Simon Arnold

I do the same thing, with the list changing every fortnight or so.

I've recently been listening to Velvet Revolver, Brett Garsed (incredible Aussie guitarist) and Foo Fighters.

Simon,

I do like hard rock - not heavy metal, though - but when at work (like right now - don't tell on me, please!) I tuned my radio on classic music station. It has been proven by research long time ago that people who do some mental work are more productive when there's Mozart muzic on the background. The experiment was actually conducted on two groups of students doing the same homework assignments (technical sciences, of course). The group that was listening to Mozart did much better than the one listening to some rock/pop. Yes, both have steady beat/tempo, but somehow Mozart won (again, he-he).

Out of your list, I do only AC/DC. Ever heard of Uriah Heep, BTW? And about 30 years ago, I found out that making your drawings for your semester term project with Elton John or Yes goes better than with Led Zepellin, Deep Purple or that same Uriah Heep, let alone Queen and Beatles (these latter two proved being distructive: I caught myself listening to them with full attention instead of working with pensil and ruler on my drawing...)
Well, I was young, then...

So you all need music to concentrate. Funny. The nicest sound I can come up with while at work is the sound of silence. It brings me in a state of narrowed concentration... AKA hypnosis. I close the door of the room where I work, shut down some apps where others could reach me (skype and MSN) and completely concentrate on the task at hand. The only thing I hear then is the humming of my PC and the clicking of the keyboard...

I have over 400 music CDs, and about 300 of them are hard rock mostly from the 70s/80s. I don't buy new CDs much anymore, only a few per year. I recently found two great new hard rock CDs just released, one is by a band called Seventh Key, the other is Jon Oliva's Pain (from the band Savatage who has a great album Hall of the Mountain King). Alan Griver and I went to see the Scorpions and Tesla play live at a concert here in Seattle just this past October, row 16. A great mix of melodic hard rock and classic symphony is a CD from a band Trans Siberian Orchestra, which is also band members from the original band Savatage.