Howdy.

I’ve never written for a blog before, and my journaling habits are disjointed and inconsistent to say the least, so I’m not sure how this is going to go or where to even start. I already gave myself a little introduction on my About page, so I figured I would use this blog to just write about some things I’m interested in, share some inspiring quotes from my favorite writers, or ask existential questions to life’s biggest mysteries.

So, what am I interested in? Well, music has been a part of my life as far back as I can remember - I was basically using drinking straws as drumsticks before I could talk. My father was a drummer in the Philadelphia area during the late 70s and 80s whose heroes included rock legends like John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, Neil Peart of Rush, and Keith Moon of The Who. Naturally, he passed on his love for music and drumming on to me. Outside of rock music, which included the classic, progressive, and stadium variants, my father introduced me to grunge, new wave, ska, punk, jazz, and the occasional pop tune. On the many long, weekly drives to various hockey practices, games, and tournaments, we would listen to different mixtapes and latest releases on “burnt” CDs using MP3s that we pirated off of Napster or LimeWire. I remember sitting on our family computer in the basement of my childhood home, surrounded by hundreds of CDs, cassette tapes, and vinyl records neatly organized in spinning racks and on cubed shelves, downloading misspelled and misnamed versions of classic hits and new chart toppers to start building my own digital collection of music.

Though most of my youth was consumed with travel ice hockey, playing in quarterly tournaments all over the United States and Canada in places like New York City, Boston, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, and down to Florida plus regional trips throughout the Mid-Atlantic every other weekend, music was the one thing that I had with me at all times everywhere I went - thanks to my trusty Sony Walkman CD player and Sandisk MP3 player. My tastes were all over the place, from the classic rock my father introduced me to to popular 90s bands like Third Eye Blind, Goo Goo Dolls, Matchbox 20, Live, and Smashing Pumpkins. Much to my father’s dismay, I went through a boy band phase like every other 90s kid where I listened to nothing but Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, and LFO, though this was pretty short-lived. Predictably, my later teenage years were spent discovering music with a little more angst - I grew very fond of bands like Anberlin, Dashboard Confessional, Jimmy Eat World, Jack’s Mannequin, The Maine, and Death Cab For Cutie, which I was mostly introduced to by my older sister.

At some point, I realized that I was listening to a lot music that my friends, girlfriends, and teammates weren’t interested in - it was too abstract and different for them, so I started exploring genres that were becoming increasingly popular at the time in the late 2000s to fit with my social group a little better, like country, reggae, and rap. It was around this time I also started smoking weed and getting drunk on occasion with my friends and my sister’s crew, which I felt really cool around because I was a couple years younger than most of them. We were getting inebriated in the way underage kids do, listening to a lot of Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, and Toby Keith on the country front, as well as up-and-coming reggae bands like O.A.R., Slightly Stoopid, and Iration. I would be remiss if I did not mention the plethora of pop rap and R&B that we consumed, consisting of Kanye West, Eminem, Nelly, Outkast, and Chris Brown.

Decades later, I’m transported to another place and time when I hear the opening note or lyric to some of these songs. This music not only served as the soundtrack to my childhood and young adulthood, but it now serves as a time machine, bringing back vivid memories that are often buried deep in my mind but resurface every now and then like a long lost friend stopping by to say hello and remind me of where I came from and who I am.