Thanks, JTT. I am gradually re-training him, I think - after some full-on battles. In almost every other aspect he does respect me and my preferences but he has this blind spot about music. I do admit that I like some pretty far out stuff, like Tim Buckley & Jeff Buckley, and the whole gamut of musical taste from classical to electronica, but there are few of my CD's that he will sit through unless he liked the music before he met me.

I just bought a Gryphon double album and I put it on because a couple of the tracks reminded me of Frank Zappa but hubby went out into his shed away from the music before we got to those tracks. I'll have to put the specific tracks on and say "does this remind you of Zappa?" and he'll probably listen.

I did turn him around about my favourite electronica album called Leftism, by Leftfield - I mean it is my absolute favourite album and it is electronica. It's percussion rhythms with an amazing polyphonic complexity but very listenable on the surface, i.e. not dry, theoretical music (as the Aussies say, not disappearing up their own a-holes :-)    ) but very passionate and, well, listenable. I bought the album because of the song by Johnny Rotten/John Lydon called Open Up, but then very quickly got drawn into the African-inspired rhythms being produced electronically. The first 20 or so times that I played it he walked out of the room, and then afterwards, when I explained about the percussion stuff he started to stay in the room, and I have actually heard him talk about it - a little bit - to other people.

Strange anomaly.

Anyway, I have tried to listen to Cohen, and I still stick to my previous statement that with Dylan & Cohen, I don't mind them if sung by someone else, but I find both of them grating and annoying - from a musical standpoint.

Helen