Wanted to do something different today. It’s my birthday, and I already built a playlist last week celebrating a bunch of great music that came out during the year of my birth. But the music of 1973 isn’t what made me into who I am now – that’s an ever-growing, ever-evolving store of musical moments and memories. And so I wanted to make another playlist, of the songs that inspired me, moved, me, marked significant moments of my life.
Continue reading “52 Reasons Why”
So much for a fresh clean start to 2025. Fires are rampaging all across Los Angeles, devastating families and friends, so if you’re one of the few people who check out this blog (thanks, BTW!) affected by that, my heart goes out to you. I’m still getting over a linger case of pneumonia, about the only thing I’ve been able to focus on besides YouTube shorts is the plethora of new music that’s come in over the last month. It’s almost stupidly massive, exacerbated by the holidays, so I guess it’s time for yet another round of “What’s come into my house” for (Un)Focused Definition. Let’s get to it.
Continue reading “(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 32: Holiday Acquisitions”
I wish I could go back and change the past.
Not the big moments, not the world-changing events. But those smaller regrets, behaviors and actions that still sting when they rise unbidden in my head. I travel back in my mind, re-arranging conversations and finding that no matter what I do, the shame and guilt remain. I’m sure we all doing the same thing, but recent events have me falling back more, especially when it’s the middle of the night and all I want is escape through sleep. So for this edition of (Un)Focused Definition I went back to 1990-1991, recalling the treasured mix tapes my high school friends would make that colored so much of my life, both the incredible moments and some of the more sour. For better or for worse, let’s jump into a wide array of tunes that shaped 17-year old me.
Continue reading “(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 3: Reconstructing the Past”
Day 6 of the #mayvinylchallenge asks for records that go together, whether on a mixtape or just complement each other. This one may need a revisit down the road, because how do you talk about one of your favorite albums of all time, especially an album as acclaimed and steeped in mythology as Blood On The Tracks, the fifteenth album by Bob Dylan without resorting to cliché and hyperbole? What can you say that hasn’t already been said? Probably nothing, so rather than try I’ll make this one brief and talk about the impressions going through my mind as I take another listen to an album I’ll never get tired listening to.
Continue reading “Bob Dylan: Blood On The Tracks (1975)”
Consuming the Tangible 