Varied Musical Tastes

Lately, I've not been happy with the music on the radio here in Seattle. Sure, one station has started off a 2 Minute Promise (only two minutes of ads at a time), but that just gets them back to the mostly cruddy hipster music sooner. My daughter and I got burned a few nights ago: another station's DJ announced "great music right after we come back [from these ads]." It turns out we almost finished our drive home, more than five minutes, before they played some pop song that neither of us liked.

I'm always flipping through the presets in our cars, hoping that the next station will be playing a great song. And you know that the expression the grass is always greener isn't always true.  But every once in a while, I get lucky and find a good song. And I'll turn it up.  Loud.

I've realized that music I like falls into some pretty disparate categories. This dawned on me as I was driving back into my neighborhood with Verdi's Rigoletto playing loud enough that the ladies walking on the street could hear it.

The morning before that, as I was driving to CrossFit at 5:40AM in the dark, it was Simon and Garfunkel's Cecilia. It's got such a catchy beat and did a half-way decent job of firing me up. You've got to be awake for 6AM CrossFit.

Bend Ova by Lil Jon has gotten some radio play of late. The thumping bass, the rhythm of the lyrics, the call and response just makes it ripe for being played loud. Just about everything my Lil Jon makes me want to move and I don't have any moves. Warning, though this the non-explicit version, its pushes quite a few boundaries, so its probably still NSFW. Or when the kids are home. See, that's why I play it loud in the car.

And none of these are my favorites or even fall in the same genre as my favorites. You've got to go pretty deep on the independent radio stations around here to hear any Ministry, KMFDM or NOFX.

What song(s) are you going to turn up when they come on the radio that might surprise even yourself?