First Post.

This is the first post of my hopefully long running blog relating to music. I’m a recently graduated college student living in Orlando, Florida right now. I was an English Lit student and hoped to get a teaching job out of college, but after substitute teaching for a while and applying for a few full time positions I realized I didn’t want to teach. I really only know a lot about a few things…drums, records, music, and literature. So, I figure with the knowledge that I have of the above I should be able to make happy living writing or doing something related to music. I think my ideal job would be scoring films and choosing the music for their soundtracks.

I do a lot of thrift shopping for records because I don’t really have very much money to spend on record store or ebay prices. When I do have the time and money to watch an ebay auction I really do prefer buying things that way. I feel it’s more convenient and I don’t have to dig through 300 dirty and moldy classical and Christian records to find what I want. I also like seeing what other people are interested in and if they bid on the records I do. However, I do like finding a good chunk of records at a thrift store for a quarter a piece. I’ve learned to be pretty patient. I know I’m not gonna find a Beatles Butcher Block, Skull Snaps, or Rickey Calloway all of the time, but sometimes I find pretty good stuff just being patient and going through everything. Some of the things I’ve found lately are the Question Mark and the Mysterians full length, “Groove Grease” by Jimmy Mcgriff, a few Lee Dorsey records and a Mickey and the Soul Generation funk 45.

Anyway, The majority of this blog may just be about records I find at thrift stores, or records that I’ve been playing a lot lately at the house. Some days I just wake up and there is a specific record that I want to hear right away. The other day I got up and the instant I stood up I wanted to hear 7 and 7 by Love. You know when you get in a certain mood and start playing records of one genre you just want to play them all? Well, I just started playing all of the 60’s psychedelic stuff that I had and then I got into garage records and all kinds of different things out and then by the end of my frenzy I had about 20 records scattered all around my turntable.

I listen to almost every genre. I grew up listening to classic rock and oldies with my parents. My aunt occasionally would play drums along to some of the Motown classics, but other than that I mostly grew up on classic rock. When I was a teenager I became heavily involved in the punk rock scene and I also began listening to classic 90’s hip hop like Gang Star, Common Sense, Tribe and others. Most of the hip hop I heard was in skateboarding videos and things like that. Of course, when I came to college I became interested in listening to and collecting just about every genre especially funk, soul, hip hop, jazz, indie rock, and in the last few years roots reggae. This blog will be pretty well rounded in terms of what music I choose to write about. Some of the artists will be contemporary and some will be a little bit older. I feel like there are very few contemporary artists worth writing about so if there is someone on here who is newer odds are they are someone I feel still produces genuine, sincere, thought provoking music.

So we’ll see how this blog goes, I hope to have a decent amount of people reading it. I also hope that I can turn people onto new music. I think that introducing music into people’s lives or having new music introduced into your own is totally refreshing, especially if you get turned onto a completely new genre, record label or sound. I am completely open to all sorts of opinions and will take criticisms and responses seriously. I realize I don’t know everything about music and I love learning about music just as much as I like teaching people about it. I hope that this becomes a blog that you frequent and tell your friends and family about. I especially hope that you enjoy learning about the music that I love and want to share with you.
Zach Callahan.