Les, You need to get out more often.
Tell me about it!
In the 80s music started being a niche thing; the Rock I was listening to was at the other end of the spectrum - Police, Men at Work, The Cure, The Cars, Tom Petty, Pretenders, Steve Winwood, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Clapton, etc., but my main non-classical musical interests were Fusion music, Electronica and World Beat.
So folks like Jean Michel Jarre, Jean Luc Ponty, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheney, McLaughlin, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, Kraftwerk, and a few others were my main fare.
However, in the 80s I got back into classical piano in a fairly serious way, so there was a lot of listening to the old RCA, Phillips and Deutsche Gramophon recordings by the greats. And Bach. Lots of Bach. I didn’t play guitar very much for several years.
That classical music excursion taught me the ins and outs of orchestration, so it was time well spent, and served me well when I finally took the leap into scoring to picture.
I did get out and listen to music, go to concerts, etc. It was just a different kind of music, and most of the concerts were at Orchestra Hall.
I still don’t relate to hard rock, metal, etc. (I respect these genres, just not my thing), though I did like Van Halen.
