Do your local friends have similar taste in music?

[The Walrus]

I live in a rural area, and like a lot of prog/power metal, so... no. Add all the other flavorings like new age and post rock and the fact that I don't like a lot of huge, mainstream artists, I don't have too many people with whom I can talk music locally. I have one friend who always acts interested in bands I like but never listens to the stuff. He said the other day, "Oh yeah Helloween, those guys rock" and I asked him what his favorite album and song were and he couldn't name one. I'd rather people just tell me they don't know who such-and-such is, or if they're not interested, don't pretend to be!

I have one pal with whom I can talk Dream Theater and MP all day and night, but that's about it - another guy I take to concerts all the time but he doesn't really follow music, but he's always a blast to go with. What about you? I'm sure those of you in cities have no problem finding friends with similar musical tastes.

[ganpondorodf]

Not really. One of my best friends is a huge black and doom metal fan and my other best friend mostly listens to classical. My mum likes Steven Wilson though!

[SoundscapeMN]

I live in the Twin Cities, and the weird thing is, a large percentage of the people I see at concerts do not actually live in town, but in RURAL parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, The Dakotas, and even Winnipeg.

But if I lived a rural part, I'd probably be in a similar situation as the OP.

That being said, I have some friends or more semi-regular acquaintances who are into the music I am. Although they often are into just 1 or 2 bands or styles. I only know a small handful from my hometown who seem to be into a lot of the same bands, 2 of which actually are both here on DTF, Lordixor and JRundquist.

There's a Minnesota Area Prog Fans group setup on Facebook, with just 54 people in it (many of which never post), so that tells you a how small the numbers are where I'm from.

[The Walrus]

At least I'm not alone  I've met a lot of people from various forums up in Chicago and in St. Louis thanks to the Internet, so at least there's that.

[Mladen]

Most of them do. It's funny how, ten years ago, I was a complete outsider when it came to music. Nowadays, people that listen to the same music as me are everywhere. There is only a handful of bands that I love but not a lot of my friends listen to.

[cramx3]

For the most part, no.  I have some friends who enjoy metal music, but more so nu metal and thrash so there is some over lap, but not a whole lot.  I do have one friend who likes a lot of the same music and is the only friend who will go to concerts with me.

[MirrorMask]

I am lucky to live close to a smaller town, Bergamo, which is 40 minutes away from Milan, where I live, where there is a very vibrant metal scene, especially in the folk subgenre. I basically have my social life there, rather than Milan, so I consider those of that town as my "local" friends, since it's a matter of nothing to go there anyway.

[Crow]

I admittedly don't hang out a ton with people around here but there's always at least been a decent crowd at every concert I've gone to here (Devy/BTBAM was PACKED & sold out, too)

So I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of locals here with similar taste 

[Lethean]

The only local friends who listen to the same music are people that I've met at local concerts.   Otherwise, people that I encounter in my daily life do not; I'm lucky if they're even familiar with Rush, much less DT or anything else discussed here.

[Stadler]

I have one friend that is into most of what I'm into, but not totally.  There are some bands - most of Mike's work, frankly - that I pretty much go by myself or meet up with one of the fine people on boards like this.

My wife is into country.   My son is into rap and country.  My daughter is into rap.  My other daughter is into pop, country and is getting her feet wet on classic rock (which is good).   My other son is too young; he likes songs and there are very few (and usually depend on whether they mention something he likes like the Titanic [Brett Eldredge's new song]. 

[twosuitsluke]

It's funny, if you'd asked me 10 years ago then I would've said that way more of my friends were into the same music as me. Back in early '06 I met a new group of friends who were all into metal/punk. I already had quite a few friends who were into the punk scene, but not so many metal friends. Back then I was discovering bands like A7X, Trivium, In Flames, Lamb of God plus loads of others. At the time I was like 23 and most of my friends were massively into music and discovering new bands all the time. With a lot of my friends actually, music, drinking and gaming were the basis of our relationship. I've been to many gigs with lots of these friends over the years.

As time has gone on though most of them have kind of lost interest. I mean, I still go to gigs with some of those same friends but when we do it's mainly the same bands we were seeing back then. If I'm honest, my obsession with new music and discovering new bands has only increased. I can only think of one friend who actually still looks for new music and doesn't just listen to the same stuff they were listening to 10 years ago. He is into some prog metal, he loves Opeth and I went to see Devin Townsend with him earlier this year. It sucks though that the rest just aren't interested in any of the awesome stuff I am listening to these days. Whenever we talk music now they have no clue who bands like The Dear Hunter, Leprous, Haken, Caligula's Horse etc, are!!

I've actually had to start going to gigs on my own if it's anything prog related. Like, I'm going to see Reel Big Fish, Anti-Flag and The Mad Caddies next week and a big group of us are going but if I had gone to the recent Anathema/Alcest show, not a single one of my friends would know who they are. If they do listen to new metal stuff now, it's just the 'mainstream' metal bands 

[SwedishGoose]

Well there are obviosly a lot of fans of prog of all kinds in Stockholm where I now live but none of my  now local friends like the same music as I do. My local friends from back in Mariestad where I grew up though.... even though we moved to different parts of the country we meet up at concerts around Sweden or neighboring countries to see old or new heroes.
It's quite interresting that we who grew up together and listened to the same music "find" the same new music even if it is quite far removed from anything we listened to back then.

[cramx3]

There's definitely tons of metal fans locally, I just don't seem to be friends with them.  They come out for the concerts, just not sure where from 

Also, I pretty much consider DTF as my music friends, I talk/learn/discover more music here than anywhere else in my life.

[twosuitsluke]

Also, I pretty much consider DTF as my music friends, I talk/learn/discover more music here than anywhere else in my life.

Same 

Bloody great community.

[Anguyen92]

Yeah, I don't think my high school friends have similar music taste as mine.  Back then, I was liking Seether, Daughtry, Alter Bridge, etc. and they honestly did not really care much of it and I do think they had the assumption that because I like Alter Bridge, I must like Creed by default and then comes the jokes (all lighthearted though).

Nowadays, I don't think I have ever met anyone in real life that legitimately knows and likes Alter Bridge.  They always get the "Who?" treatment or the whole "3/4ths of the band used to be in Creed."  It saddens me.  They do know other bands I like such as Foo Fighters and Breaking Benjamin, but not on a level of being a huge fan of them.

[wolfking]

I associate with a lot of different people mainly through work and no one listens to what I listen to and I've seen a lot of good people come and go.  Even friends I've had in the past weren't that big on it.  It's weird, they are out there and I'd really like to know people with similar tastes and get to know them.  I think that's something that's kept me from being more social outside of work.

[twosuitsluke]

Nowadays, I don't think I have ever met anyone in real life that legitimately knows and likes Alter Bridge.  They always get the "Who?" treatment or the whole "3/4ths of the band used to be in Creed."  It saddens me.

I have one friend who is a die hard fan. He has an Alter Bridge tattoo and everything  he also has an Apocalyptica tattoo, which is really cool.

I'd say like 80% of my friends have what I'd consider 'good' music taste and between all of them they cover a wide range of alternative music. The main problem is that they are pretty much just all stuck in the rut of listening to the same bands they have been for years. They don't seem to want to listen to anything outside of what they know. That's what sucks for me 

[The King in Crimson]

Nope. Not really. I have a friend/roommate who I went to see a couple of bands live with and we can talk about some music, but mostly I end up going to shows alone and listening to my music alone.

Also, I really don't meet too many new people at concerts on account of me being an anti-social git, which really just compounds the problem even more.

[The Walrus]

Interesting responses I've met lots of cool people through concerts. As a music geek it's the most comfortable possible way for me to meet new people with fairly similar musical interests

[jcmoorehead]

Some and some, for each band/artist I like I generally have one friend who'll also enjoy them. I have a friend who is into Meat Loaf & Dream Theater, another who enjoys Porcupine Tree, Marillion, Steven Wilson, another who loves older Genesis, a friend who likes Zappa so there is no one I really clash with when it comes to musical taste.

[ariich]

My tastes are extremely eclectic and varied (aka random) encompassing all sorts of styles of rock, metal, pop, electronica, jazz, classical. So I share some musical interests with a whole load of different friends, but not really anyone who shares the same breadth of interests other than my brother.

[noxon]

Where I grew up (a town with population 25000 up in northern norway), there was an abnormal amount of Dream Theater fans. I think the local music store just were exceptionally good at selling fringe genres. My father bought WDADU back in '89. He was a fan. So when I started high school, there were several other people there who also were fans. ACOS had just been released - so I got hooked on that based on the fact that my friends like it and wanted to hear it when they visited me.

Trondheim also had a pretty good scene for that kind of music. Maybe no wonder that the fan club was started by a guy from my town and Trondheim (i joined the team a few years later). Lots of people I knew in Trondheim dug DT.

Oslo is a completely different story again; here there's a big scene (of mostly adults in their late 30s to early 50s) who we refer to as the "prog family" - we almost always meet eachother at gigs and we tend to plan meetups at bars and stuff - even when going to international concerts/festivals. So its cool, cause theres always someone you know at a concert.

[MirrorMask]

Nice to know that the metal and the prog are strong in Norway  I figure most people in Scandinavian countries are metalhead anyway 

[Stadler]

I don't want to start something, but one of the benefits (I consider it a benefit) of having friends/family that do not share my listening choices is that I have come to see how music I don't care for can still incite passion in others.  I've become far more tolerant in my dotage of music that I wouldn't have given a second thought to when I was 25.   My daughter; she gets the same thrill out of the new Taylor Swift album as I did from the new Kiss or Marillion album back in the day.  Whether I think she's a phony, or a flash in the pan, or a no-talent is not relevant in that.   I've come to appreciate the ability of music to connect. 

She is not a passive listener, so it's not that she's just into generic stuff, and she's aware of what came before (I made sure of that) so she knows and likes Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, and Kiss, but that's the music that transports her, and I encourage that.  It's also changed me in that I almost never say "I wish they would do THIS", and rather, I look forward to hearing what the artists have to say.  What are THEIR choices?   I don't have to like them (and I don't always) but I feel like I DO owe them the time to give it a chance to see where they are coming from, as opposed to wishing that they did it "my way". 

[PepeLePew]

There's only one of my friends who shares my music taste. Since he got a divorce he has moved away, so now we basically only see each other when we go to concerts.

I live in a relatively small village (in Germany), and there don't seem to be ANY people here liking the same music - at least I am the only one running around with nerdy t-shirts from Bands like Bigelf, Neal Morse Band or Dream Theater. 

[Architeuthis]

I have a few metalhead friends here in the small town I live, some even like DT and have gone to their conerts with me. I have this one friend that I figured would love DT because he's heavily into Metallica and Maiden, but he is put off by the keyboards so he won't give them a chance.
 I have a good friend that lives two hrs away in the Seattle area that I met in person at the Symphony X show in Seattle who is a member of DT forums, way cool! 

[Herrick]

I only have one real life friend who likes a lot of the stuff I like. We're seeing Dream Theater in November.

[jingle.boy]

What is the "local friends" you speak of?

[ganpondorodf]

I guess actually it was friends of mine at the time that got me into DT and Rush. And I've been to a few shows with friends when there's been a bit of crossover but by and large my friends have very different tastes in music from me. And my wife and I tolerate some of each other's favorite artists but there's nobody we both 'love'.

[The Walrus]

Sigh, it is frustrating. Pardon me if I vent for a minute; the friend I mentioned in the OP borrowed a couple CDs because he showed huge interest a little over a month ago. So towards the end of September I asked him how he liked them, he said he was firing up the laptop to rip them. Asked a couple days ago if he had heard them, no response. Slipped it in a conversation today, he made up excuses about being tired and he'd try to fire up the laptop later (again) to rip them.

Like... why show fake interest? Why ask to borrow the albums if it's clear this is not your style of music and you'll never make an attempt to listen? I'm more than a little annoyed because this is the fourth or fifth time it's happened (and he's quite aware of the style of the bands he's borrowing), I should just ask him why he feels the need to do that. I only ever get to hang around (in person) people with similar musical tastes at concerts, and from 2016 to now I've been to a grand total of four shows. Four. That's why I get so psyched in the lines and in the crowds at shows, people there always have the same passion and interest as I do in many many bands. Lots of awesome conversations to be had.

Hope to see some DTFers and maybe even some MPFers at the Dream Theater show in Peoria, IL this November. Would love to bullshit about music and other stuff over a beer or eight.

[Herrick]

Sorry to hear that Kattelox. If your friend asks to borrow CDs again tell him to just go on YouTube or something.

[wolfking]

Sigh, it is frustrating. Pardon me if I vent for a minute; the friend I mentioned in the OP borrowed a couple CDs because he showed huge interest a little over a month ago. So towards the end of September I asked him how he liked them, he said he was firing up the laptop to rip them. Asked a couple days ago if he had heard them, no response. Slipped it in a conversation today, he made up excuses about being tired and he'd try to fire up the laptop later (again) to rip them.

Like... why show fake interest? Why ask to borrow the albums if it's clear this is not your style of music and you'll never make an attempt to listen? I'm more than a little annoyed because this is the fourth or fifth time it's happened (and he's quite aware of the style of the bands he's borrowing), I should just ask him why he feels the need to do that. I only ever get to hang around (in person) people with similar musical tastes at concerts, and from 2016 to now I've been to a grand total of four shows. Four. That's why I get so psyched in the lines and in the crowds at shows, people there always have the same passion and interest as I do in many many bands. Lots of awesome conversations to be had.

Hope to see some DTFers and maybe even some MPFers at the Dream Theater show in Peoria, IL this November. Would love to bullshit about music and other stuff over a beer or eight.

Doesn't sound like a all that great friend mate.  People do some weird things.

This thread reminds me of back in high school my best friend was really digging what I was getting into.  eg Maiden, Dickinson, Gamma Ray, Megadeth etc.  We had great times drinking and listening to metal and also went to a Megadeth show together when we were like just 18.  Then one day, overnight almost, he changed, he was desperate to find a girlfriend and started listening to popular music just to try and conform (Coldplay, Stereophonics, Chilli Peppers etc.) I saw it happen right before my eyes.  I would bring something new and he's would just shrug it off, wasn't interested.  Then one day I was cranking some Rob Halford and he said to my face, "When are you going to stop listening to that and listen to normal music.  Don't you want to find a chick?  What's a girl going to think of you when she asks what music you listen to and you respond with Halford!  She'll think you're an idiot." 

True fucking story.  That was the beginning of the end of our friendship for me.  That was one moment in time that gave me my real lone wolf style mentality.  I've never met anyone in real life that I associate that has heard of the band Gamma Ray or Helloween.  Fuck the haters and never conform, be true to yourself and you metal heart, no matter what others think or no matter if no one around you knows who the fuck they are.

What is the "local friends" you speak of?

haha, I had this thought too.

[MirrorMask]

I don't know where you all live, but here around girls metalheads are more often than not drop dead gorgeous, so it's only a win to find a girl who knows what or who Halford is.

And anyway, trying to change what you like to conform to what supposedly chicks like is something absurd to do, and that will end up in failure.

[IDontNotDoThings]

People do some weird things.

hey

[Mladen]

It must be one scary place where no girls like Helloween and Gamma Ray.