Happy New Year! I hope all three of you had a wonderful holiday season. As you can tell, I treated myself to an extended break from blogging, and now I feel re-energized and ready to get back into the swing of things. This year I am introducing a new column: Sounds From The Cave. Let me explain.Recently, I decided to create a personal space in the basement of my house where I could indulge in all of my manly obsessions. Many people call this modern phenomenon a "man cave," and I will refer to it as such from now on. But whereas most guys use their man caves to watch sports, play video games, and drink beer, I will be using mine to listen to records. I have a large collection of indie rock LP's from the 80's and 90's, all of which have been neglected for several years. Well, I just dusted off my turntable and now I'm ready to rock. The side-effect of this is that I will be writing about various albums in my collection, and each post will focus on one record that I consider to be noteworthy in some way. If this sounds like an idea I ripped off from Mad City or Quest For Manuka...well, it is. The difference is that each album I discuss will be out of print. What's the point of this, you ask? Well, I realized that some of my favorite albums have been virtually forgotten in this modern age of mp3's and iTunes. And that's a shame. These records are like hidden treasures, or as my wife cleverly called them, "Concords in the rough". My goal is to give these albums the credit they are due. Any idiot can go over to Pitchfork.com and learn about all the cool, new bands out there. But today's music listeners are being deprived of hearing some of the great, lost sounds from the pre-internet days of indie rock. Sure, you won't be able to find these albums on Amazon.com, but if you're motivated enough you can track them down in your local used record store. Stay tuned, dear readers, your ears are in for a treat!
