Three Years Old and Rising - Things I've Learned

I'm proud of reaching this small, personal milestone, and am now looking towards five as the next, immediate one. Here are a few things I've picked up along the way.

1. Write often. I started with the idea of reviewing albums that I loved but it all became too unwieldy. Now I make sure I post something every day and it feels like it has a more natural flow.

2. You'll never get to the bottom of music or stop discovering things that you love. Writing this, and searching for things to post has broadened my taste incredibly and taken me away from falling back always on the stuff I first loved in my formative decade of the eighties.

3. Do it for yourself. I don't advertise the blog much and get little support apart from a select few who post on here. It is what it is. I like doing it so I'll carry on because it's achieved a natural, habitual momentum of its own.

4. Do what you want, make it your own thing. Personal music blogs are a space where there are no rules and you can set your own. They're a small, wonderful gift to the trainspotters among us.

5. If you're going to write at length, write about what you know. I've realised through this for example that I don't really write very well about Black music, much as I love it.

6. Try not to be pretentious. I'm not quite sure what that is always, but I try not to be. Don't pretend your a music journalist. Try to write from the heart. All of these are vague maxims but I at least think I know what I mean.

7. The importance of memory in all this Coming upon that Nick Cave quote that's the tagline at the top of the page was a small turning point for me. It's quite remarkable and slightly indescribable what hearing a song or record that was important to you in the past will do to you. 

8. Focus on what you like if you can. Seeing the line up of Glastonbury this year and checking things I wasn't aware of the other day, brought me to the realisation of exactly what an enormous ocean of quite meaningless, bland, mainstream bilge there is out there. Just an opinion! Best to not worry about it and concentrate on what you do appreciate as there is still more than plenty.

9. Set yourself manageable targets that mean you will think about things and subsequently write more. I do this myself via finite and non-finite related series.

10. Keep posting!