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Feel free to join in in posting some of your favorite Christmas music videos.

No two people are the same. While some want sax every day, others are fine without any. For me... I grew up on sax. It was all around as a kid and sax was pure pleasure. But then, the shine tarnished and sax wasn't giving me the pleasure I desired. To be honest, it was annoying as I grew older. Maybe just too much sax in my life ruined it.

Pawn shops and music stores go hand-in-hand. I remember getting my first Spanish guitar from a hock shop. I must have been 12 or 13 years old. If I recall, it was $20 but my dad only had $17 so the store owner made the deal. In school, I studied music. Formally, my instrument was oboe and right behind me was sax... 3 sizes. Alto, Tenor and Baritone. Only one person could play the Baritone as it was so big, they had to sit it in a holder.
One Saturday, my day and I were perusing pawn stores and found a smaller sax. It's size is Soprano and much smaller than the others, also it didn't have a curve at the bottom like the others. I hadn't seen anything like that in the school symphony or the marching band.
I wanted that sax. So, we put $5 down and would return each week making installments until it was mine. If my memory is correct, my dad had a heart attack and was unable to work. It was a short time later he had a triple bypass open heart surgery and was out of work for several months. We never returned to the pawn shop to finish the deal on the sax.

In other blogs, I've mentioned my musical taste is fickle. I could like something one day and not the next...or if there is a style change. On my 'do not listen' list you can find Country Music. To be specific, American country. I grew up in Miami and 'country music' was totally connected to the people in the area. Islanders, listened to different 'country' music.
On the highway one day, a CB'er asked "Where's the country music station?"
My response was "What country?"

I don't recall hearing any sax in country music. Moot point as I don't listen.

What I do listen to is Smooth Jazz.. but only in small doses as the sax quickly gets annoying. C'mon, aren't there any other instruments suitable to play smooth jazz?
Ian Anderson / Jethro Tull could play flute to rock music, I'm sure somewhere in the world there's a 'kickin' flutist playing smooth jazz.

So.. if you're like me and you don't like sax, I suggest you stay away from smooth jazz.

Now that I have a subscription to satellite radio, I'm listening to lots of 70's and 80's bands I may have known, but didn't actually listen to all of their songs back then. There is a channel called Deep Tracks that feature songs from famous groups that probably didn't get any air play or B-side material. Good stuff, just obscure from FM classic rock stations.

Between song breaks, the announcers (called disc jockeys from an earlier time) sometimes give history about the bands, albums with a little interesting trivia. On occasion, they mention artists who have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
A good example would be 3-time inductee, guitarist Eric Clapton. 1992 with the Yardbirds, 1993 with Cream and 2000 as a solo artist. His career spans more than 55 years!

There was a time I was influenced by the aura created by the R&R Hall... but little by little, I'd see Hip-Hop/Rap artists eclipsing some long time rockers. I mentioned this to a musician friend of mine about one band that were front runners to heavy metal and his comment was "It's political" as the singer in the band we talked about had a big mouth, especially when their albums received poor reviews. His mouth got the band black-balled.

Curious, I went to expecting to see some museum tours and memorabilia. Instead, it's a whole community of membership, classes, lectures, calendar events, swag and other stuff to buy... much more than I expected.

It's too soon to poo-poo the idea, so I won't write them off for now and one day if I retire and decide to take a road trip or an extended vacation to see my brother in Dayton, I'll have to head east to Cleveland, less than a 90 minute drive.

We all have those songs and music videos that we hate. For instance, this one is annoying, but it's funny.



Feel free to post the ones you hate...

I had a few months of free satellite radio in my car and saved a few channels of favorites, like Classic Vinyl, Beatles, Blues and Rock.
Sometimes, they would advertise what's available on the other channels and I would skip around trying music I don't normally listen to, like Smooth Jazz. Depending on the time of day, one channel called 'Watercolors' does Jazz that's okay. One night it seemed like saxophone was in a marathon. I thought I would vomit. Enough... that was gnawing on my ears.
So, I spun the dial to see what else is out there. Dave Matthews... nah. Jimmy Buffet... nah. Bob Marley... nah. Ozzy Osborne's bone yard... nah.
A little more spinning got me to Liquid Metal... the channel of head-banging, dark and despair, demonic kinda music every mother wants to censure their kids from listening!

Having played music professionally. I can understand it... and found my tolerance for no more than 15 minutes!

Here's a taste of SOiL
I recognized the singer Ryan McCombs who left SOil to join Drowning Pool for 6 years then returned to SOil.

I was a big Joan Jett growing. Here are some of her past work. Enjoy...

Amazing take on this beautiful song by Mr. Lionel Richie.