My dad is one huge nerd and basically doesn't like anything but the Beatles, the Kinks, CCR and The Band.

When I played him Goat, he said that "they've got the right attitude and the right sound" even though "no one in this band can sing."

I was shocked, I tell you.

About 11 or 12 years ago I left Stations of the Crass in the tape deck of my mom's car.
She totally dug it and said it was the best drive to work she'd had in a long time.

My mom put a Throwing Muses tape in the deck when she was in my car and didn't say anything negative about it.

Met my dad when I was 18, we had coffee, smoked cigarettes, got to talking music. Hendrix, Miles, Zeppelin. Then he asks if I've heard Sonic Youths "Sister", King Crimson, The Gang Of Four, and how i feel about the Clash.

FUCKED MY SHIT UP!

Since then I've seen Zorn, Cecil Taylor, Living Colour, Gang Of Four, and many others with my pop. I turned him onto Zeni Geva and the Sun City girls, he hooked me on Sonny Sharrock and Marc Ribot (amongst many others both ways.It's actually a prety constant back and forth between the 2 of us).

Also a couple of years back a girl that works in my bakery was 19, and heard me blasting some Darkthrone and Electric Wizard. She begged me for copies of all that stuff. Prior to that she listened solely to "Nu-cuntry" and modern Pop (Maroon 5!). Still listens to that crap, but now she owns 2 Urgehal CD's, some Reigning Sound, Crass, Enslaved, Bolt Thrower, Scorpions, and Emporer. I've slowly learned that MOST peoples tastes are broader than even they know. They Just require exposure. She was freaking out of "Trouser Minnow" by Rapeman this morning.

Damn that's Krunk as hell

My very good friend Will who works at a Kinko's outside of Milwaukee once found several pictures of DEVO stuck in a photocopier, a photocopier that had just been used by an altogether "straight-laced"-looking businessman. Will caught up with the man, to give the prints back to him, and it turned out the gentleman in question was a lawyer, a lawyer who liked DEVO so much that he was putting together his own fanzine in his spare time.

Imagine that!

Nerdy quiet fat dork dude I work with turns out to be a DJ, he played me his CD and it's insane superfast gabber metal type noise shit, way out there just relentless screeching and pounding.
That was kinda weird, he seems like he'd listen to Bright Eyes or Hootie and the blowfish or something.

My dad's thrown me about music a couple of times in the last few years. Because he grew up in Romania during Ceausescu's reign, he never had much exposure to rock besides radio free europe. Even after he came to the states, rock's never been his thing, but every now and again, in the car mostly, he said he likes GY!BE when he heard them, and he liked a few Ozzy and System of a Down songs on the radio. R.E.M. and Kraftwerk, too.

I remember my mom liking the Ramones when I played them. That was surprising.

My mother's affinity for Sinead O'Connor has always mystified me.

I was truly surprised when Steve Albini expressed to me his admiration for Cat Stevens.

My best friends here in Crofton are a folk artist couple with impeccable taste in country, blues, soul, and rockabilly music. How, then, to explain their devotion to the late Stevie Ray Vaughan. I don't get it.

One of my best friends is a church-every-sunday-grace-before-every-meal-wait-until-marriage-nice-as-pie Korean Christian girl, and she listens to, like, K-Pop... and hardbody fucking gangsta rap, early Ice Cube and Wu-Tang and stuff. First popular music she ever heard was Westside Connection's "Bow Down," and she says that at the time she was transfixed and convinced she was going to hell for listening to it.