Click and Pops-iversary

This blog is exactly one year old today.

One year ago today, the first post appeared on Clicks and Pops.

In lieu of getting me a cake, here are a couple of things you can do instead:

• Support independent music (go to a show, buy music from your favorite artists).



• Email several of your music-obsessed friends and tell them to check out this blog.



• If you read something you like here, share it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social networking sites.



• Browse through the archives. If you want, start with some of my favorite posts (about Blotto, my favorite record store, the Ludwig Wittgenstein of Rock, driving through the snow with a time machine, and the piano on the lake). Or just type "alternate universe" into the search field in the upper left and start there.

Over the past 12 months, I've been thrilled to hear from more than a few of the musicians I've written about (both old heroes and new discoveries) whose songs have inspired me. But special thanks go out to all of you -- the regular readers and the ones who show up from odd corners of the world via Google (and stay to check out the blog).

And for everyone, in weren't there a year ago (or didn't look all the way back in the archives), here's a rerun of the very first Clicks and Pops post:
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[Originally posted Saturday, December 13, 2008]

I spent too much of my youth in used record stores.

See, I grew up in a small town with three colleges (and two more a few miles away). There were great used record stores there – one in the back of a head shop on Main Street (specializing in selling foreign cut-outs), one next to a stationary store (whose owner was busted for selling pot – I know, in a college town? Shocking!), and another one that sold hundreds of cheap bootlegs whose “covers” were cheap mimeographs of bad band photos.

And I was patient – I’d thumb through the stacks, always looking for something specific, but always open to what I might find – especially if the price was low. And the price was almost always low, because there were always lots of college students selling their records to the used record stores. Plus, I wasn’t a collector.

That’s important. Collectors care about more about the label and the idea of the record than they care about what’s on the record.

This is what collectors do:



For me, it was always about the music.

And while I own a few records that actually are valuable, their real value for me is what’s on them.

To be honest, when I was younger, I was more like Jack Black’s character here:



(I like to think I'm more tolerant now. So if you wanted to listen to "I Just Called To Say I Love You," I wouldn't say anything mean about you -- but I would leave the room.)

And while I own a few records that actually are valuable, their real value for me is what’s on them.

So this blog is mostly about music (and often about vinyl). Because it’s the music that matters.