Now listening to: an iTunes/Genius playlist based on the song "Bulletproof" by La Roux.
Most recent album bought: 'La Roux' by La Roux
Someone told me that if I wanted to get a job in the music industry, I should start with being on a street team for a radio station, and in order to do that, it would be a good idea to have a blog that focuses on music. I guess that makes this the beginning of the beginning. Today seems like as good a day as any to start. I'm on day two of creating an inventory of my CD collection. I'm in the initial stage in which I am simply writing down the artist, album, record label, year, and physical condition of every CD, which I sort loosely according to genre (alternative, indie/folk, pop/hip-hop, punk/pop-punk, and compilations). Within genres, CD's are organized alphabetically by artist, and if I have more than one album for a given artist, those albums are sorted chronologically. Over-zealous? Yes. Complicated? No. Contributing to my phobia of getting carpel tunnel? Most definitely.
So, since this is a blog and I am, to use the technical term, the blogger, let me be polite and introduce myself. My name is Mercedes. I go to college in Boston for marketing and writing. I don't download or steel music. I believe there is still a pure experience to be found in going into a music store and buying a CD, especially a used CD which has some character, seeing the album art, and having an actual object to keep from it. I myself am not much of an artist or musician. I have played guitar since I was 8 and some piano since I was 16, but countless music lessons and classes and minimal amounts of practice have told me that I'm no Mozart...or Haley Williams, Lacey Mosley, Imogen Heap, etc. My dream is to do any from of music promotion or marketing. Yes, I know that would make me the one who gobbles up artists for money and the one artists beat the money back out of. There are worse people out there.
I didn't really discover music until I was 11. I was raised--and home-schooled until high school--in a Catholic home in which we pretty much only listened to gospel music and hymns and Christian radio (which is largely just white girls singing gospel in watery voices over pop music). Don't get me wrong--there is some good Christian music. I own a Lifehouse album. I like Newsboys and Steven Curtis Chapman and Relient K as much as the next gal. My first concert ever was actually Christian rock group Skillet. But the problem with Christian music is that it can get a tad uptight and restricted. There are artists who can appreciate their faith and there are artists who are afraid to sing about anything else. And then there is the Eric Cartman approach from "South Park" of selling out to a crowd who won't illegally download because it's against their religion. I've learned to differentiate.
But to get back on point: at 11, I discovered WCYY, the local rock station back in southern Maine, and I fell in love. I heard sounds I'd never imagined. Every night, I locked myself in my room, turned the radio on low, and literally pressed my ear to the speaker to listen to the music that previously hadn't really existed in the house. This went on for months until I got up the courage to ask my mom if I could go buy a Linkin Park album, to which she, of course, said yes. Silly, paranoid me. Soon I had it: "Meteora," Linkin Park's third studio album, released in 2003 on the Warner Bros. label. I bought it at Wal-Mart, of all places. It still plays. Thus non-Christian music was brought into my home. I said, "Let there be rock!" And I saw that it was good.
That concludes the genesis chapter of my musical history. I have to get back to my inventory. I stopped in the middle of my 10-album Death Cab for Cutie discography. My next post will probably just be the inventory, or some basic version thereof. It's a cop-out, I know.
Until next time, then--as they say: sing like you think no one's listening...because trust me, they're not.
Sincerely,
Mercantile
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