this is only faculty, I don't know what the students are up to.

I think all my irl friends are musicians or music fans. It was not always thus.

I'm actually trying to work out how this happened bc it didn't occur to me until I answered this thread. Moved back to a city with decent-sized classical guitar and free improv scenes, live with my partner so don't have a roommate, am not working in a large institution where I'd interact with a lot of people outside my own field, no longer do things like Toastmasters or book clubs but do go out to jazz jams. My closest friend is a total record collector I couldn't keep up with, whose tastes line up fairly closely with mine, which is saying something - I was the second-least hivemindy voter in the last ILM year-end poll, after saer.

My friend of 20+ years and I had very similar musical tastes; he leaned more roots rock, blues and jazz, while I was a little more open to pop, electronic, and hip-hop, but we talked music all the time and were always recommending new (to us) music to each other. He died of lung cancer in 2018 at age 46 and I don't really have anyone that close that I could talk about music with that freely.

Are French universities really like that??

AMERICAN universities are like that, esp in philosophy departments, where there are always a load of uncultured types around who have always gravitated toward whatever is reputedly most refined for truth-seekers and good-lovers like themselves. aka lifelong nerds who branched out from whatever their first-love nerdery was basically. then throw in a few more actual aficionados and performer types and people who like to listen to keith jarrett trios and conscious rap.

Hm, interesting. That's not typical for non-music faculty I've known (whose musical interests have mostly not been terribly different from what I would expect of anyone else of their demographic). I'll ask the philosopher in the next room when she's done with her online conference.

i think it's generational, but not exclusively—the older you are, the more likely you are to hew to high-culture in your professional as well as private pursuits because it's 'what one does' when one cares about such things.

The philosophy PhDs I've known were decidedly not like that at all: they were either into indie pop/rock or Josh Groban (*shudder*) or they suffered (ymmv) from musical anhedonia.

xp but yeah, I think you're totally right to point out that there's a marked generational divide, even more so in North America.

not talking about irl friends here, but I was in the park earlier and there was bunch of white middle class, 40 - 60 + years old men stood under the balcony of a storage building. Some were vaping and they were sharing a box of Sol lagers and a top Megan Thee Stallion tune - Savage was blasting out. It looked quite amusing for a second but then when I got around the other side i realised it was some teenage girls blasting out the music not the old posh white men.

lol I had the exact same experience trying to turn a purported Miles fan on to On the Corner.

― pomenitul, Wednesday, June 3, 2020 3:58 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

not to be rude or anything but i would never put on on the corner for some background conversation music, that shit is out there.

on a related note i've been listening to future days a lot in my car and finding it weird that i always thought it was the breezy, accessible can record when so much of it is rock-derived free jazz and deliberately blunt / dis-harmonic. it's probably because of the mixing that puts the ayahuasca trip of keyboards and guitars in the background.

thought it was generally accepted that if you want breezy, accessible CAN for dinner party background music you put on side three of "tago mago"

The only person I’ve ever known IRL who listened to Can did happen to be a philosophy (literary theory) Ph.D., in an actual university setting.

I'll ask the philosopher in the next room when she's done with her online conference.

She reports that it varies but what is probably most common is to have no strong feeling for music at all; classical would probably be the default if e.g. someone were going to put on music at a reception.

Some of you will have heard me tell of one my best friends from high school who was a big jazz head, turned me on to all kinds of edgy jazz and prog, studied with Anthony Braxton in college, and had a tendency to shit on indie rock. Nowadays he's obsessed with Morrissey, and I don't even know what's happened to the world.

Meanwhile, my wife and her sister used to think I had cool music taste, but that I fell under the influence of ILM and now only listen to music for teen girls.

lol I had the exact same experience trying to turn a purported Miles fan on to On the Corner.

― pomenitul, Wednesday, June 3, 2020 4:58 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

What if it was... the same guy o_O

yeah I mean my lack of knowledge of classical music is rooted in bafflement at the social climbers I found myself among as the powers that be figured out that I was "smart". these kids took music lessons (because that's what aspirational people do) and it became their taste by default. They were at best amused by pop music, if not sneering at it. This was class in action: I don't blame the kids, and I think they genuinely appreciate, if not love, this music. I'm married to such a person, and no doubt my attraction to her involved no small amount of aspiration myself toward her world. Yes, I live in a Vampire Weekend song.

Forgot to mention my siblings. My older sister was the single most important influence on my musical taste though she settled into musical middle age some time ago. I think my brother would say the same about me - influence that is, not musical middle age... I hope! My brother is still obsessive about music but he's veered off in different directions, he's a musician and now into prog and very technical music.

Most of them are into pop, r&b and mainstream hip-hop, many of them like to reminisce about alt-rock's heyday, some enjoy electronic music to a timid degree, some like a couple of 90s indie acts that are still more or less around, others only listen to oldies.

Yeah most of my friends would prob fall into one of these categories. My closest colleague is in a metal band but doesn’t listen to much else outside of a few fairly narrow subsets of guitar-based music. My best girlfriend is big on mainstream pop/r&b. They’re really the only two people I talk to regularly about music outside the home but neither have tastes that are really close to mine.

My brother, nine years older, was the biggest influence in terms of exposing me to lots of different types of music but our tastes have long diverged. My husband likes most of the things I listen to (other than K-pop which he merely tolerates) and is a great resource for 80s/90s punk/hardcore, but he doesn’t bother to seek out new stuff cause I pretty much do all the work for him lol.

A past circle of friends had a nice diversity: one a Dylan enthusiast who also liked Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Monteverdi and Lieders; one into hip-hop and Ninja Tunes; one into punk.
Another circle of friends has one into Trap music and the latest French hip hop; another into dancehall; the rest nowhere.
My wife likes dance-pop and some hip hop.
Other friends not into anything recognizable. Same for my family.

To be honest, I don't think I'd become friends with someone heavily into music collecting / into obscure or experimental music, and I've never found a way to have music conversations beyond "what do you listen to" or "what's your latest discovery", so no regrets.

Actually I do have a few friends who I met by joining bands, who generally have broad tastes in music. I can't always talk to them about Schnittke or Bongripper or Autechre, but they'll maybe know the name and at least appreciate my interest. My one friend Dan likes the same types of music I do but almost none of the same bands, and not the same albums when we do like the same bands. It's hilarious. At least it gives me someone to go to concerts with.

musical middle age

Cute turn of phrase. is it the same as "taste freeze"? Mrs. McBB stopped caring about new music sometime in the mid-1990s though I've managed to sneak a few things into her repertoire.

I am SO fucking lonely right now in my love for 80s-90s indie pop, specifically Sarah records style as well as early-mid 90s American indie (AKA stuff that borrows a more overt Sonic Youth influence than the UK stuff, generally). It's not the only thing I like, just a major pillar. But I'm on a kick because I associate the music with springtime.

Nobody I know cares! The indie fan friends I've had just can't really be bothered. To them it's just "Evan's 90s shit". They've been riding the trends; indie isn't as hot now- it's all about critically approved mainstream pop these days. But even still, old obscure indie pop to them is like forgotten veggies in the very back of the freezer. To me they're these pure gems I keep unearthing the more I dig.

So, we're very far apart and I have nobody to geek out with. It's come to me searching the internet looking for a community. I know there are some fans here but I feel like there's got to be a dedicated fan site with discussion too? Anyway, IRL friends. I don't even really have any local IRL friends. I am so jealous of all these Brooklyn people I see hanging out connecting over this stuff and forming bands etc. Here I am in NJ, having failed for 10 years to form that kind of bond with anyone... perpetual pity party!

My future husband likes current "country." For the me of 20 years ago, that basically takes the cake.

High school was definitely the period where music was most important for me in bonding with friends; not just in terms of sharing preexisting tastes and interests, but also making discoveries together with other people. That didn't seem to happen anymore starting in university. I could still go to shows with friends and talk about music sometimes, but there wasn't the feeling of joint discovery. I had to go on the internet to occasionally experience that.

With the exception of 2, my oldest friends (friends i have had the longest, 2-3 decades) stopped caring about music a long time ago and I stopped talking with them about it. They mostly think that the music of our adolescence was tops, the end.

That said, I have made a concerted (hehe) effort to befriend people IRL whose interests more closely align w mine musically and I have a lot of IRL music friends now. It's great!

...jealous

It takes effort -- it helps that I am pretty naturally friendly and afraid of no one.

I think high school was the time when I felt most alienated musically. Even when I did find people with some similar interests, the kids into hardcore would think it weird and gauche to also listen to prog rock, the kids in band didn't think noise-rock was music, etc.

Please note that in my previous post pretty modifies friendly, as in somewhat or mostly friendly. I did not intend to claim that I myself am pretty. Even though I’m alright looking I’d never say that!! Anyway. It helps to be chatty. That’s what I meant.

Oh also if we’re talking about alienation, I felt very to somewhat musically alienated for most of my adult life.

My gang of friends at school were just not into music. One listened to The Blues Brothers and Billy Joel, one I only remember ever mentioning Five Guys Named Moe, and my best friend had 0 interest in music at all, the only CD he owned was Shakin Stevens Greatest Hits, an unwanted christmas present still in its wrapper.

Then at University all of my friends were very into music, they were all in bands and worked in record shops or ran club nights and it was maybe 80% of what we talked about.

I moved to China in 2006. Almost all of the Chinese people I know have very little interest in music, the stuff they do like is background only, anything even slightly discordant or exciting is "too noisy." The non-Chinese I know from China are a mixed bag, but never met anyone there who was as obsessive about it as I am.

Since I moved back to the UK a few years back I don't seem to see anyone except my family and the colleagues in my small office - one of whom plays guitar in small gigs sometimes, another who is into landfill indie and Eminem, don't feel I can share that much with them tbh, they have already found the music they like and are not keen to find out about any more.

The only people I know IRL and can talk to about music are my uni friends, and they don't live in the same part of the country.

When I was growing up, it was always a priority to seek out like minded music nerds. But the herd really seems to be thinning out as I approach 30. Meh.

Apologies for my post above, which I have just re-read and is boring af.

no it was good!

In the case of my oldest friends, we met in junior high and bonded over music, primarily punk, indie, and Radiohead, and music continued to be the core of our bond, even as our individual tastes evolved in different directions.

All of my IRL friends I've met since I share at least *some* niche music taste with; with one friend it's old hardcore and doom metal, with another it's 90s hip-hop, etc. I'd say the person I have the least overlap with is my hippie muso friend from meditation meetup who is really into the Dead and jazz fusion, and professes to hate the Ramones.

Loving everyone’s responses so far, thanks, all!

I suppose I'm quite lucky that where I work there's, for instance, not one but two Chrome fans! Who knows there might even be more! Along with the guy I mentioned earlier in the thread, the other Chrome fan is this guy who wears Nurse With Wound t-shirts and knew Genesis P-Orridge and thought he was a dick. I'm not really into talking about music with guys though, it seems a bit juvenile. There's a woman I work with who I like talking to about music though, she's into late 60s/ early 70s music and she looks exactly like she's from 1969 and would be photographed arriving at an airport with Jimmy Page or something. Oh yes, there's also a Romanian guy who seems to be into interesting music, I was going to with him to see this 70s Romanian artist, Rodion GA, but I got the dates wrong and missed it.

knew Genesis P-Orridge and thought he was a dick

This is literally everyone that knew him.

Rodion G.A. sounds amazing, thanks for the tip! Think I might have heard about him before actually, rings a bell somehow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSJ77zI1tGU

Pretty much all my friends are through the music/musician scene, although mostly on the middle-aged side so often a little entrenched in their tastes, not that I can talk. Tastes range from prog to doom to punk to classic rock to gnarly noise-rock to whatever else, but everyone has relatively eclectic taste so there's always some common ground to find.
My wife's friends (largely Japanese) aren't really into music at all, other than one who's into 'club jazz'/nu-soul, and find it fantastically exciting that I've actually played in bands. Don't think they'd be saying that after an hour or so in a tour van mind.

One of my friends loves jazz and another likes lots of similar older stuff i like and some new stuff but others seems stuck in baggy or britpop depending on their ages and the rest dont really care much

always considered myself primarily an internet-music-fan going back to usenet days, a solo operator, and had v little in common w/ friends in high school. had a period of overlap through 6th form and uni w/ friends I grew up with especially, my two oldest friends in particular, & while I was the most rabid for a while it felt like a collective obsession as we went to gigs&ATPs, swapped records, put some DIY shows on together, got to know ppl a bit and so on. around 24 I was living far away from anyone and was out of contact with most ppl but wld still meet up for gigs/clubbing/jamming occasionally, and since then I've moved to the city & met a bunch more ppl who are p into music of one kind of another, in bands, go to shows etc.

I still have my old pal I can fairly reliably call up to go to any weird/serious gig, my other half whose taste is all over the place but is heroically open&joyful & will come to basically anything even on a sunday night, one particularly loyal & gloriously high-energy clubbing companion who is the nucleus of our bopper crew, a few big time indie kids inc one who has turned into a big glossy pop/kim petras/pc music/charli xcx-ish fan and regularly sends me Rad Shit, one rnb/pop/country fan, my friend who secretly has the best taste who I can go see and just sit down and swap tunes with (into a beguiling mix of rap/northern soul/jazz/dance/outernational/crate-diggerish stuff), as well as a bunch of friends who are p open-minded and somewhere between "quite" and "seriously" into music & who say nice things when i send them tunes or playlists and sometimes reciprocate. I love & am fascinated by my friends' taste and am always interested in hearing abt what they like&why, finding overlap, enthusing, dancing, engaging in nonsense arguments and all that good stuff

Sounds like a good crew.

Rodion GA

I need to check this guy out. I asked my dad if the name rings a bell and he said 'vaguely', so he clearly missed the bandwagon when it was still around.

friends rool ok

I'm def not as into music as I used to be, and probably suffer more from the inverse. I was obsessed enough in the past that I mostly sought out the company of other music heads (I probably have Asperger's), so most of my closest enduring friendships are with music people. I've lamented having too few friends for whom music is not the main thing in their life, or who enjoy the same activities i'm into lately, but the truth is most of the time I don't want company anyhow. I have newer friendships based on other shared interests, but without the history of shared experiences. But I'm never lonely or even bored. Alone time is what I can never get enough of.

As with most others I'd imagine, there are different areas degrees of overlap with different friends, but there is no one person who is interested in all of the music that interests me or vice-versa.

The two I overlap with the most are a semi-professional record collector who is the most expansive and adventurous listener I know (fond of inviting me over for listening sessions to showcase his latest discoveries), and an electronic musician with a masters degree in music composition who is the most astute (and more inclined toward discussing music we've both listened to for decades). The music part of these two relationships are still rewarding. The latter is probably more sensitive or sympathetic to my diminished enthusiasm, and talk of my current interests is something they tolerate or endure. Conversations always seem to come back to music sooner or later, which I guess is inevitable and even desirable because it's such a huge part of their lives.

The people I know who I enjoy recommending to and receiving recommendations from, are people who still seek new things to listen to (not many do). None of them align closely with my tastes, but my taste is eclectic enough to occasionally overlap with them. I am completely fine with this. I also have a few work friends who enjoy talking about music, but are stuck in bygone eras and it's almost like reminiscing about great meals we've had. There's a guy at work who has pretty wide knowledge of a certain strain of early 90s rock who can be fun to talk to. He's a marketing guy and his only interest in modern music is for use in promotions - which is actually kind of more interesting to chat about than old overplayed rock.

When I was in my 20s, I was really annoying about music. I was full of zeal and would find something new that i loved and just cram it down everybody's throats. Once I recognized this behavior, I slowly retreated and learned how to internally appreciate music, and until I had a kid I've been . This board, for almost 20 years has really filled every need I have for having music nerd friends.

One of my dearest friends sells records and books for a living (Hiding Place Books, look it up), and we share many enthusiasms and also disagree on many things.

I have another friend who used to be on here sometimes with whom I continue to share a love of house and techno.

These first two live in Philly, so we see each other fairly often. Sometimes I get very drunk and listen to records for hours with the former.

Other friends who share some music tastes are far-flung, though mostly in California, which makes sense as I worked as a music journalist out there and was involved in alternative music communities in a much bigger way.

My partner doesn't actively seek out music the way that I do, but he has very esoteric tastes and is tolerant of my blasting weird music in the car and at home. Only rarely does he say, "this is some high-ass noise, please put it on your headphones."

But for the most part, people have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about when I talk about music.

So...what are some bands your homies or work buddies like (but you don't) but if they invited you to go to a concert with, you would - street cred be damned?

For me, it's metal. I don't go to metal shows with my music friends, but when I'm back home and someone asked me to go with them to a metal show I would.

Or, like, work friends. This one work friend asked me to see Peter Gabriel with her, which I would gladly have done. I was broke and felt so bad about it, because I was afraid she thought it was because I was too goth or that I was judging her.

Do you ever just flip the bird at your more cynical peeps because you want to be entertained?

Cynicism doesn't seem to play a part in anyone's decision making anymore. I'd be surprised if I met someone in 2022 that gave me a hard time about certain types of shows/artists not clique-approved unless it was Kid Rock or something shitty beyond taste preference.

I agree, people tend much more chill these days, but I'm middle-aged and some of my acquaintances are still a bit crabby, arthritis and aging / deceased parents and all.

In spite of those things, I meant.

I still feel bad about the Peter Gabriel thing to this day, partly because I hadn't forgiven stuff like "In Your Eyes".

if someone invited me to like, a Taylor Swiftian mega pop show, I would go. just because I don't get to see things of such spectacle often.