We Both Know Why You're Here
There is a scene in High Fidelity (the book) where Rob realizes that he no longer knows all the bands that are playing in the London clubs (its the beginning of chapter 22; page 300 if you have the first edition hardcover). When I first read the book ten years ago, that scene didn't really stand out to me. I was in my mid-twenties and still at the height of my music geek-dom. I read Melody Maker and NME every week. Buying CD's was an almost daily activity. If one of my favorite bands was playing a show anywhere within a 6 hour radius of Nashvlile, I was there, regardless of what day of the week it was. Going to local shows was a weekly experience. Every other book I read was a music bio. I was the go-to guy for anyone who needed the answer to a musical trivia question at a bar.
Even when I hit 30, I was still a music god. I was the indie buyer for a huge record store in Las Vegas. If a customer had a question, ANY question, about a band or song, I knew the answer, whether we had the CD in stock, and its exact location in the store. With all the promos I was getting, my CD collection grew from ridiculously impressive to hideously obscene. I helped my promoter bandmates put on shows for touring indie bands.
Its amazing how quickly you can get out of the loop. It started when I moved back to Nashville in 2001. It might have been that I was distracted by living in a city with an NFL franchise. The fact that my finances no longer allowed me to make weekly trips to a record store was surely a factor. I no longer worked next to a bookstore where I could read music magazines every day on my lunch break. And within 6 months, I started getting the feeling that the hip parade had passed me by. When I re-read High Fidelity a couple years ago, that scene hit home like a runaway truck.
So I started taking steps to change that. I got high speed internet so I could listen to music online. I started swinging by the records stores at least every few weeks to check out the CD's on the listening stations. I made it a point to go to a show at least once a month. I read the occasional music blog. I'll never get back to the halcyon days of my twenties, but I'm to the point now where I'll know at least one of the bands on the marquee at the Exit/In. And when I'm talking music with my younger friends, I'll have heard OF the bands they are talking about, even if I haven't actually heard them.
So this site is another one of those baby steps. Its not a new music blog, or a concert review blog, or a CD review blog, though it will have a little bit of all that. It's a place for me to talk about music... whatever I'm listening to, or buying, or seeing live, or just thinking about... and hopefully help me continue to reconnect with my first love. I'm doing it mostly for me, but you can read it if you want to.
post title by The Church
Even when I hit 30, I was still a music god. I was the indie buyer for a huge record store in Las Vegas. If a customer had a question, ANY question, about a band or song, I knew the answer, whether we had the CD in stock, and its exact location in the store. With all the promos I was getting, my CD collection grew from ridiculously impressive to hideously obscene. I helped my promoter bandmates put on shows for touring indie bands.
Its amazing how quickly you can get out of the loop. It started when I moved back to Nashville in 2001. It might have been that I was distracted by living in a city with an NFL franchise. The fact that my finances no longer allowed me to make weekly trips to a record store was surely a factor. I no longer worked next to a bookstore where I could read music magazines every day on my lunch break. And within 6 months, I started getting the feeling that the hip parade had passed me by. When I re-read High Fidelity a couple years ago, that scene hit home like a runaway truck.
So I started taking steps to change that. I got high speed internet so I could listen to music online. I started swinging by the records stores at least every few weeks to check out the CD's on the listening stations. I made it a point to go to a show at least once a month. I read the occasional music blog. I'll never get back to the halcyon days of my twenties, but I'm to the point now where I'll know at least one of the bands on the marquee at the Exit/In. And when I'm talking music with my younger friends, I'll have heard OF the bands they are talking about, even if I haven't actually heard them.
So this site is another one of those baby steps. Its not a new music blog, or a concert review blog, or a CD review blog, though it will have a little bit of all that. It's a place for me to talk about music... whatever I'm listening to, or buying, or seeing live, or just thinking about... and hopefully help me continue to reconnect with my first love. I'm doing it mostly for me, but you can read it if you want to.
post title by The Church
