I listen to a lot of music. I keep a log of what I listen to. I know, I know, but really what can I say. It’s just who I am. I first starting keep a “log” of what I listened to in 1977. So, some 30 years later, I’ve decided to blog about what I’m listening to. Not every album, I don’t have time for that. I’ll blog about selected albums and/or artists. I don’t have any agenda as to what I’ll blog about and what I won’t, just depends on what I’m listening to and what strikes me as fun to write about. It’s not a blog for me to “review” albums in the normal sense of the word. What I’d rather do is tell you about these albums and how music they contain has influenced, changed and directed my life. Music is one of the most important things in my life. I couldn’t live without being able to listen to the music I love on a regular basis. Well, I guess I could, but I wouldn’t like it at all. It’s my refuge, my solace, my “shelter from the storm” (which also just happens to be the title of maybe my all time favorite Bob Dylan song). If there are such things as previous lives, I must have been a musician in one of them. This time round though I have no talent whatsoever for making music. It’s a sad irony.
There are stories to go with almost every album I love. I can tell you where I was when I first listened to it. I can usually tell you what store I bought it at or where I was working if I got it for free. Like the time I read a rave review of an album called Aquashow by some new artist, Elliott Murphy, in Rolling Stone. I was 18 and “living” (if you can call it that) in Paris at the time, staying in a cheap youth hostel for $1 per night, very lonely and very homesick. When I got back home I went to the local record store, a Licorice Pizza in Torrance, CA and asked for the album. Nope, they didn’t have it in stock right then. But, hey the clerk told me, they had this other album, The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle by another new guy named Bruce Springsteen that was really good as well, and in some ways similar to Aquashow. Nope, that review was just too damned good and I didn’t have a lot of money in those days, so I told him I’d just wait until they got Aquashow in. But more on that later.
Leave me some comments if you’re so inclined, I love talking about and discussing this music.
Steve Wilkison
Hi Steven ~ Happy Holidays 2010! It’s really great to see how far you have come with your website over the years. I come to visit a couple times each year (during the tour and around the end of the year) to read up on your music blog and see where you’ve been cycling. LOVE the photos. What camera are you using? You have a great talent for snapping some awesome images — quite spectacular. Here’s wishing you much peace and joy in the coming year. ~~ Alleen
PS: I’m no techy, so I thought you might like to know that I get an error message when I try to read (more) from your menus or blog this time around. (which was a total drag, because I was all primed – now I’ll have to go back to reading Jane Austen)
Hi Alleen:
OK, the new site is finally up now. The reason you got that error is because you were viewing the site when I was working on it and had actually made some of the new stuff live temporarily to check things out. Everything’s good now, you shouldn’t get any errors.