WHAT IS THIS "TWANG"?

Okay, I will tell you. I called it quits just last month, September 2006, with a music-only blog called Agony Shorthand that I'd nurtured like a young suckling lamb for over 3 years. I reckoned I'd probably start something up again in fairly short order focusing on "the written word", 'cuz that's just how I roll. I wasn't sure if I'd be unveiling my long-schemed "political rant blog", my "amateur film scholar" blog, my "militant atheist" blog, or just some total redux of the thing I'd done previously - a buncha blah blah blah about my record collection. So I decided it made sense to do it all, and a little more too.

Implicit in all this is the cleared-eyed realization that, on "the Internet", when you specialize, you tend to bring in targeted, dedicated traffic, and a lot more of it than when you generalize. I know I personally have found blogs that recount the day's events and the passing fancy of the moment to be beyond boring. This'll only have a little bit of that. No, my goal here is simply to have a repository for stuff I want to write about, which could take any form but will likely be centered on culture, the arts, societal stuff - but not my family, my breakfast or my navel. With Agony Shorthand I sort of hamstrung myself into a bind in which any given film or book review would've stuck out like a sore thumb, but there were times when I just wanted to tell you about it so goddamn much that I had to instead place my rant into a special place deep within my belly, where it would fester and grow tumors. I didn't enjoy that, so here's DETAILED TWANG.

"Detailed Twang", by the way, is the name of a record by the crude British uber-D.I.Y. band THE DOOR AND THE WINDOW. That's your (and my) first clue that this blog will probably continue to feature its fair share of music writing. The rut I got into with my last one was setting the self-perpetuating expectation that content would be updated nearly every day, which to my chagrin & sometime frustration, I pushed myself to do in spite of having, like you, a real life away from the computer. I can say now that that won't be the case here, but who the hell knows. I might post some music here, maybe a video or two, might even put some digital coupons on the site so you can go shopping later. I hope you enjoy the good times here, and come back to see us next Monday, when the party really gets rolling.