How eclectic is your taste in music?

I’m all over the map of genres depending on my mood. For me, I know a song is timelessly beautiful if I get that tingling down my spine. If it happens once it will happen every time. I’m getting that feeling as I type this listening to the 36 minutes version of the Grateful Dead’s Dark Star on “Celebrating Jerry Garcia and the Days In Between”. I get that tingle every time I hear “shall we go, you and I while we can...throooooough the transitive nightfall of diamonds” (“Live Albums Collection”, “Live Dead” as I’ve always known it, has my favorite version, though, where the engineer is best balanced. Funny to think it was an afterthought album because they had to make a contractual obligation last minute). Sweet musical bliss. Transcendence.

@whart ...
your comment “I’ll listen to anything once. I’m not much for opera largely out of ignorance.” caught my eye. Check out the outstandingly engineered and my go-to opera compilation classic and see what you think... “Pavarotti - 24 Greatest HD Tracks” in the 24 bit/96KHz version. It brings tears to my eyes whenever I play it. It’s best at higher volumes :).

With opera you really don’t need to understand the words, but to listen to an entire opera I do feel one must know the story and it is then still enjoyable not knowing the language. I levitate for sure more to compilations where I’m comfortable just feeling each piece. Pavarotti’s voice was truly a planetary treasure. I saw him in the last phase of his performance live at the acoustically “not as bad as other arenas” Denver Pepsi Center and was absolutely astounding with the breadth of his vocals. His stage presence was by far the largest I’ve ever witnessed. Which reminds me of the first time I saw Tony Bennett - from the “halo” balcony at The Denver Opera House (Ellie Caulkins Opera House). Acoustics there are incredible. As part of the encore, Tony had the house turn off all mics and he sung “Fly Me To The Moon”. What a moment in life to remember. It was truly for me a “religious experience”. Both experiences literally brought tears to my eyes. Not an easy feat :).

For me music is literally the soundtrack to life. The pieces that hit me like a ton of bricks and hook me forever always instantly take me back to when I first heard them or had a memorable experience such as when I first heard Mazzy Star - Fade Into You in the flagship Tower Records in NYC (sadly no longer exists) when it first came out or when I saw Trentemoller play live solo on the xylophone Miss You at The Ogden in Denver or when for the very first time ever I  heard Jeff Beck play Cause We Ended As Lovers. I wanted to drop on my knees like I saw god standing in front of me. That was incredibly the first time I had ever heard that song. All I can say is wow. Speaking of which, just the mention of Moby by me yesterday brought me back to him. I find his ambient and his club/rock powerful. His cut Harbour with Sinead O’Connor on 18 & 18 B-sides blows me away every time I hear it and the engineering is excellent. She is such a talented person with a tortured soul. I could keep typing for hours, but there’s what is front of mind for me at this moment.
Matt