Thursday , March 28 2024
Getting to know music all over again for the first time.

Welcome to “Harmony In My Headphones”

As much as I might like to think I know about music there are always going to be 999 things I do not know to every one thing I do know. In the face of such knowledge, of course, one can only accept the truth and then move forward and try to even up the odds. That’s where this column (hopefully) fits in.

Whatever the genre and whatever the era it might have been recorded, at 39 years of age I am setting myself out on a quest to learn. I want to listen to — no, not just listen to, but truly hear — as many albums by as many artists as I can. And then, I want to write about it so that I can look back and have a keepsake of permanence against the slipshod thing that is my memory.

Helping me to increase my knowledge will be the fine folks at our local record store (who have also graciously offered to decrease the weight of my wallet at the same time) which will ultimately be something they regret. Gone soon will be their eager offers of assistance when they realize “Oh dear Lord, it’s him again!” as I drop in day after day after day during my lunch break in search of just one more album to listen to, just one more album to discuss in newsprint.

At the moment I’m listening to a nice helping of punk rock from the 1970s (in particular a great little band I’d never heard of before a few weeks ago called X-Ray SPex) but I’m also listening to the new Kanye (good, but really I’d heard most of it as he’d released about 9 of the songs for free in his GOODFriday downloads on his website as he was recording the album) as well as the new Aaron Neville, Springsteen, Jimi Hendrix, and Nicki Minaj albums.

If I can get my headphones strapped on tight and my head wrapped around all this music, I should have plenty to write about… which excites me. Hopefully the idea of having someone write a little bit about music in these pages excites you too. The whole thing is about learning and I can’t think of a better way to learn than to have this be a two-way street kind of a thing.

Please feel free to suggest an artist or an album that you think has something to offer that might lead me on another stepping stone on my journey. In return I promise to always listen with an open ear and mind. Always.

About Michael Jones

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