If anyone reads my blog regulary you will know that a couple of months ago I was ready to close it. This was due to me being unable to write on more regular basis. Work, home, hobbies etc., you know how it is. I received some encouraing replies mostly saying that regularity is not the issuue, it's just that you continue to do it. So I did.
But a few days ago I almost closed it again due to a powerful and somewhat overwhelming book just published in the UK: The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture and Assaulting our Economy by Andrew Keen.
It tells of the impact of Web 2.0 [2nd generation of the internet/web by means of broadband] which is bassically the oncoming death of the music industry, world of media etc. Stuff that we sort of already know but he does back it all up with facts and numbers.
He is quite vitriolic about blogging and bloggers and how the vast majority of them are boring, propganda or marketing vehicles for companies. He is right in many ways and my own crisis of content on my own blog was based on this. But now, several days after finishing the book, it has galvanised me to continue.
This is because I care passionately about music, it's history, it's writers and artists, in fact everything about it. I am accutely aware in this world of 'lists', 'charts' and 'bestsellers' that the dumbing down process offers less rather than more. It also does not encourage exploration into anything other than chart music.
At the hospital radio station I volunteer at, we get so many young people join who have no more musical memory other than the 80's. many come back from collecting requests on the wards asking; 'who is Frank Sinatra' or 'Ella Fitzerald'? And so in some small way I wish to open up the world of music to whomever stumbles onto my blog.
I will keep going, in fact I have gone Pro now and actually pay for my blog. I am not on some evangelical mission. I simply want there to be spaces out on the ether that tells of the glorious music and it's heritage there is available in the world, either by ordering via the net on Amazon, going into a huge chain group and asking for it or downloading it from the web.
To quote Robert Crumb: I'll keep 'Truckin On'.
bobski77
I used to work with quite a few young people and they used to look at me funny when I mentioned certain bands. hopefully or unfortunately (which ever way you look at it) my three children have had to listen to my different tastes in music, so they do have a varied knowledge of music.