One of the jobs I had when I was in college was working as a refiling clerk at the local public library. This allowed me to become familiar with the Dewey Decimal System, where certain subjects fell within that system, and also exposed me to a bunch of music I might not have otherwise heard. …
There are only two shows that I remember watching with any consistency on PBS, Sesame Street and Austin City Limits. Sesame Street had its fair share of good songs. Don’t get me wrong. But Austin City Limits had even more. The earliest performance I can remember seeing on Austin City Limits was by Stevie Ray …
In first getting to know my sister from another mister, Angelica, we talked about music a lot. In doing so, I learned that one of her favorite artists of all-time was Otis Redding. Though I knew Otis Redding and had heard the song “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” many, many times, I was …
Coming across the Sam Samudio album Sam, Hard And Heavy was another moment of happenstance and education. I got a request to work on the album about five or six years ago, but neither the artist nor the title rang a bell. When I got things rolling, I started to get into the record from …
Yesterday morning was a moment of elation for me. Just last week I was talking about how you might have a lyric in your head, not know the song, but can use the power of technology to help you figure it out. On Sunday, I was thinking about an artist but only had one particular …
I got a chance to watch a lot of my hometown sports teams play during the Thanksgiving holiday and subsequent weekend. Unfortunately, most of the games did not provide the kind of outcome I was hoping for. The Lions lost again. My Pistons lost twice, one of which I at least got to see in …
There were a lot of musical styles that got significant airplay in the ’90s, but one that seemed to have a big influence on all genres was electronic music. Drum and bass, jungle, and trip-hop were gaining in popularity, and straight-ahead rock bands, like Radiohead and The Smashing Pumpkins for example, released albums that incorporated …
The Kinks are another one of those bands that I’ve known about for a long time, but I really didn’t know any of their catalog beyond “You Really Got Me” until I started working at my current job. Through the work, however, I became much more familiar with their tunes, particularly the stuff off of …
My mom used to shop at Big Lots when I was a kid. I would usually poke around the toy and music sections while she went around and grabbed her stuff. One time, I came across a cheap Black Sabbath compilation CD called We Sold Our Souls For Rock ‘N’ Roll – Vol. II, which …
The amount of information at everyone’s fingertips these days still blows my mind sometimes. Before the Internet, if you had a song in your head but didn’t know the song title or artist, it might be a rather long time before you actually figured out what it was called or who did it. Now, if …