Those of you who regularly dance around the musical architecture of this site probably associate the place with reviews. Perhaps also verbosity, run-on sentences, obscure musical references as befitting a chap my age, and even lame jokes that often don’t work. Hopefully, meaningful and wide-ranging reviews are also high on the list.
It is fun writing about new music and being among the first to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) in the service of grassroots music. It’s certainly much more rewarding than being the 47th person to ask Dave Grohl what his favourite cheese might be or compile another list-based retrospective of the top five Nicki Minaj albums in order of merit. (Is there even five to choose from, I can’t even be bothered to look that up.)
But as great as writing such sonic dissections is, no matter how great or grim the subject, there is always a brief, an agenda, and a job to be done. In the past, rock writers and music journalists got around this by gonzoing their writing, making them as central to the piece as the subject under discussion. Nick Kent’s glorious pieces about The Rolling Stones were often more about him out-Keefing Keef than about Keef himself! (But then again, he had a more exciting lifestyle than most music writers of today or any age.) But those days are gone. We shall probably not see their like again.
So, my solution to freeing up the mind and the pen, creating somewhere I can call the literary shots and amuse myself, is to start an (ir)regular blog thread on the site. And that is what you gaze upon now.
So, what to expect? Well, pretty much anything, I guess. Whatever is on my mind when I find a spare moment to write. Perhaps a music book I have read, a gig that I have been to, maybe even a place to mention some of the music which doesn’t make it to the music pile (there is a lot that I don’t have time to write up properly, as you can imagine.) It might just be an issue or discussion that is already the water cooler discussion of the day into which I cast my two penneth!
And, of course, I welcome your response, as I do on anything posted here. If anything I have to say piques your interest, hopefully, it will then feel free to chime in, and we can share collective thoughts in the comments section. Some of them might even form the basis of another post, and suggestions for the subject matter are also welcomed.
Right, I look forward to waxing lyrical about…well, who knows what? Talk soon, and TTFN.
