By no means am I judging anyones taste, I was simply trying to give the young man some perspective ;-)
But I have a theory about aesthetic preferences. I believe they are hard wired, or genetic in origin.
Why is it that one 16 year old can take a puff of a cigarette and run in revulsion, while another can take a puff and be hooked for life. Same with alchohol. Why is it that one 16 year old can hear the Grateful Dead, and be launched on a lifelong journey of admiration and, dare I say it, compulsion, while another can hear the Dead, yawn, and move on. I don't think it matters whether you were exposed to Joni Mitchell or Beethoven in the womb, I think, by the luck of our genes, we are blessed/cursed with natural receptors for all kinds of aesthetics, and if you happen to get exposed to something your predestined to accept, bam zoom, thats all she wrote.
My musical taste are quite wide and varied, some things I enjoy make others cringe in mere seconds, and some are very mainstream. Yet there is plenty of music I just never connected with. The music I love took no effort to enjoy, and the music I don't enjoy, I have been unable to learn to appreciate. I tried for years to learn to grok the Dead, and I could never make it happen. Took a nice nap from 1AM to 3AM during a new years eve show in 1979? It's not a matter of good or bad, or degree of sophistication, we just get wired that way and we are stuck with it.
Some music, when heard for the very first time, induces an involuntary, physiological reaction in me, just as if a beautiful woman walked into the room. That's not a learned consideration, that's my reptilian brain sparking.
Back to the thread, I never had braces, but some say I should have!
