Banal Stories #6: Things Would Never Be Better

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When I bought Paul Westerberg’s 14 Songs in 1993, I hadn’t heard of the Replacements. No, instead I was doing what I did fairly often back then. Reading a review in Rolling Stone and buying the record if it sounded promising. During the same period RS turned me onto two other artists with whom [...]

July 24th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , | 2 comments

Banal Stories #4: I was wrong

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Here’s a list of classic/favorite records I initially disliked, but that I later purchased (or re-purchased) and cherished.

Big Star’s #1 Record/Radio City. The last CD I remember buying that came in one of the tall cardboard boxes. Purchased in early 1994 while I was at Baylor in Waco. Early in 2000 I [...]

March 20th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , | 11 comments

Banal Stories #3: Guitar Lessons

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In the summer of 1992, when I was 17, I decided I would work for my Mom’s office leasing business, which was on the 12th floor of a building on Kirby near Miyako. Normally, I lived and went to school on Houston’s north side. But I was now close enough to Rockin’ Robin that [...]

March 13th, 2010 | Tags: | 4 comments

Banal Stories #2: Quitting Piano

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During elementary school, I took piano and voice lessons from a lady at church for nearly three years. I hated those lessons. I hated practicing. I hated sight reading the heavily simplified classical music. I hated singing songs from the Bill Gaither songbook.

My dad and I had a lot of arguments [...]

March 6th, 2010 | Tags: | 2 comments

Sonic Youth #1: Banal Stories of How I Came to Music

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The early songwriter I was visiting the home of my parent’s friends playing in one of those tiny plastic pools when one of the party’s attendees said something like, “hey that’s a nice song you’re singing. Did you know there’s a real song just like that? It’s called, ‘Splish Splash I Was Taking A [...]

February 20th, 2010 | Tags: , | 2 comments