Why Blog Again?
May 18th, 2010 by Blake
Why blog again? Why now? The short answer: David Mills made me do it.
The long answer… I’ve had a web site in some form continually since 1994, and I guess I blogged a bit before the word even existed. Then about five years ago, a new kind of blog appeared: a music blog with links to downloadable mp3s. Inspired by Soul Sides and a few other similar blogs, I started The Ten Thousand Things. It was quite exhilarating for a while, posting an extremely eclectic batch of music, digitizing my vinyl, getting into discussions about music with a group of loyal readers. At the peak, I was posting most days and thousands of people were reading and listening.
But then I got really busy. And the landscape of the Web changed. Mp3 blogs were a dime-a-dozen. My inbox was clogged with requests for old posts and mediocre pitches from indie labels. And the wars over drm and “piracy” heated up. It became less fun, and I realized I was running out of ideas. So the blog dried up for the most part.
Last year I started working as the music supervisor on Treme, and I thought about blogging again. Then one day at the end of an email exchange with David Mills, he said:
By the way, I recently discovered your blog. I digs, I digs! Downloaded the version of “St. James Infirmary” you cut with Davis. Hope you return to blogging at some point. I believe in it as a cultural happening.
David was a writer on Treme and The Wire, among many other extraordinary accomplishments, and he had a sensational blog called Undercover Black Man. So it meant something when he said that. A couple of weeks later he died suddenly on set from an aneurism.
So here we are. This will not be a blog about posting mp3s. I will not be sharing any spoilers or propriety information about Treme. And it is absolutely not a place for pitching music to me. But if you want to talk about New Orleans and the music, about the history, or about other things that the show brings up, let’s go.
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