Anything that's got good tone and groove!
Amen!
Though ever since I was a toddler, I've liked music with:
* Weird noises, be they whale-song samples on Judy Collins records or blinding effect-drenched psychedlic space assault
* Thick, heavy tones, be they from Wagner or Zakk.
* Folk/World feels (perhaps because a lot of traditional music actually has pretty heavy, if acoustic, and weird sounds in it :)).
A good melody helps, but frankly I can listen to shamanic chanting and drumming for hours (even without weird drugs) as long as it was
good shamanic chanting and drumming :)
My starting points for contemporary pop/rock were: the Monkees (!), the Beatles, Def Leppard, the Grateful Dead, the Allman Bros., Creedence, Jethro Tull, Fairport Convention, Led Zeppelin, Hawkwind, Motorhead, Metallica .... I never listened to much pop/rock before about 1986 or '87, but those places are where I spent a lot of my first 5 years or so of contemporary music. Then came university, big-city record shops, and the Internet, and waaaaay too many CDs! Rock, metal, folk, blues, Coltrane, whatever! :)
But before that .... My grandad was heavily into classical, and an amateur composer -- I picked up a love for 19th-century Romantic composers from him, I think: Rimsky-Korsakov ("Russian Easter Overture" is one of my favorite pieces of music, ever!), Borodin ... even more Grieg and Sibelius (Kullervo Symphony! It's like doom metal with a symphony orchestra and a full choir! :twisted:). My dad was into 60s folk stuff, like the Kingston Trio, and my Mom into the likes of Joan Baez, and when I was a baby they were always playing Johnny Cash (folky -- but kinda heavy in a way!). From there I eventually pickup a liking for bluegrass (I wish I could pick banjo!) and British folk stuff; I also dig the Scandinavian "modern folk" bands like Garmarna, Hedningarna, Hoven Droven, Gjallarhorn.
More recently .... my wife is a major Latin music fan, and that got me into classic salsa dura, like the '70s Fania stuff, Niche, Fruko .... I'm not as into the romantica stuff, or so much merengue, but Juan Luis Guerra has some great songs. And Carlos Vives (Colombian vallenato-pop-rock) and Shakira (especially before she "went gringa";)) have some great stuff --really!
