How much do friends influence you musically?

I think my father had the most influence. He's obsessed with Northern Soul. But because he was (and still is) my father, I never thought it was weird to obsess over music. As for friends? No, they don't really change my views on music/bands.

Massively, yes, they do. I'm an awful vampire, too. I've let myself be influenced by friends a lot and I think that's no bad thing really. (Though conversely I've never really seen myself as influencing friends' tastes). If you wont admit to liking something because your friends will laugh at you, then it's going a bit far, though thats not as bad as not admitting to DISLIKING something in my book. With music it's actually less of a thing than with stuff like films. There's that moment when 5 or 6 people have been to see a film and its like, who is going to be the first to say something?

In a fanzine Mike once sent me there was a discussion of I think Byron Coley dismissing people for having "second-hand tastes". I can't think of a single person I know with first-hand tastes.

Too many of my friends seem to have forgotten music and their tastes are the same as when they first discovered new things in their late teens/ university. Sad, but true.

Obviously you don't know Byron then. ;-) Then again maybe for the better. A man who puts TV Personalities on the same level as Coltrane... You just wonder how the aliens tortured his brain. Byron Coley, I almost hate him as much as Greil Marcus.

Oh yeah I'm not disputing that there are people with first-hand tastes, it does seem logical after all. I just don't *know* any of them.

Personally I can't think first-hand taste is possible. Wouldn't that mean you just bought the records without ever having heard of'em? You'd need to avoid talking about music with your friends as well as avoid media-exposure. I can just picture Byron talking about fluffy clouds with Thurston. Yeah right.

Byron's OK: it's just that the spiral of his stated reasons for his tastes pushes you inexorably towards necessary G. G. Allin fandom, on the grounds that NO ONE ACTUALLY LIKES ALLIN (obvious reason: because he was in fact total rubbish). (Not that I ever saw him.) (Not that I ever wanted to.)

BC and the Pigfuck crew generally are I think all TERRIFIED of being caught merely sentimentally affirming friendship as something, y'know, Not Secretly Evil. Not punk. Of course friends influence you: that's what "friends" means. (Coley's friends influence him: he just pretends he hasn't got any — actually, he doesn't do this either, he just plays with the pretence.)

And at risk of sounding like someone's overcaring parents, if your friends really (just) laugh at yr opinions, then maybe they're not really yr friends.

I can be influenced by friends....depending on the friend, of course. If your tastes are pretty similar it works well, but if one of your friends worships Ben Harper and Jewel obviously it's not gonna work.

Usually it's a case of an album I have not heard before being recommended to me, or in the case of the Nick Cave album un- recommended (I know, not a real word) to me. But friends usually don't sway opinions on things I've had a chance to listen to first.

I'm uncomfortably aware of the effect the audience have on music. Something that was peeling the wallpaper off when I was listening to it on my own, can become an awkward noise as soon as someone comes in the room. Similarly, certain qualities can be intensified when I listen to music with a sympathetic audience. Or even shift the mix completely, introducing instuments that weren't even there before, I know someone who can bring synthesizers out in almost anything.

As far as friends manipulating my taste, they send me information, but I tend to listen to everything on my own, at home or amongst people I don't know (clubs/gigs), so I decide whether I like it or not without the influence of their presence. So I'm informed by friends but not influenced.

Hmmm. Well, honestly, mostly my friends don't influence me much on my tastes. I mean, I have picked up albums (or downloaded them to try them out) on friends' recommendations, but I don't think of myself as any more likely to actually like it as if I had picked it up on my own, and I think that's the key to the question.

I mean, honestly, anyone I'm friends with on this message board knows I live to argue, so if a friend recommends me an album and I think it's shit, I'll let them know. I don't feel any urge to like something more or less because of someone I know, although I will admit that if I already hate something and a friend of mine bangs on about it as if it's the best thing ever, I'll start to hate it more, so maybe that's influence right there. So I'm likely to hate things that I dislike already that get banged on about, but I'm not more likely to like something.

1. Don't know who this Byron is, as opposed to the other one; but anyway, I think that Tom E's point about the, um, primacy of second- hand taste is well-made.

2. Tom also made the interesting point re. how *he* doesn't think that *he* influences *anyone else*. This could be some kind of unnecessary modesty, I suppose - because it strikes me that Tom is probably one of the most musically influential people I have ever met (being a web-emperor, etc etc). But it's an interesting question. Are we always liable to underestimate our own influence? Do we feel we have an influence at all?

I think that I may have made Lloyd Cole more prominent in one or two people's lives than he would have been otherwise (which is not the same as *introducing* them to LC). Whether they think that's a good thing, they may or may not care to tell us.

3. Do friends influence me re. music? Yes - but maybe mainly in a slow, mediated way. It was only after years of whispering by Stevie T and Steady M that this Magnetic Fields thing suddenly made sense to me. Sometimes you have to discover things at your own pace. The Go- Betweens are another, unfinished example. Broader changes can happen too. One or two people I met maybe 2-3 years ago have, I think, helped me move into more rootsy territory - a more active interest in country and folk. Steady M slowly, almost imperceptibly made me more attuned (but I'm still not really attuned) to ideas of music as, um, 'sound' - to sound quality, acoustics, space, texture, etc, in a way that seems somewhat different from what I knew before (but I'm still not sure if I have yet managed to learn anything substantive here).

And of course, as I think the question implies, this can work both ways - you might dislike something more cos of someone else's advocacy. Stevie T's advocacy of the contemporary charts has probably left me more unsympathetic to them than indifferent, as I'd otherwise have been.

I have failed 100% to influence him.

I should *hope* friends influence me musically, I keep relying on their tastes to my general satisfaction. Don't stop, dammit!

My friends are a massive influence on me musically, not as much as they used to be, but still looming heavy behind my ears, both for good and for ill. The discussions get so giddy at times, i look back in retrospect and wonder what the hell we were thinking, as i actually enjoyed talking about the record more than listening to it. Because of my friends, I'm a musical agnostic, and may love anything, only to doubt it. Any song could be a one-night-stand (the closest I'll ever come to that.)

Conversely (it is conversely isn't it? I used to get my geometry theorems scrambled in my head too) near-complete strangers have been influencing my tate in music too. Between this site and several others, the discussions keep accelerating the embrace and doubt in all kinds of music that I've never even bothered to listen to before.

You guys are my friends...

...right??

Hmmm, considering my closest friends in London are:

1) a dire pits of wibbling twee 2) post-rock, post-rock and the occasional jazzwank 3) ex-Manics fan - well, that knocks her out right there 4) Married couple who listen to whatever they get for free from EMI

uuuuhhhhhh...

Sure, I get exposed to new music through my friends- my postrock neighbour actually has turned me on to some good stuff, simply because he would play certain albums (Delgados, Kingsbury Manx) every time I went over for supper. But I probably would have liked those anyway, had I heard them in other context.

But given my argumentative nature, people are more likely to turn me *off* a record or band than turn me on to them. I have way too many bands begging me to adore them, so a little culling is a good thing.

The only thing that ever makes me reconsider a song or artist in a positive light is extreme drunkenness. Not that that ever happens, mind you.

I used to be influenced by the musical tastes of my friends a long time ago - way back when I was still at school. Since then I've probably been more influenced by music press reviews and hearing interesting new music on the radio or in clubs.

I don't let my friends offline influence me, but that's only because I know all the wrong kind of people. Online, oh yes. Just before I went online my tastes were the worst they've ever been (I even liked the ***Propellerheads*** a bit: need I say more?). Case closed.

I get two radically different viewpoints from my two closest friends and luckily my tastes lie inbetween - i take increasingly less notice of them now that my frame of reference has broadened - but yes ive felt the excitement of the shared first listen to a long awaited album but ive never reconsidered my opinion

i agree with k-reg's assessment about audiences changing your own opinion of something you might like while listening on your own. i often would not play stuff for my ex-girlfriend or not bring stuff i really love to listen to to work because somehow my own opinion of this music i held so precious was diminished because they frowned on it, i guess that is insecure, but when you love something and put it on for someone hoping they will love it as much as you and all you get is shrugs in return that is sometimes disheartening. i haven't any friends who are into anything similar to my tastes, perhaps because all of my friendships have been formed either at work or school and that was our shared experience, music never really enters the picture except for when i decline the invitations to blues traveller concerts("oh come on tickets are only 47$").

I listen to prog. My mates all listen to hip-hop, R&B, rap. They influence my musical taste a lot: I am made to REALLY like things that aren't that great because they degrade it, insult it, so much I am forced to defend it cos whatever it is, it's better than their crap.

Anna, you're obviously in your rebel years. You are just all blase. But you picked the wrong target. Rebel against your parents. Rebel against your dad's record collection.

She is. Her dad's Sway and her uncle's Tech.

My friends have been huge influences. I've known one since I was 14 (1973!), and he was a colossal influence on me - he was the first to play me the Velvets, the Ramones and other important bands. It still happens, in that if Andrew L keeps playing me Tortoise and Sonny Sharrock and stuff I will eventually cave in and start liking it.

Despite this, it comes as a huge shock when I find my views influence any of my friends. I remember one friend telling me that he went out and bought Endtroducing based on a review by me, and that sort of scared me. I would have felt as if I should offer a refund if he had not liked it, but he did.

If either the records or the phonograph worked, my dad would have a fabulous record collection. Modern music is never released on record, thus when our CD collection is sprinkled shamefully with the odd crappy CD no one in our house listens to, the record collection isn't. I have no need to rebel against it.

My friends haven't really been influences I don't think.

I suppose my brother was always an influence, but now I've sort of settled on dance music anyway he's able to point me towards the odd single and I can do likewise for him.

Clarke's question is good, having a friend to share the experience with is a major thing. I know with lots of dance tunes, because they're associated with my social life, they become major major things between me and my friends. I definitely go off some artists when certain friends start enthusing about them. Though often cos I don't want to discuss them rather than disliking the individual taste of the friend.