...I've inherited any influences from my parents but as I now have a 2 year old of my own to experiment on, I'm happy to contribute.

I'm currently playing him (when his mother is out of the house) the new Van Der Graaf Generator album. He has already developed a very good frown in his 2 years on the planet; fair to say that it's getting a good work-out when Hammill and the boys get into their stride.

Hang on, is that the NSPCC at the door?

My parents didn't own a record player of any kind. When I used some of my savings, at age 13, to buy a Portadyne record player, that was the first non-radio musical device to have entered our house, and "Woodstock" by Matthews Southern Comfort and "Ball Of Confusion" by The Temptations, which I bought at the same time, were played to death until my folks bought me Motown Chartbusters Volume 5 for my next birthday. My Mom used to listen to the radio quite a bit, but my resulting early diet of The Billy Cotton Bandshow, Listen With Mother, Housewives' Choice, and Round The Horne, doesn't explain my subsequent taste for Van der Graaf Generator.

I am told I have an aggressively broad taste in music (shut up, PC and VV)encompassing or trying to encompass all areas, at least in exploration if not by colonisation. Yet my childhood household was surprsingly music free. My parents owned perhaps 20 LPs, my fathers taste being Kenneth McKellar, Moira Anderson, Harry Secombe and the Seekers, he having, I believe, a soft spot for Judith Durham. He was a weekly listener of the Cliff Adams singers and Sing Something Simple, liking also the Black and White Minstrel show. My mother liked Jim Reeves and Val Doonican. An elder brother liked bebop, to my ears unlistenable until, strangely, the last year or so. He also had the Songs of Leonard Cohen, appropriated as soon as I hit 13. My sister had a lot of singles befitting the era, Beatles, Hollies, Dave Clark Five etc.
I suspect it was boarding school that whetted my whistle, as my peers included all the run of the mill Purple, Sabs and Floyd enthusiasts as well as one (obviously wealthy) individual who regularly bought Van Morrisson, Arthur Brown, Colosseum, Man and other exotica. Well it was late 60s/early 70s. Trips to a local record shop with a free rein on headphone rights and a strong west coast bias led to dalliances with the Mothers of Invention, Stoneground and Flock. And an initial inquisitiveness about a strange man dressed up as a fly, latterly of Fairport Convention, whose single I had bought as my 2nd aquisistion. Amongst the music anoraks, of which I was clearly one already, there was hopeless out obscuring of each other, as we sought more and more atypical role models and professed favourites. In Eastbourne in 1979, who would have thought best guitarist lists included John Platania and Jorma Kaukonen? To like the predictable was disallowed. And, being allowed neither, the longer the hair and the more ragged the beard the better.
In 75 I moved up to London and further education. Again disallowed long hair, I went the other way and had my hair cut short and took to wearing an aged pair of wranglers drainpipes. I actually only later and accidentally discovered punk, the Stranglers at the Roundhouse being my only bona fide experience, but I did like the "Noo wave" look of skinny ties and jackets as I attended Albion Band and R&L Thompson shows.
Having absorbed most styles along the way, dismissing britpop and regurgitating prog, I am now sweeping jazz. I look for interest at more and more arcane americana and rootsier reggae, along with the world/dance interface.
When will I find what I am looking for?

Fatherly attempts to persuade me of the wonders of classical music and orchestras did not succeed. An LP of Peter and the Wolf was intended as part of the indoctrination process. I liked it but not much else. My parents did have pop records. These were The Carpenters, The Sandpipers (guantanamera) and Simon and Garfunkel. They did interest me. But I think I would have got music anyway once started to watch TOTP. We also had West Side Story and some 45s - Elvis Don't Be Cruel and The Archies Sugar Sugar and I remember and some Glen Miller. Plus the TOTP LPs and Chartbuster series. I came to enjoy their covers especially(the sleeves not the songs) where crocheted and sequinned mini skirts abounded.

When my sister started getting records I listened to hers. The Beatles were her thing. They definitely interested me. There were also flimsy flex-discs free with Fab 208 magazine and the like. One I remember was Alice Cooper Elected. I then went my own way once I discovered radio shows that played rock - like Alan Freeman on a Saturday where you could hear Pink Floyd and the like. My sister was by now into Wings and I was no longer interested in her stuff.

Mum: Tracy Chapman, Joni Mitchell, Suzanne Vega.

Dad: Thin Lizzy, Pink Floyd, Clapton.

Clearly with such disparate tastes their marriage was doomed from the outset.

Mother: Jimmy Shand; Kenneth McKellar; Andy Stewart; Louis Armstrong; Ella Fitzgerald; Frank Sinatra; Bing Crosby; Glenn Miller.
Father: Jimmy Shand; Kenneth McKellar; Andy Stewart; The Black & White Minstrels; Harry Secombe.

My father appears to have never had any interest in music at all.

My mother's taste largely ran to Herb Alpert, Ray Conniff (eek), James Last (double eek) and musicals. To this day I can sing along to most of the tunes from Sound of Music, South Pacific, Oklahoma etc but can also claim to never having actually seen any of them all the way through. Also Val Doonican (Paddy Mcginty's Goat was a particular favourite of mine at the age of eight). Frank Sinatra was also a favourite of hers and although I can't imagine buying any, I will concede that he was a damn fine singer.

So all terribly uncool. I wish I could say there was lots of cool 50's jazz or whatever which informed my future tastes .....but I can't.

Dad also brought me up with a love of Big Band Jazz, and the smaller bands as well. Curiously this was old music to him, pre-dating him by about a decade or so. So he also bequeathed me The Beatles, Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers, The Pretty Things and The Spencer Davis Group.

I had to dig these things out of his collection for myself though. When I was a kid in the 70s it was wall to wall Gallagher and Lyle, Neil Diamond, John Denver and Bread from the living room. So on my hand me down portable record player in my room I countered this with old mod 45s, The Hollies, Benny Goodman and Django Reinhardt.

When I discovered Woody Allen's films about 10 years later the soundtracks were as familiar to me as Martin Scorsese's are to people brought up in Rock households. Benny Goodman's Sing Sing Sing is still one of my all time favourites. Great to get ready to go out too. Another thread?

...my dad had VDGG/Hammill/Floyd/Crimson/ Zeppelin/Colosseum/Camel/Caravan/ELP albums and played them a lot, also singer-songwriters like Neil Young/John Martyn/Roy Harper. Still love it to this day as there's such a richness to it, musically, that I didn't get from what was on the radio at the time (mainly Oasis!). From there I went to Genesis, Yes etc. Was into Bowie, Elvis, Beatles, Stones when I was about 6. All of those acts I'm still very much into.

My parents met thanks to Melody Maker. He was carrying it and she was interested in the music.

Dad loved jazz, everything from Louis Armstrong's Hot Five through to Ellington and Basie. There were blues records around but mainly big band stuff. He respected bebop onward but didn't play it much. Music was played constantly and my parents had a huge collection of 78's and LP's. Mum, who's still with us, had slightly smoother tastes. She actually saw Glenn Miller on the tour just before he disappeared over the channel.

My weirdest experience was over Robert Johnson. Sometime in the late sixties my dad was peering at Wheels of Fire and remarked that he knew who Robert Johnson was. I had no idea a the time, just a name on a Cream album. He reached up onto one of the record crammed shelves and pulled down King of the Delta Blues Singers, the original Robert Johnson album that inspired Eric. He'd been introduced to it years before by Paul Oliver the great blues writer. Paul Oliver was a friend of a friend and had been in my house on a number of occasions.

Turned out my dad was cooler than me in his tastes! Something for the therapist?