Theme Park Experience

There are times when reading about music bums me out. Bummed to the point where I think the writers only want to hear free jazz while being stoned and/or drunk, huddled alone, spacing out in a dilapidated home. I enjoy reading perspectives from people who take the time and effort to investigate why a certain record or an entire catalog connects with people. (When I mean "people," I mean people who actually identify with the music and they carry that connection for the rest of their lives.) But if someone is going to continually bad-mouth a popular act, I have to wonder why this person is going on and on about it. "Okay, it's not for you," I think to myself. (I say this knowing full well of how much I despised a popular form of emo ten years ago and wrote a lot about it on this here blog.) If I were to only abide by music critics, especially those from the 70s and 80s, and fear verbal stoning for disagreeing with them, I should not speak up. Especially wh...

Hosting a podcast has been something I've thought about for years. My uncle Keith suggested it about seven or eight years ago, but I didn't really know where to start or how I could maintain one. As the years passed, I kept finding new podcasts. When friends of mine started doing their own shows, the thought of doing one kept coming up in my head. Only in the past couple of years, I've recognized what I want to hear in a podcast and what I don't want to hear. I want to hear an engaging conversation between two people in the same room, not on a cell phone connection. I want the people to be in a quiet room, not frequently interrupted by dogs barking. And, I want to hear something that isn't too inside baseball, meaning too niche-oriented that you can't understand what the hell the people are talking about. With Santa Claus bringing me a laptop, two microphones, a quad box, and ProTools, I decided 2015 would be the year I did my own show. Two episodes in...