My buddy Mike and I met in college. He's a musician. We met in college, he was one of a handful of folks whose intellectualism marvelled and intimidated me, and later, whose artistic sense inspired and provoked me.
Mike and I worked together this summer on some creative ideas that may or may not manifest in time to come. In the meantime, he started this super cool project that I think all music lovers need to check out. A Decade of Music is Mike's blog, and invitation to anyone to create(from his first blogpost)a mix of music created from 2000 - 2009 that influenced you as an artist, if you're an artist, or that you just loved the fuck out of, if you're a geologist or something awesome like that. It should be in chronological order but from your perspective (ie. If you suddenly discovered Kid A in 2008, you should place is thusly in the mix, as opposed to placing in the year it was released, whenever that was... everyone knows Radiohead is a pretty silly band without much of a future).
Totally, totally check this blog out. Especially if you're a music-lover, or even just a mildly music-interested geologist or something.
Now look, I love this. What's always cracked me up about that crew from college is how compared to them I came ass-end in to things, foraging the world a bit before college and only coming in to myself, my intellectualism and creativity, towards the end. It's my identity as an intellectual and artist that I've always struggled with, that I've spent the years of college, and after, trying to integrate. The things of the world outside always came easy to me, natural. These pals, their smarts came easy and were never questioned. It was the world that, post-college, challenged them to enlist their creativity in order to associate. So of course their music is smart, eclectic, emotional, hugely ranging.
For facebook I recently put together a list of artists that inspired and changed me through out my teens. For the better part of the 2000's I wasn't taking much new music in. Mike's blog made me realize my illiteracy in this area--the last decade of music. It delights me to see the variety on his blog, makes me realize the great accessibility of the Internet and what this era has done for art. At first I was quick to jump on board with the claim that the great milieu of info and variety out there really only made for a flood of crap, no way to find the great stuff. But I realize now that new standards are cut precisely when a playing field gets leveled.
I think people talented as Mike are the ones who will cut those new prototypes.
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