Jeez, where to begin.... I have always been heavily involved in music. My first record purchase occurred when, as a child incited by my older sister's mid-1960's swoonings, I asked my father in a store if he would buy me a Beatles album. I recall it was $2.99. Dad said -- and I quote -- "Why not get this $1.99 one over here?" (It was the Dave Clark Five.) "They're all the same anyway." I still have that Dave Clark Five album and, strangely, my musical tastes are such that there have been times over the years when a wacky Dave Clark Five album has been far more valuable to me than a regular Beatles album one can purchase in any store.

These days, I have three primary musical interests: jazz, bluegrass and klezmer. My jazz tastes focus on the 1950's California sound, "Cool Jazz," as it is known. My favorite jazz musician is Chet Baker, the trumpeter. Others I admire include Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Stan Getz, Sonny Clark and Louie Armstrong. Jazz vocalists I like include Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith and the contemporary vocalist Holly Cole. The more avant garde, atonal wing of my jazz tastes looks to John Zorn, Wayne Horvitz and the Lounge Lizards.

My bluegrass tastes center on 1950's and 1960's old time mountain 'grass, starting of course with the Father of Bluegrass Music, Bill Monroe, and continuing on to Doc Watson, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, the Stanley Brothers, Joe Maphis, Mac Wiseman, Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs, the Osborne Brothers and Del McCoury. I also like the original Carter Family, if you stretch the definition of "bluegrass" a bit. Among contemporary acts, I like Alison Krauss when she's not glitzing out for some video, and I like the Bad Livers and 5 Chinese Brothers for more hard-drivin' fare. At one point in my career I worked at the periphery of the country music industry, but the pop- and video-oriented fare I encountered there only reinforced my preference for the more authentic end of the genre.

Klezmer, for those not familiar with it, is a genre of music combining the traditional sounds of itinerant Jewish musicians of Eastern Europe with American influences such as Dixieland and show tunes. In recent years, a number of bands, many based in New York, have forged a remarkable revitalization of klezmer music, with a sound that pays homage to tradition yet shows tremendous musical creativity and has great all-round funk. My favorite contemporary klezmer acts are the Klezmatics, the Klezmer Conservatory Band, Brave Old World, Kapelye, the Klezmorim, Andy Statman, Don Byron, the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, Yale Strom, Frank London, David Krakauer, the New Orleans Klezmer All Stars, Muszikas (with Marta Sebestyen) and the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band. For classic klezmer I admire the clarinetist Dave Tarras. For Borscht Belt kitsch I favor the Barry Sisters and Mickey Katz.

Another type of music I listen to is Space Age Bachelor Pad music, an ironic, semi-kitsch, retro sort of lounge music, with artists such as Esquivel, Martin Denny, Les Baxter and Arthur Lyman. Related to 'Pad is Outsider Music, a celebration of the oh-so-sincere croonings of the insane, the feeble-minded, the idiosyncratic and the simply annoying, with "artists" like Daniel Johnston, Lucia Pamela and Mrs. Miller. I also like polka, with performers such as Brave Combo, Guy Klucevsek, Frankie Yankovic, Jimmy Sturr and Dick Pillar, and zydeco, with artists such as Beausoleil, Boozoo Chavis and Buckwheat Zydeco. In my more cerebral moments I listen to minimalists such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno and the Kronos Quartet. In the late 1970's I was, like Sheena (inside joke), a punk rocker. Some faves, which I still listen to from time to time, were the Gang of Four, XTC, the Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, Television, Richard Hell, the Fleshtones, Generation X, early Clash, early Elvis Costello, early Blondie, early Talking Heads, early Devo, early B-52's (sensing a pattern here?), the Ramones, Bananarama, the Au Pairs, the Bush Tetras, Bauhaus, Joy Division, the dB's, X-Ray Spex, Patti Smith, James Chance, the Del-Byzanteens, the Bongos, Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric, Tom Tom Club, Ultravox, Polyrock, Klaus Nomi, the Jam, the Psychedelic Furs, the Feelies, They Might Be Giants, the Thompson Twins and Blancmange. For a while in the '80's I was into reggae (Steel Pulse, Black Uhuru, Yellowman, Gregory Isaacs, Dennis Brown, Eek-A-Mouse, Burning Spear, Sly & Robbie, Toots & the Maytals, Mutabaruka, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and, of course, Bob Marley) and ska, both original Jamaican (the Skatalites, Don Drummond, Desmond Dekker) and revival British (the Specials, Madness, the English Beat, the Selecter). Later I was big on African music (Mahlathini and Miriam Makeba from South Africa, Babatunde Olatunji, King Sunny Ade, Ebenezer Obey and Fela Kuti from Nigeria, Thomas Mapfumo from Zimbabwe, Alpha Blondy from the Ivory Coast, Daniel Owino Misiani from Kenya). My tastes have always had a pronounced kitsch side, and to this day I can groove to the Cowsills (my first favorite band, in fourth grade), Herman's Hermits, the Archies, Josie & the Pussycats, the Partridge Family, the Brady Bunch (yes, they sang, albeit dreadfully), Don Ho, the Carpenters, Dean Martin, Wayne Newton, Nancy Sinatra, Petula Clark and, of course, the Monkees (pictured above). I also dig a few of artists I can't categorize: Tom Waits, the Roches, Loudon Wainwright III and Leonard Cohen.

And yes, I still spin that Dave Clark Five platter every now and then.

Featured links:

Jazz: Holly Cole
Bluegrass:Cybergrass
Klezmer: Ari Davidow's Klezmer Shack
Space age bachelor pad: Theremin Enthusiasts Club International
Outsider music: The Shaggs
Polka: U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich on Polka, Bowling & Kielbasa
Punk: Punk Page
Reggae: Reggae Web
Ska: Ska! Ska! Ska!

A one, and a two....

-- General:

IndieWeb
 Music Plasma
Rhino Records
Festival Finder
Music-Sites.net
Bad Album Covers
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
70's Flashback Web Ring
Kohn On Music Licensing
Let's Sing It (lyrics engine)
Demented Music Web Ring
Musi-Cal Concert Search Engine
KissThisGuy.com (archive of misheard lyrics)

-- Jazz:

Jazze.com
Jazz Online
Blue Note Records

-- Bluegrass:

Mandolin Cafe
Bluegrass Rules
Bluegrass World
Discover Bluegrass
iBluegrass Magazine
Bluegrass Connection
Old Time Music from 78s
Bluegrass Radio Network
Banjo Revolution Web Ring
Banjo Tabs & Bluegrass Info
Flatt & Scruggs Preservation Society
New York City Area Bluegrass Scene
Bluegrass / Acoustic Music Web Ring
International Bluegrass Music Association

-- Klezmer:

Tzadik
Tzimmes
Jewschool
Mazeltones
Tara Records
Klezmer Web Ring
Yale Klezmer Band
Jewish Music Institute
German Klezmer Page
Judaica Sound Archives
Jewish Music WebCenter
Jewish Alternative Movement
Klezmer/Yiddish MIDI Library
Yiddish American Sheet Music
Zemerl (Jewish song database)
Freedman Yiddish Music Archive
Israeli-Jewish-Yiddish MIDI Library
Gary Lucas's "Busy Being Born" CD (review by me)

-- Space age bachelor pad:

WFMU
Esquivel!
Tiki News
Bongo Page
Enoch Light
Vik's Lounge
Ultra Lounge
Ukulele Diner
Cocktail Nation
Moog Zone
Moog Music, Inc.
Roots of Lounge
Lounge Web Ring
Space Age Pop Music
Theramin Enthusiasts Club Int'l

-- Outsider music:

Weirdsville
Odd Music
Weirdo Music
Audio Oddities
Incorrect Music
Miserable Melodies
Basic Hip Digital Oddio
Incorrect Music Siftings
April Winchell Multimedia
Record Collector's Heaven
Raymond's Dance-O-Rama
Online Guide to Whistling Records
American Song-Poem Music Archives

-- Polka:

Polka Fan
Polka Web
Polka Store
Polka Music Index
Page-O'-Pol(s)ka Links
Nancy's Place For Polkas
Steve Litwin's Polka Page
International Polka Hall of Fame

-- Cajun & Zydeco:

CajunZydecoNet
ZZounds on Cajun & Zydeco

-- Punk:

PunkNet '77
Ring of Punk
Punk Kittens
All Punk Web Ring
Women of 1970's Punk
House of the Rising Punk
Search & Destroy (punk search engine)
Nasty!Nasty! Punk Rock in the UK 1976-79

-- Reggae & Ska:

Reggae News Network
Jammin' Reggae Archives
Reggae Passover & Chanukah

-- African:

African Music Encyclopedia
Awesome Tapes From Africa
African Music Resources Online

-- Other:

Cowsills
Pink Lady
Lyric Wiki
The Rutles
Gary Lucas
Steve Reich
Cat Stevens
Bongo Page
The Zambonis
JewsRock.org
Nancy Sinatra
Ye-Ye Girl Scene
8 Track Web Ring
Smothers Brothers
They Might Be Giants
The Science of Music
Dead Musician Directory
Beatles Reference Library
Velvet Underground Web Ring
Captain James T. Kirk Singalong
Von Cello (high school classmate of mine)

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Wax lyrical to me

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