Hip Hop

I've noticed this too. I used to like some of it but now I stick to rock. I can't take songs like "ridin dirty" and the likes.

I'm old, so some of the artists I mention may well draw a blank with you, and any other young whipper-snappers out there, with your loud pop music. I have always preferred the kind of pass-the-mike Hip Hop, that you got when I was a lad - Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, Sugar Hill Gang - and which is still around today, with artists like Jurassic 5. I'm not really that 'booty-shaking, down with my ho type of homey, you hear what I'm saying Boo', though this is not because I don't have a fine behind, I do! If you like Hip Hop, you may like to take a journey back through time, to when we had vinyl LPs and strange magical needles that played music through a horn, and try some of the artists the DJs have sampled - like 70s Funk (I always wanted to dress like Sly Stone, when I was a kid - which worried my Mum, because I'm white, and he looked like a pimp), bands such as Sly & the Family Stone, George Clinton, Tom Tom Club, et al. If you really want a change (and, I'm getting a sort of hippy vibe from you - I've noticed the henna question!) the eighties was a hay-day for British bands, who had developed from the hippies, into New Romantics, goths and indie rock/indie dance. A lot of it is being re-hashed nowadays. Might I recommend a small list of bands, who never made it big, but had a massive underground following, and who led to the spawning of such bands as Mudhoney and Nirvana. ABC - a tongue-in-cheek band Heaven 17 - electro-synth music Japan - wonderful, did some great Velvet Underground covers, have an oriental feel and quite chilled All about Eve - bouncy hippy revivalists Pop Wil Eat Itself - fun loving The Cult & Fields of the Nephilim - goth without the depression Sigue sigue sputnik - fun, with sampling Happy Mondays & Stone Roses - Manchesters finest The Chameleons (or Chameleons UK, in the US) - guitar based Echo & the bunnymen - having a bit of a revival, UK tv is using their stuff. Visage - New Romantic gods If all else fails, try French/Algerian rap, it's really good, bands like 'Massilia Sound System' and 'IAM'. As for my own personal taste, then I suppose you always feel nostalgic about those early days, when armed with a cheap bottle of plonk, an LSD tab and quarter of Leb, you'd meet up with your friends, get drunk, get high and then go clubbing - so, I admit I was a New Romantic, dressed like a 17th Century Cavalier, or a Beau Brummel baby, with long hair, plenty of lippy and eye-liner, and a penchant for posing. Good luck.