Welcome to the first of many diverse and diffuse posts! Here is your host, Matt Keefer, small-time music critic and generally unimportant person. Those of you who’ve checked out the MySpace site know that I do brief (very brief) reviews of two albums that hit my fancy. I’m taking out 4-28’s review to introduce you to myself (and to save a few bucks; I just bought a new bike):
I’m currently freelancing for the Mercury. Hopefully I’ll land some PT or even FT gig elsewhere, hopefully in the wide field of music critique.
I’ve been called a music snob on several occasions. 50s-60s jazz and plenty of the 60s classic pop-rock albums do me just well, though I’m always on the hunt for something that makes me go, “Huh. Didn’t see that coming.”
I have several weekly adventures of my own. Just the other day, I ran out of socks and had to clean my old wash. I believe I also had to pump gas into my car once.
If you were unaware, Bob Dylan released another album this past Tuesday. I didn’t get time to listen to it, but I’d preemptively say that it’s fantastic, classic Dylan. That it’s better than his 80s output, and it challenges, but is not quite up to par with, his old 60s originals. That it’s one to sink your teeth into.
Actually, I personally have nothing against Dylan, but I don’t find myself spinning him up all that often. I hear he’s classic, and I naturally appreciate classics, but for some reason he just doesn’t connect with me all that much. Maybe it’s his straggling voice, or his never-ending phrases; maybe it’s because he’s a werewolf. I don’t know, but I gather that Alice Sebold (if memory serves me right) had the right sense of a Dylan fan: that they’re an entire sub-breed of human beings on their own.
Like the Beatles vs. Elvis question, I suppose (though who’d ever say they didn’t like “Baby You’re a Rich Man”?). It’s easy to categorize the kind of person you imagine someone to be based on what you know of their likes, their taste in clothing and music (“Ah, so he’s an Abercrombie and Fitch guy…”) than to sit down and puzzle what the person’s like. I think if you got down to it and really tried to figure out the “stereotypical” Dylan or Elvis or Insane Clown Posse kind of person, you probably wouldn’t see why owning a Mercedes would make someone all that different from you.
This goes out to the record store guy eyeing me a couple weeks ago: so I appreciate Lizz Wright’s vocals. Don’t read into it too much.