you should have RUN away!

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I disagree... The re-worked white R&B (Pat Boone stuff) was not very good... Although, it at least brought the idea of early rock to the ears of many white Americans for the first time... This is why Elvis was so important... He took the original sound and made a product worthy of the original style(s)... I don't think Pat Boone and many that were similar to him came close to that very often...

Boone was HUGELY promoted and very successful... Time (and a thoughtful review of history) has diminished his fame (rightly so)...

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The 're-worked' R&B - or the race record market changed to fool white kids into believing that there was a new music, ie, rock n' roll - was still throughout the 50's centered around the black performers - Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Chuck Berry especially. Anyone fooled by Pat Boone was, well, a fool.

That's not the worst of it I'm afraid. It's better when he listens to that stuff actually. It keeps him from playing The Back Street Boys or 4HIM. That's when he starts singing along.

You know, not everyone can get into music or understand it...I think all of us here know someone like the Petra Superfan in question. I actually got into sports partially because I didn't have a common language with the people around me. Partially because I like seeing people hitting things (and each other).

Now I am in the tech field, and not only are there fewer sports fans in my vicinity, but fewer music fans, as well. The new language is video games, something I am WAAAYYY behind on. Go figure

I think that the state of music runs in cycles. The 1950s and late 1970s started something completely new (the birth of original rock and roll and the 1977 punk revolution) while to me personally the 1960s and 1980s were really when the most creative music was made. The 60s had the Beatles and Dylan and then all the psychedelic bands. Then in the 80s bands like the Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, and Husker Du took the do it yourself approach of punk but made it much more stylistically diverse. So if you follow patterns, this decade should be a big decade for music, but unfortunately there doesnt seem to be much new coming out. The new releases that I've found myself most excited by are those by bands of the previous era like Sonic Youth, the Flaming Lips, and Mercury Rev. As far as newer talents go, I dont really know of any unfortunately. Maybe history will repeat itself and an underground band like Nirvana will make it big in a few years and we will get to hear about all of the great bands that influenced them like what happened with Nirvana. Maybe that is just wishful thinking though

I dont think there is much wrong with the state of music, rather it has become more tedious to sift through the shit to find the real music. And with MTV added to the mix, promoting increasingly shittier bands this has become quite a daunting task. I think 2000+ has delivered its fair share of classic albums and artists.... but as time passes and the rubble clears, these bands will come to the fore and will be remembered decades after Justin Timberlake brought sexy back.

I run into this problem a lot. If I ask someone what they listen to, and they say "whatever's on the radio," suddenly it's that much harder to find common ground. I tend to find that, with exceptions, what someone likes culturally usually runs in a trend with the kind of people i like and get along with. When someone turns out to be a Costello fan, I usually end up liking them, less so with Fall Out Boy fans. On the flip side, I often find that nice people who's music was unknown to me tend to have terrible taste (my closest friend at work turned out to be a Rascal Flatts and New Found Glory fan and exclusively). That doesn't say anything too good about me. It's a "High Fidelity" complex.

The same thing happens within the realm of avid music fans, the good and the bad. It's still all you can talk about, and when someone has crap taste, suddenly you've hit a dead end.
I was in a very empty starbucks-esque coffee shop today, and got into a conversation with the two people working about music. The older woman turned out to be an ex-DeadHead, which was cool, and the younger guy (17-ish) asked her if she liked Screamo. She didn't know what it was, and i told her something like "it's the worst thing you'll ever hear." It turned out the younger guy plays in a Screamo band. The rest of my conversation with them dissolved into she and I recommending older Hardcore bands to him (Bad Brains and Misfits are my only dabblings into the genre, but I still felt like I had something to contribute). Then he made a complete non-sequitor and said that Green Day were good but too old-school for him. That's when I left.

It's almost a little sad how much you (I) can be turned off to someone's personality when they like shite.

I'm somewhat the same, though whether I end up liking a person based on their musical taste isn't entirely true, though it certainly does limit conversation. Two of my close friends have terrible - I mean, horrible - tastes in music (I'm talking Journey and Poison. Seriously.).

I used to DJ in a request bar and I used to get the most ridiculous requests. One time, this dude comes up to the booth and asks for some "piano music". So I say "Anything in particular?" So he asks my opinion for some cool piano music. I throw out Pine Top, Brother Ray, Tatum, Monk, Sykes, Johnson, Waller, Slim, Spann, Domino, all those cats. I play some for him. He listens to three songs (Domino, Sykes & Slim, and Tatum, if I recall correctly) and says, "I'm looking for something more along the lines of Coldplay." Saying nothing, I turned around and closed the booth window.

I tend not to worry about someone's taste in music, although as I get older I've found there are other ways to find common ground with people. When I was younger, I was more about media preferences as a litmus test. These days, it's no big deal.