Rock On !!

Music is an important part of my life now. I don't remember much about my taste of music during my school days. It probably would have been very similar to what i listened to in my college days. Yup, the usual bollywood numbers that everybody grooves to. Although i had heard very few "english" numbers, i always made it a point to argue with some of my colg friends who would listen to them. I would go blah blah about how Indian music(=bollywood songs then) is better than the silly western music, how melodious they are, how you enjoy them for you life,etc,etc.

I don't remember the exact year when i started developing a taste for non-bollywood music. I think it was primarily pop music at first => Backstreet boys, etc. Then somewhere down the line came eminem. I think heard a few rap numbers before eminem, but once i heard eminem, i just couldnt stop listening to him. His numbers were funny, rhyming and rapilicious. He is the God of rap.

Around the same time i tried Linkin Park or was it LP before eminem?, aah who cares !!. Initially it was all noise to me but their noise was somehow "different" though. As i listened to more and more of LP, I started liking them. I loved their mellow starts. I always felt energetic after listening to their songs. I got more and more of their songs from the internet and from friends and before i knew, i was an LP fan and i still am. I still like their numbers very much.LP changed my attitude towards western music. Its not that i stopped listening to bollywood numbers, i still liked them, but LP helped me broaden my "range".

So during my colg days and early engg days, whenever i was asked for my music "taste". I would say LP and rap. I still identified my taste based on the bands i listened to. Its not that LP and eminem were the only ones i listened to, but LP and eminem were among the top.

After reading about LP on the internet, i realized there was this genre called "rock" music and LP was not the only one doing it. Liked some more bands. I was becoming more of a "rock" liking person that just an LP fan. In engg days, you get a lot of music from your friends staying in hostels, so that again helped me explore.

Although i started listening to more and more bands and read up on them on the internet about their styles, i couldn't listen to a song and say "this song belonged to this genre", I always equated songs to the bands. Also, anything that was energetic and intense was "rock" to me.

During my first year @ GSLab, me and some of my colleagues were @ McD. One of my colleague's roomie turned out to be a music geek. Another colleague also had some info(A brilliant knowledge powerhouse, ask him anything and you would get info on it). So we had this cool discussion as to what distinguishes each band and how a band is labeled a particular "genre". I had heard genres like "metal", "rock", "heavy metal", "death metal", "soft rock", "blues", "classic rock" and there are soooo many of them. Although i got some info from that discussion, i still cant distinguish metal from rock with confidence.

Now a days i listen to many more bands and genres of music, so much so that my friends are of the opinion that i have no particiular taste, i listen to any crap that comes along. hunh? They don't know what they are missing :)

There are so many good Indian bands too - To name a few => Parikrama, Agnee, Pentagram, Avial,etc (Mallu rock !!, i love them, may be coz i am a mallu?, donno :) ).

But, once in a while i do meet friends and friends of friends who have these awesome huge music collections and All i say to myself is "what the hell was i doing all these years?".

and

I say gimme more!, more!, more!. There is so much of music out there that deserves attention.

Now i pity those who only have bollywood numbers and oldies to groove to :) But, anyways, whatever one's taste is, Music is a great source of pleasure and energy for anyone. One has to find one's taste. There is so much music in the word, i say, dont just stick to what you hear often, go out and explore more, you will certainly find some interesting "Noise" out there.