Friday, September 15, 2006

My First Post

In the last year I discovered music blogs. It started with Brooklyn Vegan and spread as I clicked through the list of blogs that he referenced. Gorilla vs. Bear, Stereogum, My Old Kentucky Blog, Aquarian Drunkard, Fluxblog, Large Hearted Boy, Rich Girls Are Weeping and on and on. I wasn't that busy at work this summer, and I also don't sleep much, so I got to spend a lot of time reading blogs and downloading mp3's.
I think the thing that I like best about the blogs I read, and the editors and writers of those blogs, is that they exhibit the same kind of passion for the music that the writers at Creem and Fusion and Crawdaddy and NY Rocker and Trouser Press, and other magazines from the 70's. And the passion that my friends and I had. We were in bands, we worked in record stores, we haunted other record stores, we'd sit around each other's stereos and play music at each other. Reading all these blogs was like being with my friends, talking about and listening to music.
I have a couple of goals for Be Hear Be Now. One is to pass along stuff I hear that I really like. Another is to offer a forum for friends of mine who care as much about music as I do, but may have different tastes or interests or simply a different point of view. And finally I hope to write a series of sketches that I'm calling my rock and roll autobiography. Over the years my love of music has caused me to run into one experience or another, in a Forrest Gump sort of way, that I think might be interesting to share. The first one is actually something I posted on MySpace last month after Arthur Lee died.