Shop Music Thread- what are you listening to today?

J. Doyle said:
I like and listen to a fairly wide variety of music.

But my hands down favorite thing to listen to is bluegrass. And if you made me pick a favorite artist, with careful consideration, I'd probably have to pick Norman Blake.

I think I'd be hard pressed to think of a better folk/Americana/bluegrass picker and story teller than Norman Blake. He has a smoothness and fluidity to his playing that he pairs with accuracy and precision, often at breakneck speed.

So today I'm listening to my extensive collection of Norman Blake.

Any other bluegrass fans here?
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I used to play in an Old School Country Music group. We had a steel guitar, fiddle, harmonica and all. I will never the forget the steel guitar player. He was like 89 years old and he hated bluegrass with a passion. I used to talk about recruiting a banjo player to our group just to mess with him. I do not mind bluegrass, musically speaking the banjo is a beast.
 
I always get a kick out of surprising people when they think they could predict the kind of music I would listen to in my shop. My listening preferences are driven by two things – nostalgia and variety.

I think most of us are subconsciously driven by nostalgia in our music preferences, I have music in my line-up that I really don’t like but it makes me feel good to hear it due to the fond memory that was created while it was playing. I guess this is the best explanation for the heavy presence of 80’s music in the thousands of tracks on my shop computer. I always think of the Byrds lyric “Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now” when I think of my music listening today. There were so many exciting new things happening in music when I was a teenager but I was too stuffy, uptight and nerdy to listen to anything but old school country, so now that I am “younger” I try to make up for it.

The second criterion is variety, I hate listening to the radio and hearing the same songs again and again until I want to gouge my eardrums out. If I have my sound system on in the shop when I have visitors, they may complain about the Roy Orbison or Culture Club that is playing and I will tell them to shutup and wait a minute. Next may be Disturbed, or Nine Inch Nails, followed by Beethoven Piano Concerto #3, then Waylon, Willie or Johnny Cash, or Billy Idol. I LOVE the “shuffle” feature especially when it leans a little toward Pat Benatar. Pat is a rock Goddess, but also a crooner, such a variety of talent in that little 5 foot frame, some of her best stuff I never heard on the radio.

I have speakers in every room of my shop wired into a computer driven sound system that I regularly add countless MP3’s to every month or two, to keep things fresh. My ideal is to listen all day and never hear the same song twice. I love the jolt to the system to go from a Vivaldi concerto to Nugent while I’m working. But I do have certain play lists for when I may have company, it can be awkward when you have prudish guests and something like the Bloodhound Gang starts playing.
 
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Kevin R. Cashen said:
I think most of us are subconsciously driven by nostalgia in our music preferences,
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I think this is exactly right especially in my case.

My grandpa was a woodworker and tinkerer in general. He was ALWAYS making, fixing, building or working on something in his garage. (Incidentally...his former garage is now MY knife shop...pretty neat.) He lived just down the road from us so as a young kid (and teen/young adult) I was over there every chance I got. He always had old country and bluegrass on the radio. I specifically remember a lot of Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, Norman Blake, Doc Watson, Hank Snow, Emmylou Harris, probably leaving out plenty of others. And I loved that music as early as I can remember.

When we had football practices, parties and get togethers in high school, I was never asked to pick the music. None of my friends had ever heard of any of my favorite musicians...probably because many were dead before we were born.
 
I caught my daughter singing Blue Moon of Kentucky and I was like "???!!! how do you even know that song?!" I'm the only one in the family that even goes near bluegrass, and I had never listened to it around her. While I am a firm believer that a great deal of our our music taste comes from nostalgia, I swear that there is some part of it in our blood.
 
Great thread! I love it all. But Chris Stapleton, Lynard Skyn, Marshal Tucker, and one you may not have heard of - GangstaGrass. You gotta go listen to “Long Hard Times Ahead” by Gangstagrass - you are welcome

Right now - hard core rap is playing. My son is home, plays college football as a Safety, squat rack and plates are in garage and he is working out. I dont think I could even type the names of these songs. Boss Dawg would run me off.
 
Greg, funny thing about kids these days. My kids are 16 and 17. They didn't grow up with radio like we did. They didn't make the pilgrimage to the record store to see what came out in the last month. My entire musical worldview revolves around genre and the years that songs came out, like musical generations. Our kids have no such concept. They grew up on YouTube and streaming services. My kids have no idea if the Eagles are from last year or the 1940s. They hear something they like and go down the rabbit hole with no regard to genre or time period because there's never "that moment" for them when a song became a hit for them and all of their friends. It's odd and a little sad to some degree because that's how folks our age formed the soundtrack of our life.


And yeah- the songs now... good gracious. I'm no prude but when I was in high school 2 Live Crew was *shocking*. Now it's almost quaint by comparison.
 
John Wilson said:
Greg, funny thing about kids these days. My kids are 16 and 17. They didn't grow up with radio like we did. They didn't make the pilgrimage to the record store to see what came out in the last month. My entire musical worldview revolves around genre and the years that songs came out, like musical generations. Our kids have no such concept. They grew up on YouTube and streaming services. My kids have no idea if the Eagles are from last year or the 1940s. They hear something they like and go down the rabbit hole with no regard to genre or time period because there's never "that moment" for them when a song became a hit for them and all of their friends. It's odd and a little sad to some degree because that's how folks our age formed the soundtrack of our life.


And yeah- the songs now... good gracious. I'm no prude but when I was in high school 2 Live Crew was *shocking*. Now it's almost quaint by comparison.
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That is very true. I never got into the whole album thing. I was too busy building street race cars before I could even get a motorcycle license. I just love to hear something making noise
 
Greg Rice said:
... I was too busy building street race cars before I could even get a motorcycle license. I just love to hear something making noise
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I rode a motorcycle to high school before I was even legal. But I knew the world had changed beyond recognition when I was talking to my son about getting his first car in high school and told him to save some $$ and get a bike like I did. He informed me that he would be a laughing stock for riding a motorcycle! Wow, think about that... to the modern youth riding a motorcycle is one of the most "uncool" things you could do! How the world has changed! I guess driving mom's sedan to school is now all the rage?o_O
 
Kevin R. Cashen said:
I rode a motorcycle to high school before I was even legal. But I knew the world had changed beyond recognition when I was talking to my son about getting his first car in high school and told him to save some $$ and get a bike like I did. He informed me that he would be a laughing stock for riding a motorcycle! Wow, think about that... to the modern youth riding a motorcycle is one of the most "uncool" things you could do! How the world has changed! I guess driving mom's sedan to school is now all the rage?o_O
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Yessir. My now 21 year old never even rode his bike. I mean - you could not get me off my bike from about 6 to 12 - we even had BMX Trials at school. Trachers would lay out a course - for PE. I bet those teachers had a lot of fun doing that.

I had an old Harley 110 Street/Trail with a chrome tank. Had a lever for street and trail on tranny - I wish I still had that
 
I like a mix. Blues, Rock, Metal. Not a fan of Country or Rap. Really depends on my mood! I play Blues Harmonica so any Blues with Harp in it is a staple, Little Walter, Suger Ray Norcia and William Clarke some of my favorite harp players. Most Rock 60s thru, with a lot of the 80s Glam-Rock bands favorites Motley Cru, Kiss etc... now metal for me is all over the place! Classic Sabbath, Motor Head etc... every once in a while ill hear something that just makes me sit up and notice! Half the time I cant even remember the names of new bands!
 
I don't have music in my shop but I do listen to music off and on on YouTube or in the car. Mostly 70's Rock, some classical and some Blues. I also enjoy classical guitar music.
Artists that come to mind off the top of my head are Mason Williams, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, Black Sabbath, Hauser (the cellist not our Hauser :) ) , Moody Blues, Miles Davis and Maynard Ferguson.

I rarely listen to Country and Rap leaves me cold.
 
John Wilson said:
Speaking of Bluegrass, Billy Strings is fairly non-traditional but his guitar work is phenomenal. This obviously isn’t a bluegrass tune but most of his stuff is. Anyone who appreciates guitar will enjoy this one.

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Yeah Billy strings might be one of the best guitar players alive today. I've been following him for a few years.

I liked his early stuff a little better when he was playing with Don Julin.

But man that kid is INSANELY fast and accurate.
 
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