Monday, November 17, 2014

Good evening!

Welcome to my music blog!

When I was a sophomore in High School (way back in the analog Fall of 1982) my locker-partner was a senior named Grover.  Grover was, not unexpectedly, a bit eccentric, and he often tried to act older (and thus appear wiser) than he was.

Grover and I loved music.  We loved Blondie, Devo, Roxy Music, Talking Heads, The Ramones, The Clash, and lots of other "New Wave" and punk bands.  I had began seriously collecting music in junior high, and just over those few years, I had put together one of the biggest record collections in my high school, with several hundred titles.

So, one day, as Grover and I met at our locker between classes, and I was probably boring him to tears with some new fact about some artist I liked, or some record (yeah, records!) I had bought the night before, Grover just sighs, and says, "You know, Keith, you love music now, and you think you always will.  I was just like you when I was your age but now that I'm a senior, I've found that music just isn't as important to me as it used to be.  In a couple years, you'll feel the same way."

I seriously doubted it.  I certainly loved music then, and I couldn't imagine ever not loving it.

And, so far (more than thirty years later) Grover's words remain, at least for me, completely untrue.

I have nearly 3,000 CDs in my collection now, and I still add from one one to four--on average--CDs to it every month.

My tastes are quite broad; I like industrial, heavy metal, jazz, classic rock, progressive rock, 80s New Wave, experimental music, electronic music, folk, alt-country, indie, (some) Pop, Classical, and real honest-to-goodness opera.

I'm forty-eight years old now, and I'm a grandfather twice over.

I still love Talking Heads, Blondie, Duran Duran, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Cocteau Twins, Rush..but I also love Bjork, St. Vincent, the Abbess Hildegard Von Bingen, Tom Waits, BT, Fredric Chopin, Modest Mouse, Camille Saint Seans, Richard Wagner, Neko Case, John Tavener, and Bat For Lashes.

This blog will to focus, mostly, on my new favourites....but I'm will also explore some "classics" along with some hidden gems that you may have overlooked the first time around, or have simply forgotten.

Thanks for stopping by.

We'll start on the music tomorrow!