AN IMPORTANT REMINDER FROM HENRY ROLLINS

I don't always love Henry Rollins' music (although I do dig a lot of it), or his taste in music (but generally, I enjoy a lot of the same jams). But I am always interested to read what he writes, and listen to what he has to say. In fact, I think I probably read some of the stuff that he wrote (I think he wrote for Spin back in the day) before I heard his music. I have a lot of respect for the man, he is the real deal.

He writes a column for the LA Weekly, and this week's was particularly good.  It is all about "staying hungry" for new music, or at least music that is new to you.

"Now and then, you may have to endure someone who insists that new music is either bad, a repeat or somehow not worth investigating. It is new -- how could it possibly have any merit? This is, of course, a cop-out. New music is not boring; new music does not suck. At least not any more than it ever was or did. To be proprietary about an era of music and to dismiss that which came before or after your particular sonic comfort zone as mere filler is so completely off the mark."

A friend of mine (who is about half my age) kind of jabbed at this blog's credo - "Almost Absolutely None of the Hottest New Music." I kind of got that from a VH1 Classic t-shirt that I got when I worked there. But I hope no one thinks that I'm against new music. Until a few years ago, The Cocktail Slippers were "new" to me, ditto for The Drive-By Truckers. Muse, Elizabeth Cook, Jamey Johnson, and the list goes on and on. It's not that I don't like new music - I just stay away from the fray of blogs that are dying to be "first" at "discovering" a band, and then first to be "over" them. And yeah, I stick with mainly older stuff, but I figure that gives me some cred when I want to introduce something that may be new.  But I hope no one thinks that I'm not into hearing new music, nothing could be further from the truth.