I embarrassed myself a few years ago. I said to one of my lady friends who has a beautiful wife that I had just heard of this person named Chappell Roan and her wonderful music. I asked her if she had heard it and she replied “Yes, I’m married to a woman.”. It was a good burn. But it does highlight something that I never thought would happen, I am so out of the loop when it comes to music.

I thought from her sound that Chappell Roan was a cool indie artist. I didn’t realize that she was a huge pop star that everyone knew about. I was trying to come up with songs for a rock playlist and couldn’t really come up with that many. I did the whole listening to a hundred albums thing last year but I don’t remember that many songs from it. When I listen to Spotify, I keep going back to old favorites instead of finding new things.

Maybe I’m not that bad off. But the fact of the matter is that new music doesn’t excite me the way that old music did. I think a big part of it is that that music hit me at exactly that moment when I needed it. I fell in love with it. I walked with it. I took it places with me. We had a relationship. Everything since then has been a one night stand. We did our business and we both moved on.

I don’t want it to be that way but I think I can change it by listening to more music. Maybe check out some articles on Spin or Rolling Stone about up and coming bands. It could just be that I have no connection to any of these bands. When Bright Eyes was putting out the bulk of his music, I read articles about him and I was like “Oh, he’s sad just like me!”

Now that I’m on the subject of music magazines, I want to talk about Blender. Sure it had the stink of its parent company, Maxim on it, but it was a good rag nonetheless. I had a subscription but then Blender got closed down and they finished my subscription with Maxim. This was infuriating for two reasons, one its porn lite that is just like “Oh you’re not brave enough to buy Playboy.” Secondly, Maxim is/was a terrible magazine. Just the worst misogyny. It was like I ordered sushi and the chef came out and hit me with a dead fish and poured soy sauce on my head. It’s the same sentiment but completely different delivery.