What kind of music do I listen to? Part 1

"What kind of music do you like?"

I hate when people ask me this question, because I listen to so many genres that I don't even know where to start, plus I don't listen to a lot of newer music, at least not the kind of newer music that seems to dominate in Red States. If I had to break down my favorite genres by decade, it would look something like this. Keep in mind that this is what I like now, and not necessarily what I've liked in the past.

• 1950s: Rock n' Roll/Rockabilly, which can pretty much include '50s Country and R&B as well.
• 1960s: R&B, Surf Rock, British Invasion, Garage Rock/Psychedelia. And I guess some Country as well. I also have a fondness for Burt Bacharach-style Jazz, or whatever you want to call it.
• 1970s: Glam Rock, Punk Rock, R&B/Funk and some Disco, a limited amount of Heavy Metal and Prog.
• 1980s: Alternative (includes too many sub-genres to list, will elaborate later), Thrash/Speed Metal (including Thrash/Punk Crossover), early Death Metal, Hip Hop, early '80s R&B (especially with the Mini-Moog bass), Electro-Funk, and a lot of stuff that was popular, but don't care to split into categories for now (will elaborate later).
• 1990s: Alternative (again, will elaborate later), Thrash Metal, Death Metal, post-Thrash Groove Metal, Techno, early '90s Hip Hop.
• 2000-2013: This is where it starts to get tricky, but the only genres I could say for sure that I liked were Garage Rock and Dance Rock, but I've been trying to focus more on finding music that "moves" me regardless of genre, which a lot of times is music that reminds me of older music, especially New Wave or Synth-Pop.

As you can see, I'm pretty scattered out. It's probably easier for me to say what I don't like, which is usually middle-of-the-road music (MOR), mainstream Hard Rock, Pop-Country (1990-2013, basically file under "MOR/Hard Rock") folksy singer/songwriter stuff, and I hate to say it, Blues. While I can appreciate the impact Blues has had on Rock and Metal, a lot of it just sounds the same to me, or at least the general Blues formula just doesn't do it for me. Plus, I need some Rhythm to go with my Blues. I don't like most R&B from the late '80s to today, or a lot of Hip Hop from after 1995.

To elaborate further on what I mean by "Alternative", a short answer would be that it's the kind of music you would hear on Sirius/XM's "First Wave" channel, or that you could find on the Left Of The Dial box set, and the '90s equivalents of those bands. The long answer is that it is a bunch of genres that spawned from Punk, my favorites of which are:

• New Wave
• New Romantic
• Synth-Pop
• Hardcore (but only from about 1980-1986)
• Goth Rock
• Industrial
• College/Indie Rock (which itself is pretty hard to nail down)
• Alternative Metal
• Grunge (which could also be lumped under Alternative Metal)

Around 1996, real Alternative Rock seemed to go back underground, while commercial Modern Rock radio pushed bands that were a watered down version of the popular early '90s Alt-Rock. It angers me to no end when people refer to bands like Nickelback or Shinedown as Alternative. I should also mention that Pop-Punk and Emo are like the "kiddie pool" of Alt-Rock.

BTW, I don't like Sirius/XM's "Lithium" '90s Alt channel. Every time I turn it on to Lithium, I hear the same old stuff that I can hear on the local radio channels. I got to hear XM's old equivalent to it a couple of times, and I freakin' loved it since they played a lot of stuff that's been forgotten.

I'm thinking that I'll have to continue this topic later.

Should we talk about the weather?

This post could also be called, "Fuck you, Ohio Valley!"

I mentioned the weather in my last post, and this weekend is a good example of what I've had to put up with. On Saturday, it was sunny and had gotten up to about 72 degrees. When my girlfriend and I walked into a store between 5:30 and 6:00pm, it was sunny and warm. When we walked out about an hour or so later, it was cloudy and seemed to be about 10 to 20 degrees colder than it was when we went in. Today, it's in the upper 30s and raining. Areas north of me have gotten snow.

Fuck this shit.

Update, March 13, 2013

I'm glad that I left the Picking department when I did since they've had mandatory overtime for the past few weeks. What's funny about that department this year as opposed to last year is that there didn't seem to be any point after Peak at which they were ungodly slow, they've either been steady or ungodly busy. I do remember having OT almost every weekend in March last year, and they seem to be ahead of schedule this year. I really hope that their OT ends soon, because I'm tired of having to smell the guy I refer to as Ol' Stinky Bastard more than two days out of the week.

March usually brings about a lot of changes where I work, and it will be interesting to see what kind of shit they come up with this year. They've already sent the Wednesday-Saturday manager of my department over to the other warehouse.

I still think the department is okay. I think I like the leads on the Wednesday-Saturday (A2) shift more than the manager/lead on the Sunday-Wednesday (A1) shift, mainly because the A2 shift leads seem to have more confidence in us newbs and started letting us learn some of the more advanced stuff as of two weeks ago, while we've been stuck doing the same old job on Mondays and Tuesdays. I still hate getting up early in the morning. I had an even harder time than usual this year in dealing with the switch to Daylight Saving Time. I'm seriously considering trying to get on the night shift in that department when the chance comes up, but I also figure there is more potential for Spring/Summer fun if I stay on the shift that I'm currently on.

Speaking of Spring, I've been ready for it since September, and I wish it would get here already! While we haven't had as much Winter this year as areas west and north/northeast have, we've still had more Winter than last year, and it's been enough to annoy the shit out of me. The average high temperatures for the past couple of weeks were supposed to be in the 50s, and we've been well below that for most of the time. I've been envious of Austin TX's temperatures for a month now, and I also envy my ex-coworkers who just moved to Las Vegas, NV.

I've been needing to do some cleaning at home, especially in my bedroom, but have neglected it because, well, I can't stand to be there! It seems like my choices are either stay home and get stuff accomplished while losing my mind, or get out of the house for a little while. I'm not just sick of home, I'm sick of Shepherdsville, too. Hell, I'm sick of even working in Shepherdsville, but I'll deal with that down the road. I'd love to move to a bigger city, especially one not quite so cold in the Winter, but I'll settle for moving to Louisville. So why don't I move out? Well, I don't quite have the money at the moment, plus with my dad currently being wheelchair-bound, I kind of feel like I'm having to take care of my mom and dad. Once my dad can get a prosthetic leg, he might be able to get around again. I'm pretty sure my car has finally been paid off, and I'll be able to do something with some stock in May, so moving out in late May or during the Summer is almost looking possible. But, I have no living room furniture or stuff for the kitchen, and I figure that stuff could get expensive.

One thing I've been wanting to write about for what was supposed to be my "Radio Tales" series was how different the demographics for Rock radio stations, especially Modern Rock, are between Austin, TX, and the Louisville, KY area. I mention this because I was highly disappointed that 93.1 The Fox went back to being an Active/Mainstream Rock station with a heavy emphasis on Hard Rock and Lite Metal after a three year stint as a Modern Rock station. Here's the history of the station in a nutshell: It started in 1993 as a sort of AOR station. Sometime between 2000 and 2002 it became more of an Active/Mainstream Rock station. In early 2009, they started incorporating more Modern Rock type stuff, eventually going full on Modern Rock around October '09, and staying that way until going back to Active/Mainstream Rock in February 2013. I'm surprised that it lasted that long as a Modern Rock station since the majority of the Rock audience in the Louisville Metro area seems to lean more towards Hard Rock, and I seemed to be one of the few people I knew who preferred it as Modern Rock. There's a lot about the Louisville audience that I want to touch base on, but I'm afraid I'm going to save that for some other time.

I want to end this post by saying congrats to my blog buddy Natalie on her new baby!