Welcome aboard Rick! Post often!

So, who are some of your favorite artists?

Thank you.
Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Nat king Cole, Marty Robbins, Grateful Dead, NRPS, Faces, Kinks,John Hiatt, John Stewart, Miles Davis, Moby Grape... to name a few.

So I've been a member for awhile and followed the boards on and off (lately have been following them more), thus I thought I'd finally introduce myself. Although I've only been looking at the music forums, I've noticed there is a very friendly tone here which makes me want to become active here.

I am unhealthily obsessed with the music of Dr. John, Ray Charles, Black Crowes, and Elton John. Somewhat more healthily obsessed with Sam Cooke, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye (What's Going On and after), and Henry Butler, although I still should seek help for all of them. I like the fact that others here can probably relate to this obsession. Recently, have noticed I've become as much of a collector as a fan of those artists. Anything you need to know about the CD-discography of Dr. John, Ray Charles, Black Crowes, and/or Elton John, I am a good man to ask. Have thought about starting a Dr. John website cause there are no good ones, plus would love to give potential fans the cyber-jumping off point that I never had...Ray, BC, and Elton already have some really informative ones. My nickname comes from one of my favorite Dr. John songs, "John Gris"...also fits due to my Elton fandom as well as my real-life middle name.

More generally, I love practically all New Orleans music, practically all funk, and practically all old-school soul (think Stax, Wilson Pickett, Redding, Cooke, etc). I was weaned on classic rock but got sick of their limited playlists. Don't mind the limited number of artists, but the limited number of songs they play of each artist eventually disconnected me from that music. WWOZ in New Orleans is basically the only station I'll listen to any time of the day and it serves almost all my needs (thank goodness for the internet!), although there are a couple of good shows I try to catch on other stations.

Will hopefully join in on some more convos in the near future!

-JohnGris

JohnGris, being "unhealthily obsessed" with any kind of music (or just music in general) is a prerequisite for being an ICEr.

In other words, welcome aboard!

You'll fit right in, good to have you aboard! Post often.

Your middle name is Gris? Mind if we just call you Bruce to avoid confusion?

Welcome - looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the old funk and R&B stuff. It's an area I've delved into a bit, but not as much as perhaps I should, thanks in large part to the Blues Brothers.

And I wouldn't let radio turn me off completely for classic rock, although satellite radio has been a great cure for that, even if the Sirius/XM merger resulted in much smaller playlists. The offerings on satellite are still much better. That said, I know exactly what you mean (and I have been heard to say that XM stands for "eXcessive Metallica") - thanks to the local classic rock station, if I die without ever hearing Skynyrd's "Ballad Of Curtis Lowe" again, I suspect I'll die happy. Of course, I do live in fear of being in a restaurant and starting to choke just as that comes on the radio...

Alan

I wish my middle name was Gris...how cool would that be? Actually, that reminds me, Bruce Springsteen is also one of my unhealthy obsession. It becomes hard to keep up with them all.

Re: classic rock, it's too late to turn back to it now. I still respect the heck out of most of those artist and my ears perk up when they come on, but I like to think that, for my own tastes, I've moved on to bigger and better things. Maybe I'm stuck in my ways now, but I can't really find a reason to switch over from WWOZ. That's a station that plays what I enjoy, but still surprises me with stuff out of left field every single day--they play things I never would have expected to hear, and often those are the things I never would have known about in the first place. It's the best of all worlds for me. Classic rock is just a little too "safe" for me these days. Plus, even when I was little, I was drawn to the funkier and/or gospel influenced songs on the radio or pop charts. I didn't even know what funk was, nor could identify a gospel influence if it hit me on the head, but those were the numbers I got really excited about most of the time. It just took me until my adult life to figure out what I was hearing and then chase down those elements.

Something this taught me--and I think this is really cool--is that we're predestined to like what we like. We will identify it as long as we're properly exposed to all different types of music. However, because of the the focus-group centered world of traditional radio, plus the play-mostly-what-I-know formats of Pandora and satellite radio, I wonder if there are alot of people that won't ever find their music passion(s) and feel what we feel for our favorite music. Music is background stuff to most people in this world...ICErs are the exception.

Not knocking Pandora and satellite..I think they are wonderful additions to our musical choices, but sometimes they have the effect of boxing us into tiny worlds if we're not careful. It's good to mix and match Maybe that's hypocritical since 'OZ is mostly what I will rely on when I want to venture outside my own collection, but they kind of do the mixing and matching for me better and more reliably than any other combo could. I do probably need to branch out a little more, though. Ok, I have a tendency to ramble, so I'll shut it now . Cool to be here.

-JohnGris

JohnGris, I think I'm going to enjoy your perspective. Regarding classic rock, I know my relationship to it has been complicated. For years I shunned it almost completely, thanks mostly to overexposure, but over the last ten years I find myself returning more and more to the music I remember from my teen years, some of it classic rock but also a lot of r&b and straight-ahead pop. One thing for sure, this is a great place to learn about music of all stripes. Welcome aboard.

Nah - it's a good point. There's definitely a tendency to lean towards the familiar, and one of the things I've tried to do with satellite is force myself at times to listen to stuff outside what I normally hear. It was better when the XM playlist was in effect - a much wider range of music. The prog station was a revelation to me. I didn't think I was that much of a prog fan, but it was one of my favorites and I listened to it a lot. The metal station gets a fair bit of play from me, but mostly when my wife isn't around (it's not her favorite). I like the deep tracks stuff. I have it programmed, but I tend to stay away from the "hits" station because it's mostly the stuff that gets overplayed anyway.

That's one of the beauties of this place - there are always recommendations flying around.