Becoming my Father

I am totally becoming my father.

Not in the old, balding and hair turning gray kind of way (although it's not like I'm really far behind him there at this point in my life) but in the "What happened to the music industry" type of way and I never really realized it until recently.

Now, don't get me wrong, I ain't gots no problems with you actual young'uns and hipsters out there.  I enjoy a good portion of today's music scene, and by good portion I really mean I love the aging bands I grew up with who still perform and sometimes get a hit plus like 7 other musical acts out there who are more recent.

Living in Las Vegas has finally introduced me to the "radio" because I don't listen to music that made the airways in other bass ackward towns that I have lived in previously.
Sure most of the towns/cities/one-stop-sign-don't-blind-or-you'll-miss-it-hick-towns that I have lived in had a "rock" radio station that played stuff my father would be more inclined to listen to than me and most "modern" junk that my ears enjoyed got the occasional play, but most of what I listened to was in the privacy of my own room or at a buddies house.
So, the hillbilly moves to Vegas and all of the sudden there are actually radio stations that play the music I like (and golly, some of that music is now pretty much referred to as classic rock, all around my the signs of aging are everywhere) and I actually have multiple stations to choose from.  Egad's man, I'm not used to having choices!

However, getting back to the first line that started this entry and a general point, I have found myself listening to more and more music from my past - sometimes even bands that I didn't really like when I was younger.
This all hit me a few times over the past two months or so, while listening to the radio and a modern song comes on so I switch the station and there is something from my youth on from a band that I didn't like and never listened to, yet I chose to stay on the station with the older song rather than listen to a decent newer song.

Vague, I'm being way too vague.  Let me see if I can put keyboard to memory or just make something up that would sound appropriate.

1st instance:  I am listening to the radio, probably X107.5, and they start playing something by 3 Days Grace which I do kinda like sometimes, however I flip stations to KOMP who happens to be starting up a Rage Against The Machine song.  Now, in high school I never listened to or liked RATM.  They were one of those bands that I blew off and could not get into them.  It really wasn't until I started Diggin' on Guitar Hero 3 that I even started to enjoy their music (I know, only like a decade after they broke up, sometimes I am late to the party).  But, instead of turning the station back I listened to AND enjoyed RATM.

2nd instance: I am driving home from work listening to 107.9 The Alternative and REM's Everybody Hurts comes on the radio.  Once again, REM is a band that i disliked a lot.  Sure they had like 2 catchy songs - EVERYBODY loves It's The End Of The World as We Know It (and I feel Fine) and if you deny it you're a liar liar pants on fire - but once I heard Shiny Happy People I vowed to never like or listen to them.
However, in this instance I did not turn the dial to get away from this super sappy ballad from the past.  NO, I listened to it, sung along to it and dang nabbit I liked it.  Next thing you know Losing My Religion pops on and I also enjoyed that whilst singing along and knowing most of the words.

I think it's the gray hairs - something goes askew with the cranium when the hairs start coming out a different color.  I want to develop a theory on this, something along the lines of your brain losing some of it's function thus it cannot produce the hair color that you used to have and it starts shutting down the part of your brain that disliked things from your past.  Why ELSE would I be able to enjoy a broccoli salad now when my taste buds rejected the taste when I was younger - It's The Gray Hairs I tell ya!

Don't even get me started on how Cows and Beavers are working together to take over the world by tainting our milk supply *shudder*