Did your parents' musical taste(s) leave an indelible mark on your own?

one way that I'm VERY like my parents - I have zero recollection of them ever going to the cinema or watching a movie at home, they were just always playing music if the soaps weren't on. My own cinematic knowledge is terrible - I've seen Disney movies from 1992-1999ish and anything else I've ever watched has been mostly social situations of peer pressure. I haven't been in a cinema in nine years and I'm not curious to repeat the experience at all, and it is very rare I watch an entire movie in one sitting. For them and for me, it's just a lot more fun to enjoy music. They might be a pair of bastards but I'm a lot more like them than I want to admit.

My mom would've been That Creepy Lady With Elvis Decorations All Over The House if left to her own devices and now every time I hear his voice I want to vomit so maybe

My dad in particular influenced me in that he bought a lot of music, was in classical music club and would buy LPs on his lunch break, so a few new records in rotation every month. Drilled holes in the floor and ran speaker wire under the house to play the hifi in the kitchen, the living room, his office. As teens in the 50s, my Dad had been into modern jazz, my Mom into the R'n'B of the DC area, but when they met in the 60s they bonded over folk. This developed into a fandom of Fleetwood Mac, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, The Chieftains.

I've realized the two records they played that have affected my lifetime listening the most were things my Mom especially loved: Music of the Ozarks (https://www.discogs.com/Various-Music-Of-The-Ozarks/release/2754062) which had songs she remembered as a little kid in Arkansas, and the Donna Summer comp Walk Away, which she'd use to power calisthenics.

Yes. It made me realize indie snobs have nothing on northern soul fans. Lol. My dad listened exclusively to NS. I never heard chart pop until I turned ten-ish and discovered music. But happy I heard all that NS growing up.

My parents only like classical music and within the classical music their fave is baroque and in that drawer their god is Johann Sebastian Bach. #2 is probably Mozart (quite experimental, not baroque!). #3 maybe Händel.

I love Bach too - especially the Goldberg variations which btw was not part of their huge Bach collection - but besides that they did not give me a lot of inspiration concerning the music I listen o this day. Maybe listening to all that baroque music in my youth influenced my music taste in that way that I was craving for rougher music with harder edges like for example Sonic Youth.

my dad has always been a huge rock fan and perhaps more than anything an accumulator of music (now that used CDs are practically free he buys tons and tons of them, often of artists he doesn't even listen to, I think as long as he has some passing familiarity with the name he'll buy it; I see En Vogue and Mariah Carey discs in his office and I know he's not sitting around bumping those).

when I was growing up though, he had a sizable vinyl collection but the real boon for me were his cassettes since that was my primary medium for consuming music. he used to tape a lot of full albums off the radio and that was my first means of exposure to a lot of stuff. he's always been a pretty broad rock listener but he does have a particular affinity for rootsier types and that influenced a lot of my earliest classic rock listening as well -- his Mount Rushmore is probably Gram Parsons, Neil Young, Van Morrison, and Dylan. even today, he's hugely into Jason Isbell, so I guess old habits die hard.

Drilled holes in the floor and ran speaker wire under the house to play the hifi in the kitchen, the living room, his office

that's a GOOD DAD

Good thread idea Pom!

Easy answer is no, it didn't. Though in a way I think all of our parents' tastes leave marks, making you either go with it or go against the grain. My parents' lp collection consisted of Creedence, Simon & Garfunkel, Fleetwood Mac, Beatles, Stones, Dire Straits ('Brothers in Arms' was the most sold lp in the world, remember?!), Abba, 60s etc. My mum was a big Roy Orbison and Fats Domino fan. Oh, and The Dubliners lol. Otherwise it was mostly 60s and 70s radio. But it was always on. And I appreciate how many music I got to know through them. It was having the radio on at all times that kind of made me find out my very first likes and dislikes, and steering through that on my own - I vividly remember my mum hating Minnie Riperton's 'Loving You' while I *loved* it, so strange and beautiful and wonderful. And that that was *ok*, that people have different tastes? As obvious as that sounds. She had the Oh Superman 7" that she loved to bits, there was that.

It wasn't until I literally found an lp suitcase full of Tangerine Dream and Schulze and Can and Richard Wahnfried and Miles lp's at my uncle's (my dad's brother) that it felt like stumbling upon a magical portal.

Since my mother died last year, I've seen quite a dramatic shift in his music listening habits. Before it was anything goes. Now, he's completely - and exclusively - tuned to classical music. He can't stomach anything else really. Quite something to witness.

My belated condolences, LBI.

I do find classical music more comforting than other genres, for whatever reason.

Neil Diamond

thanks j.! He was majorly into hifi, though avoided snake oil.

Thank you <3

I mentioned it that for all my life - and the question at hand sort of implies it - that our parents' taste in music seems "fixed" most of the time. A life-altering experience like the death of your loved one can do that, of course, but I was still surprised to see this first (ever) major shift in my dad's musical preferences. If you beg for sounds of comfort or solace, it will make you look for it far and wide. And yet I think it is of a deep beauty that this made him go way beyond his former musical preference and explore this 'terra nova'. He's not just listening to it, he wants to know about it, reads up on things, goes to concerts. That may sound basic but believe me, for my dad this is a big transformation. If anything I'm glad for it.

Perhaps it's something for a different thread, but the radical change in musical taste of a parent is something to behold.

(xp to pom)

That's genuinely heartwarming. I'm sure he'll draw sustenance from it for many years to come!

The most notable difference between us, perhaps, is that neither of them has much patience for extreme dissonance and avant-garde gestures.
Anyhow, I'm especially curious about those for whom the exact opposite happened.

― pomenitul, Saturday, July 13, 2019 4:02 PM

I'd say Ash Ra Tempel is pretty avant garde.

My mother had quite a big influence. But it was a very delayed influence, I didn't get into most of the stuff until a decade later, but the memories of hearing it were surely important.
She played Blue Nile, REM, Talk Talk, Tango-era Fleetwood Mac, Portishead. I never got massively into Pet Shop Boys or Annie Lennox but I'm considering buying them someday. The only one that wasn't delayed was Radiohead, I picked that up immediately and it was then that I realized music was worth actively seeking out and treating as important.
There was loads of stuff I'll probably never have a great deal of enthusiasm for (Simply Red, Phil Collins, Mike And The Mechanics) and sadly the only new bands she seems to like are Coldplay inspired.

Dad mostly likes hit singles from his youth and very seldom appreciates anything else. Several years ago my dad put on a "blues classics that inspired The Rolling Stones" compilation and he was hilariously narrow minded about it, he just kept skipping the tracks and saying "shite" to each track. As if he thought The Rolling Stones were idiots for liking these blues songs.

my parent's copy of CCR's Chronicle taught me so much about simplicity and how to arrange music