Thursday, April 10, 2008

Come in. Sit down.

Thus commences "Becoming a mirror," my personal music blog.
Where to begin?
I cannot pinpoint when I first got turned on to music. My father raised me on the best of the best (and also some of the most eclectic and strange of the strange). His generation had such revolutionary musical breakthroughs. To begin listing them would be a waste of time and energy, suffice it to say that these musicians helped defined the generation that was.
My dad tells me the story of when I was really young and helping him with some menial task around the house. He put on Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" and after a couple plays (it's a relatively short album, if you didn't know), I look up at him and tell him that I really his music and that Marvin Gaye is really good. I still do hold "What's Going On" as one of the best and most cohesive albums I've heard. But by no means are my musical likes limited to the R&B/soul field by any means.
I am a rock and roller, through and through. I definitely love a quality and talented jam band. I like progressive music, instrumental epics, post-alt, folk, and anyone who can put a thought, idea, or story into words that capture it and lay the lyrics on a backdrop of beauty and leads the listener on a journey.
I do not have any credentials to write this blog at all other than the fact that I love music.
And, it's a strange thing, too, that a particular pattern of notes and noises can influence emotion so much, how songs just latch into your psyche and do not let go, how your life can revolve around an anthem, some lyrics that you feel define you in some way. It is really just air vibrations and waves that make a thin layer of tissue in your ears buzz in a pattern ever so slightly different than any other noise.
And these seemingly simple vibrations have given us the vast array of audio that we have ever experienced, from the mundane (a dog barking), to the annoying (a finger rubbing on a balloon), to the moving and lush musicianship of the great classical composers such as Bach,
Vivaldi, and Beethoven up to the bands we enjoy today.
I suppose that is enough of an introduction for now. Each post, I will show you a slice of what I've been listening to, what has been getting me through my days in this life. Maybe a concert review after a show every now and then. We will see where this goes.
(By the way, today, I was enjoying "In Between Now and Then" by the local jam-rock outfit, O.A.R. Unless you've been living under a rock, you have heard of these Marylanders. I highly recommend this album, one of their best in my opinion. They will be playing a FREE acoustic set on April 20th on the National Mall for the Green Apple Festival. Check it out!)

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