My wife is a creature of habit with music. With some exceptions her taste tends toward 90's alternative, and stuff with conventionally good singing. The last few shows we saw together were Lemonheads/Juliana Hatfield (with Gang Green!), Mudhoney, Brandi Carlile, Brian Jonestown Massacre and we'll see Tori Amos in July. I go to a lot more shows by myself or with friends, but a big part of that is we need a sitter if we go out together. There's actually a ton of stuff we enjoy together, but I'm the one who actively listens to new stuff. I could probably sell her on Shellac as a live band, but putting it on at home wouldn't fly. Typically if I want to listen to "difficult" stuff at home I can do it on weekends before she and my son wake up, a period we call "The Tarkus Hour." She saw TJL with me (c. '09 reunion) and liked it fine. I tried to play Spectrum once and she hated it with a burning passion!

twelvepoint wrote: Mon Apr 24, 2023 8:08 am "The Tarkus Hour."

(single tear of joy emoji)

seby wrote: Mon Apr 24, 2023 7:00 am WTF? jfv are you serious? Blink 182 are terrible, but just go ffs. Make it a whole dinner super fun thing.

Agreed, I've been to plenty of shows that we're not for me. It's just a good move. When I want to go see some noisy shit with my buddies, it all balances out.

My wife surprises me.She's not as obsessed as I am with music. We mostly meet in the middle on 90s "alternative" and stuff like Drive-by Truckers/Dexateens/Centro-matic. She surprises me a lot. She loved the Melvins live. We've actually seen them twice together. She's great at calling BS on bands too. She'll find the weakness in some of the most "bulletproof" stuff. It's hilarious to hear her outsider takes.

My current partner is insanely supportive of my musical interests. She went and saw Sumac/Thrones with me, will go to the horrible local punk shows and immediately pointed out what is the worst band in town (they play constantly, always second on the bill, the worst music I've ever seen, super misogynistic) and we have a running spotify playlist of bad and awesome love songs. She doesn't go much for the music beyond wanting to support me and see what I'm into, but it's a nice change from previous partners who call my music tastes "trash" or "offensive."

She also sing that Viagra Boys Troglodyte song to me constantly

I can see having marital problems because your values are incompatible, and sometimes those values are reflected in each other's favorite music. But being a music elitist to the one we are supposed to love is like dating someone younger or of a minority to our race and looking down on them for being different.

There was a time, decades ago when I was single, where I had imagined my partner would have to share the same tastes in music as myself. My ex-wife and I certainly had more of that going for us at the beginning of our relationship, with maybe a half-overlap Venn diagram going on. As I developed more interest in jazz and classical, her patience was certainly put to the test. She found the Bach solo cello suites difficult to process and listen to - so yeah, she preferred to keep things within the comfortable 3-4 chord, verse-chorus-verse architype.

I had no idea my current situation, where my partner has few strong feelings about music, and is generally comfortable listening to almost anything I might put on, would be the ideal situation. She likes jazz vocals and standards, and stuff like Pink Martini, with some French pop and rock thrown in, she also defers to anything I'm in the mood for - since it 'has more meaning' for me. That's been fun, since she's enjoyed seeing Magma, friends' bands, a Django Reinhardt tribute and also getting season tickets to the CSO and chamber music performances in equal measure.

It's also great, as she doesn't mind hearing me practice piano and playing the same four measures over and over again. It means she's had to listen to a lot of Bach being played mediocrely.

So yeah, the ideal situation was the opposite of the ideal held in my youth. Having a partner who doesn't care much about music and has no strong feelings or tastes about it has been the true ideal situation for me.

We meet in the middle with movies, but very little overlap w/ literature (which is her main obsession) and she's not into music at all (which is my thing). I had stopped using overlapping tastes as some sort of barometer in my early 20s, thank god. We do seperate social things once in a while, I can't imagine dragging her to see a show.

Our core values / general life attitudes overlap quite a bit, which is a big reason the relationship works.

I just checked ticket prices again and this is going to end up resolving itself. There's no way that she'll even want to go if two tickets for good seats are approaching four figures. Even she would rather spend a few days down south in the middle of winter than pay that much to see blink-182.

Much ado about nothing.

My gf listens to opera and classical music. She was into noisy music for years and played in noisy bands, but she traded her bass for violin and now plays in the local community orchestra. Everything I listen to these days seems to annoy her, and likewise. Still, it’s the best relationship I’ve ever been in.

My ex-wife and I like the same bands, read the same books, and like the same places. That’s about all we can agree on.

We like a lot of the same stuff. She likes a lot of heavy music--Neurosis, Sabbath, etc. A lot more than you'd expect. If it's a rando band opening for someone, heavy is a lot better than light. A lot of hard rock--Cheap Trick sticks out. Neil Young. A lot of post-punk and new wave--New Order/Joy Division, Cure, etc. Can. Roxy. Anything really important, we both like it. Same taste in 90s indie rock and all that. Loves the Carpenters, loves ABBA, as do I.

She likes Journey and some stuff like that, completely unironically. I get it, I loved Journey in 8th grade.

We also diverge a bit if it's something harsh enough to scare the cats. It's clear that Evan Parker solo soprano sax or Hanatarash isn't particularly welcome if we're both around, though I've never been asked to take anything off.