I have an eclectic taste in music. Over the years, I've been all over the road. From Country to Classical to New Age to Jazz to old folk music. Back in high school, I was into Lynyrd Skynyrd, Peter Frampton, Alice Cooper and Yes. It spoke to my nature at the time. In college, I fell in love with country music. Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Rusty Wier were a few of my favorites. When I joined the Army and ran off to Europe, I lived off of more country music (Hank Williams, Mickey Gilley, Eddie Rabbit, Clint Black) and 80's hits. But after 4+ years in Deutschland, Danke Shoen started to sound old to me. When I finally migrated back to Texas, landed in Dallas and began my affair with New Age/Jazz. Red Dust & Spanish Lace (Acoustic Alchemy) became my theme song for a while. Got into a lot of instrumental new age stuff. George Winston, Phillip Aaberg, Joe Sample, Chic Corea, Yellowjackets, Fourplay, were all in my playlist. I found one station in Dallas that had no DJ's and played this music pretty much 24/7 and I recorded several hours worth of tapes for road trips. Eventually, we moved back to south Texas and my daily work commute jumped significantly (1 hour) so I had a lot of windshield time to listen to various stations. Talk, sports, rock, country, would bounce around the dial at times. At some point I got hooked on Flamenco Guitar (Jesse Cook, Govi, Ottmar Liebert). I would hear one song I liked and go out and find the CD at the bookstore. When I watched "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?", I became hooked on folk/gospel music. When I finally made the switch to the iPod, my playlist exploded. Now a days, you'll likely find a whole hodgepodge of tunes. Rodney Crowell, Robert Earl King, Sting, Chris Isaak, Phil Collins, Nina Simone. A good number of songs I picked up along the as running tunes, while others fit the mood of the moment. I just added a couple Harry Belafonte tunes on a whim (Day-O). That's the interesting thing about the changing landscape of music and technology. Years ago, if I liked an artist, I would go out to buy the album and try to record it to tape. Then CDs became the new medium for music and I spent years converting over my albums into CDs. Now, with on line music and the iTunes store, if you hear a song you like in a movie, you can go out and pick it up for less than a Starbucks Caramel Macchiato. As I continue to drive Elvis around town, I am finding the advances in technology interesting. Not only can I link my iPhone to the car radio (can it really be called a radio anymore?) but I can play my music directly from the phone. And since Elvis came with Sirius (satellite radio), I have discovered a whole new range of things to listen to. I can spend the drive home listening to comedy bits on Blue Collar Radio.
As much as I try to keep up with the times, the changes in technology is still amazing. It is interesting to learn the things you can do with your smart phone. I stumbled across this clip from one of my sites and the tune got stuck in my head (earworm). An old tune but the way this guy did it made me run out and buy it on iTunes.
Of course, I'll keep the comments about hookahs to myself.
