My older friend Bruce (and I’m delighted to say I still have a few friends who are riper in age than me) loves vintage show tunes and pop standards. Ever since he signed up for satellite television, he has constantly played the big-band station included in his package, incessantly singing along to the verses of Carol Channing’s "Hello Dolly," Ethel Merman’s "There’s No Business Like Show Business" and Doris Day’s "Que Sera Sera." He even does a little barking sound during the chorus of Patti Page’s "How Much is That Doggie in the Window?"

Younger visitors to his home routinely furrow their brows, regarding his nonstop song-and-dance act a feeble attempt to distract them from the domino and card parties he hosts and usually wins. But Bruce can’t help himself. He’s a relic of a time when, if you were a gay man, it was almost a prerequisite to listen to a lot of Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. And one’s record collection was considered incomplete without a copy of Gypsy or My Fair Lady.

Certainly, some of the passion for music from the 1940s and 50s was generational, but myths and stereotypes die hard. As someone who grew up in the early age of rock ‘n roll, I never felt comfortable squeezed into the Broadway pigeonhole (except for an occasional teary-eyed playing of The Sound of Music soundtrack). Still, when I first came out in the early 1970s, I felt obliged to augment my collection of Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo

Springfield and Doors albums with a little Liza-with-a-Z. I truly believed that I would be rejected as an openly gay man if I didn’t own at least one Garland anthology, a Johnny Mathis LP, and a Streisand or two.

I kept them where they were quite visible, but I rarely played them except during intimate dinner parties, and even then I wasn’t particularly fond of most of the music. It seemed relatively lifeless compared to my Janis Joplin, Cat Stevens, Who, and Stevie Wonder albums. To me, the golden age of Broadway musicals began with Hair and ended with Evita and La Cage aux Folles.

So, I’m pleased to see that the mythic era of the show tune-slash-pop standard as de rigueur music for gay guys is making what may be its final curtain call. A recent online survey by Out Magazine asked gay readers what kind of music they preferred, and a measly 5.4 percent responded "Broadway" or "standards." Only jazz fared less well (2.9 percent), with even hip hop beating out the golden-olden boys in the big bands.

The most listened-to music among gay folks these days, according to the poll, is alternative and contemporary hard rock, followed closely by pop. The two categories accounted for more than 52 percent of all responses. Dance and electronica came in third at 18.4 percent.

Although the trend-driven tastes of younger music consumers account for some of the change, the relative popularity of musical genres still amounts to a significant shift in the paradigm of gay culture. And as rock gains ground as the favored style of music for gay folks, more of its lyrics speak personally to us. Take Scottish nouveau-punk rockers Franz Ferdinand. Their self-titled debut album has been an international smash for more than a year, powered by the out-front lyrics of "(Come Dance with Me) Michael."

"You’re the boy with all the leather hips, sticky hair, sticky lips; stumble on my sticky lips," the guys sing most convincingly.

Along with Ferdinand, whose new release "You Could Have It So Much Better" is also a hot commodity, the best selling modern rock albums among gay customers in our Florida shop include Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere (Cee-Lo’s voice on the hit track "Crazy" is simply mesmerizing), James Blunt’s lyrically potent Bedlam, Aqualung’s lush Strange and Beautiful and The Killers’ well-described Hot Fuss. Among more veteran rock artists, Green Day’s American Idiot has become a contemporary classic, as has the deluxe edition of greatest hits by a woman who helped make it safe for gay people to proclaim their love of rock ‘n roll: Melissa Etheridge.

In the dance category, one of the current hottest CDs is European diva Cascada’s Everytime We Touch. It’s got a retro groove that recalls the golden era of disco.

And for those who mourn the good old days of big-band music, young Michael Bublé’s collection of updated pop standards, It’s Time, performs well (much better than either Rod Stewart’s or Barry Manilow’s similarly themed but less perky tributes to the past).

Perhaps the best thing about music today is that, whatever one’s taste, the choices are nearly infinite. Almost every song ever sung, almost every album ever recorded is available in some form on the internet. Satellite radio (and television) services include stations focusing on every genre from my favorite rock ‘n roll oldies (Dion and Del Shannon) to hip-hop to those show tunes pal Bruce can’t stop singing.

You don’t have to follow the crowd in your musical tastes, but I’m happy to see an ever-larger gay crowd proclaim rock as their favorite. The genre has evolved and changed considerably over the half century since artists like Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Elvis pioneered it, but that’s undoubtedly why it remains the major musical force on our planet. As we early fans predicted all along, rock ‘n roll will never die.