I love music.

I write about the music I like and have purchased for the benefit of better understanding it and sharing my preferences with others.

Finding Music in NYC

Empire State I visited New York on a whim over Christmas. We chose excellent weather (it didn't rain, despite the forecast until this afternoon, when we had already left). And I captured this shot on top of the Empire State Building. I used Snapseed on my iPad to edit the shot; I love the effect that is created and the feeling. You can see the statue of Liberty in the distance. But I was ultimately disappointed with the lack of a really good classical shop. At least I was fruitless in finding one. I traveled to Academy Music to browse their used collection; there might have been a couple finds, but despite gravitating towards the "pre-classical" selection of what was almost 100% used stock, the employee wouldn't get out of my way to let me browse. I wasn't about to stand around her like a derelict trying to see what they had there… I guess in the U.S. the CD shop is really dying out. I enjoyed my trip to Amoeba in California in the past several years. But despite buying digital music and ordering for years from Amazon, I still like to think I could find a nice little classical shop to browse in. (The used aspect of their collection didn't bother me.) I remember the romantic notion (was it from a movie?) of looking around in the Bs (for Bach and Biber, of course) and bumping into a cute person looking from the opposite direction. (I used to start in the As and work alphabetically.) Now, without good shops, you'll never physically bump into someone with your shared interest. That aspect of buying music in a real store and carrying out real media probably bothers me the most - the nostalgia of some movie I've long since forgotten. Anyhow, we did see Chris Botti in concert at the Blue Note. I only own his one "December" album but I enjoyed the concert nevertheless of him not being my all time favorite. His fellow musicians (among them Billy Killson on drums) were outstanding too. He was the biggest name I could find performing in our short planning for the trip.

Da Plane!

The Goat Rodeo Sessions