Lately it's occurred to me that in the past 10-15 years my musical tastes have totally changed.

Back in the 1990s, at any given time I always knew exactly what I wanted to listen to. Whether it was The Clash or or The Rolling Stones or Miles Davis or Pearl Jam or The Grateful Dead or whatever, there was no doubt, I was going to put it on and enjoy it!

Now, I rarely listen to my CDs at home, and when the TV is on or I'm out taking a dance class or in my car or at the club, the music I appreciate most is that which I've rarely heard. I know! What's up with that?!?

These days my favorite radio stations are the Spanish language pop station 92.1, the heavy metal station 106.7, and the hip-hop station 107.5.

Recently I've seen programs about Marvin Gaye and Queen on PBS. These guys were awesome and I am sorry I missed out on them. Curse my closed-mindedness! A couple of other people I'd like to hear more of are Elton John and Prince, and I do catch them at times on my favorite "hippie music" station (aka. the mountain) at 99.5 and "the party" at 95.7.

And it may surprise you to know that in the Hip-Hop dance classes I take at Cleo's we are more likely to hear Michael Jackson and James Brown than contemporary hip-hop. Now don't get me wrong, over the years the teachers have played some Snoop Dogg and Roots and Missy Elliot. But one day, much to my delight, one of my teachers played some Tom Tom Club!

Certainly the most intriguing group I've heard recently though has been Big and Rich. They appeared on a rerun of the show Las Vegas, and blew me away! If you've never heard them, they are truly unique: they do country music with a guy rapping on top of it. It's nice to see someone besides Emmylou Harris (who BTW was on Letterman just last week) bringing the legacy of Gram Parsons into the 21st century!

Over the years it's become obvious to me that any given work of art is not so much good or bad, as it is original or imitative (at best, and plagiaristic at worst). And the bottom line there is I feel a real urgency to get my site groja.com going under joomla! so that hopefully I can keep it secure with minimal effort and finally begin to promote it.