Obsessed With You: One thousand Down

I got past the 1000 visitors mark last night. Not much, true but 47% are repeat visitors and for a blog my minutes per visitor is pretty high.

I initially called this blog “Singles Going Steady” (from the old Buzzcocks compiliation and the name of a column I wrote in the early 80s) and nearly went with “Innocent X” the ghost of which you can find in the painting above.

Writing about anything, like any form of observation, changes what is being observed and while what I dislike about writing music criticism is it forces me to judge stuff I would in many ways prefer not to judge, it also changes what the music means to me: how I feel about em.

For instance, I first saw G.I. Blues in 1960 and Blue Hawaii in 1961 but until I wrote about em I hadn’t noticed how the titles function as a single unit: G.I. Blues Hawaii. Also, his first album of new material after getting out of the army, “Elvis Is Back,” is the closest he ever got to a blues album.

But I have no overpowering reason to write this blog -a reader recently said it was “useless” and i tend to agree with him. I have no vision for the music business. All I have is opinions and sometimes poorly written opinions. And also, I have listened to a lot of music in my life so I have informed opinions.

As a pro in the 80s I was always interested in who read me and as a blogger in the 00s I still am. I figure I have maybe 40 regular readers,160 occassional readers, and 800 daytrippers. To them all I say thanks but especially my best reader Robert Nevin. My good pal since 1986, it was he who first recommended I wrote a blog, it was he who interviewed Ray Davies with me and saw Sleater Kinney at Central Park (and let’s not even mention the Blue Zone). Thanks Bobby.