"To begin with, everything"

Where to begin where to begin… I’ve wanted to do this for so long (yes, I procrastinate), and it is always hard to get started, so I’ll take the easy way out and do a basic Q&A… with myself.



Why am I doing this?
Music is my life. No, not really, but I just love listening to music. Music makes so many things better – falling asleep, driving, working out, doing nothing, partying, what have you. I also love sharing music, and without getting too deep – music brings a lot of different people together. So I guess this is my way of sharing and hopefully finding out about new music.

On the other hand, I’m mostly doing this as a personal diary to find out what I’m listening to as the days go by (“let the water hold me down”). I don’t really have an updated itunes, I don’t own an ipod (shocking) and I don’t think I even own that many cds (people still listen to those!)… but my boy jstreet (we’ll introduce friends another time) thinks it makes me unique, since everything I listen to streams from the internets. Yeah, we’ll get into how I listen to music in another entry. Since I talk about music with friends a lot, and listen to whatever I look up on the internet at the time, I feel like I need a running compilation of what I listen to over time. It might help me remember if I’ve heard an artist, who I’ve seen in the past (I’ve always wanted to write down the list of all the artists I’ve seen), and maybe just remember what I like listening to – I mean sometimes I just hop from artist to artist, and then I lose track of those moments I had completely immersed in a good song/artist. Too deep? Yeah, I’m not good at that.

What music do I like?
I take that quote from Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous” – the question is finally asked to Russell – what do you like about music? Answer – “well, to begin with, everything.” When I was younger, I hated when people answered the “what do music do you like” with “everything.” I thought it was a cop-out, and it personally offended me. How could someone like country?

It all started when my mom bought me an Elvis cd when I was very young, and then I bought my own Kriss Kross cd, and the rest is history? Haha. Looking back – I’ve gotten a lot of influences, and maybe I should keep this part short since I could probably write a few entries on this (maybe some of them could be interesting and well-written?). So yeah I progressed, with the influences of my friends, parents and my own musical curiosity, through many different music styles that I appreciate still today. Yes, I call Dave Brubeck one of my favorite artists of all-time and can listen to his and other musician’s jazz music with my mom, but I can also claim to be a hip-hop head, or someone who used to only listen to classic rock for a year. I’m all over the place. I love Damian Marley. Yes, I listened to country music at one point in my life (heartache, drinking, having fun with friends – what else can I say), and then continued listening to it randomly (and yes, some friends from home love going to country shows and in the summer of 2008 I went to a country concert with them).

Ok ok, so basically what I’m getting at is that I love different types of music, and yes, I’m eating my words from when I was a young fool that I like “everything.” We’ll get into this in some later entries, this is already getting too long!

Why “Hearing Jimi”?
This is your (this is me pretending like I have readers when I know I just started writing) chance to guess! I’ll reveal it at another time (read: it isn’t a good story).

What can you expect from me?
Sometimes, I ramble incoherently and for that, bear with me, some good might come out of it.

Most of the time, you won’t get some overly complicated analysis of an artist/song or deep thoughts about the meaning of music or life, but who really knows where this will take me? I might be all over the place, but I definitely hope to include a song with each post, and maybe say why I like the song/artist. It will be a growing process, nothing crazy, and if you’ve made it this far, congratulations. I've got a lot of great ideas, and I'm just learning the ins and outs of the formatting and special features of blogging. This layout will improve over time. I feel like I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and in no way will I try to be “that guy” who tries blow anyone’s mind with new artists that people haven’t heard and say how much I know more about music than everyone else – that isn’t me. Most of the music I get into, I stumble upon or some good friend passes it along. In any case, there are so many artists I would like to share with my blog, and I’m just going to go ahead and get started…

First song I will post…
is a band doing great things right now, their new album came out a while ago and have found a huge surge in mainstream popularity in the States to the point that most car commercials (ok, not most) have their songs! I just got pre-sale tickets to one of their shows finally for April (a birthday present to myself?) and I’m pretty excited, I heard they are awesome live. I feel like these guys are a band that ANYONE can listen to and appreciate (and too many people remix). The songs are well put together and they have a mature and complete sound where everything fits – I almost don’t even care to pay attention to the lyrics because Thomas Mars’ voice is so lovely you could have him sing anything and it would be great. If you do take the time to listen to the lyrics you’ll realize his words try to get across serious themes of love and life in the context of uncomplicated, clear and meaningful interactions and relationships. Sorry for my attempt at “being deep.” Yes, I’m of course talking about those French dudes, Phoenix, who rightfully won a Grammy in December for their latest album “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix”

how can you not love all of their songs?
1901
Girlfriend
Love is like a sunset
Rome
Lizstomania

Ok, I could go on and on… I recommend listening to all of their songs from this album if you haven’t already. These songs are so listenable in any situation, they are fun, emotionally meaningful and complete… and I don’t know why I’m writing this, but these songs “make sense.”