Nice ideas, Canard. I just live a ways from any large city so those options only come into play if I drive for at least an hour toward Los Angeles. I work with younger people, but of the ones I've chatted about music are into stuff that doesn't float my boat. Ramstine, dark metal, and "outlaw country".
I suppose it is hard to find new things if you are just looking for the same. And there is nothing wrong with that. You like what you like. And most definitely you should not take any guff for it.
Myself, I often,
well sometimes, find that players/groups who really annoy me at first I end up liking. The Edge - my first impression was not favourable. What is he doing to that guitar? That's not how you play guitar! In the end ... it's a pretty cool way of playing guitar. Andy Summers - first impression -
quite lame - then I had to learn some Police tunes - taking apart some the overdub guitar parts - wow, some seriously deep theoretical stuff happening here. The Scottish group, Big Country -
uggh - guitars shouldn't sound like bagpipes - after giving the first album more than a couple of spins - well maybe they should. Abba - vacuous empty schlock pop - until I had to learn some tunes for a wedding gig - whoah ... a lot of chords in some of those tunes - Jan Schaffer,
a very good guitar player. Joseph Spence - uggh ... why is he playing out of tune? And what's with all that muttering?
LOVE him now. And on and on.
I find many young people a lot more open than I was at their age, my kids included. My daughter
liberated and loved to
unplayable death quite a number of my CDs, Led Zeplin, Hank Williams, Stravinsky, Woody Guthrie, Pentangle, Vivaldi, Bach, Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Patty Loveless, Cream, Mingus, Fabulous Thunderbirds, Willie Nelson, Kate Bush, Rossini, Mothers of Invention, etc, etc. My son has everything in his collection from Abba to John Zorn - I suspect him of liberating my Max Romeo vinyl. LOL.