What I Like

Another New Year's, another bout with reflections and resolutions as I attempt to identify ways that I'd like to improve myself in this next year. I won't say it's totally hopeless, but I truly find the whole idea of New Year's resolutions a little glib. Think back to the resolutions you've made over the years and how many to which you've held up your end of the bargain. Probably not too many, if you're anything like me. Not that I don't in some way improve and grow every year, it's just never in the shape of the resolutions I made. Blah blah blah, I'm not writing this to go off on a cynical tangent or anything--I'm just trying to create a platform from which to launch into the thing I really like to talk about.

In my life, I have discovered there are a few things I can remember with great ease. As it were, they are not amazingly useful nor productive or intellectual in the traditional sense. I can't remember anything about politics, parts of a car, recipes, bank account balances, nor can I tell you anything informative about financial workings, U.S. international policy, or Hindu gods. As hard as I've tried with all of the above, the details contained in those topics do not stick in my cranial mud.

What does stick, though, are random things and opinions about music. I do not hold any mystical insights about the magic of music nor do I have a particularly deep record collection. I don't play a music instrument. What I can tell you is what year every Pink Floyd album ever made was released, why the Cure sounds so depressing, and how Jane's Addiction recorded their album Ritual de lo Habitual. I remember hearing things about how hip hop developed in South Central Los Angeles, and can tell you about the John Coltrane quartet from 1965-1969. I know who Prince's protege is. I don't know these things because I spent extensive time researching them. My knowledge comes from reading liner notes, remembering conversations between friends, reading Rolling Stone, and of course perusing the random smorgasborg of information and music websites on the internet. And somehow all this stuff just sticks.

So, it would be unoriginal and regurgitory to present these little facts I know and somehow pass them off as my own. In this light, my aim is to present very simply what I like or don't like musically and why. Maybe I'll throw in some facts. I might even use a link. I'll try and make it multi-genre oriented (my wife would pass the point of exasperation if I spent any more time talking about how freakin' cool Pavement is). And, I'll try not be a snob while doing all of the above but no promises.