A few things about me:
- I have been told that my taste in music has a wider range than it has any business having.
- My favorite bands are the Afghan Whigs and Morphine.
- I am currently loving on A.A. Bondy so hard that it makes my eyeballs roll back in my head.
- Other favorites include a range from Cab Calloway to Shudder to Think to Paolo Conte to Modest Mouse to Hank Williams, Sr. And, obviously, the Clash.
- It is difficult to recommend music to me because my taste is idiosyncratic, but I love it when people try.
Why start yet another music blog when the internet is positively glutted with music blogs? Partially for myself, partially for my long-suffering friends. Music has long been one of my top obsessions. I love to listen to it, to go to shows, to find new music, to discover old music, to fall in love with artists and to write about it all. Endlessly. So much so that I could almost feel the metaphorical pushing and boots-to-the-ass of friends when the idea of concentrating my music mania into a central blog first came about. “Do it!” they said. “You love music more than anyone we know.” And though they didn’t say it directly, I could see them light up with the idea that my communications with them in our various social venues would no longer be 90% music talk. To paraphrase an idea from Rainer Maria Rilke, I am writing this music blog because I must.
Taking a page from the Book of Aquarium Drunkard, I will note that the focus of this blog is likely to shift as my interests shift. For the past year or so, I’ve been heavy into the whole folk/roots/Americana/guys-with-raspy-voices-who-record-their-albums-in-out-buildings genre, but I could go head-over-heels into the rapping-over-indie-rock genre or the loud-angry-shouting genre tomorrow. I will, however, always strive to focus on good music, whatever genre, sub-genre or sub-sub-genre it’s in. Unless I’m posting some sort of “guilty pleasures” entry. Then it’s every man, woman, child and mid-career Hall and Oates fan for him or herself.
I will likely not include album reviews or year-end lists in NTSIB. I have nothing against blogs who do have these, but I have rarely found them useful in my music-listening/purchasing decisions and an informal poll confirms that I am far from the only one thus unaffected. I find a listener’s relationship to music too personal a thing to trust to anything but one’s own ears.
I appreciate everyone who stops by and takes a step or two in this journey with me. Comments, recommendations and, of course, music are always welcome.
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