First posted on Mark Is Cranky:

Hmmm...where did it start for me? Two answers: 1. A little over three years ago because of a radio essay on bloggers and 2. Back in 1976 or so in my bedroom in central Maine, the culprits being Creem Magazine and Lester Bangs.

Going way back first, it'll be no surprise to anybody who's read much of my stuff that my mind was fairly well polluted at an early age by way too many columns/rants from the pages of Creem magazine. I ingested each and every issue like it was food, always with a health dose of Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath and other rock delights playing loudly in the background. The writing of Lester Bangs exploded off of those pages. The man was just brilliant. Or nuts. After a while it dawned on me that brilliant and nuts, being a writerly sort of cliché, was a perfect description of Lester. He had a severe passion for music that just about dripped off of his reviews. Sometimes I wasn't quite sure what the hell he was talking about, but my 16 year old brain told me that anybody with that much passion was worth hanging onto. At the time, I had some writing aspirations of my own. In truth though, I was no good at it...so it was all fantasy.

A few years ago, while driving home from work, I heard a radio essay on an Internet phenomenon called "blogging". Just what I needed, more reading material! A little web-searching (Was it Google back then? Mighta been Altavista...) led me to sites like What's In Rebecca's Pocket and, in particular, Up Yours - And More Helpful Tips. The former was an interesting site, written by blogging pioneer Rebecca Blood. The latter was a cranky, sexy and funny rant put together by Dawn Olsen. Holy smokes, could Dawn give good potty mouth. More than once I had to hold back a spit-take at work (yea, of course I shoulda been workin'....what, you don't surf the web during the day? Liar!) Anyhoo, at some point or other, Dawn mentions this new site being put together called Blogcritics, anybody who has a blog (I did!) and knows what they're doing with words (I sorta did!?) can join up. I figure, what the hey, this was a chance to finally indulge my inner Lester.

I consider this indirect stumble into Blogcritics to be one of the best things that's happened to me in recent years. All those pent up thoughts about music, which I've been collecting for almost thirty years, now had a true outlet. And what a blast (and hard work!) it has been. At times, I find myself wondering why I didn't head in the direction of writing way back when. This is before the rational side of my brain reminds me: you couldn't write your way out of a paper bag back then! Uh...oh yea, almost forgot.