First Post

I'd really love to say this is my first shot at blogging.

But that wouldn't be true. I have made abortive attempts. Overformatted. Underprepared. Half hearted. In Swedish. All deleted after a few posts.

You see, I don't actually like blogs. I much prefer the open, collaborative, community-oriented format of the forum. But then I started regularly reading and commenting on a blog. And that had blogposts that were basically replies to other blogs. And then I realised the tiresome truth.

The Blogosphere is a big forum. It's a badly designed, ill-connected, impossible to monitor, absurdly overcrowded, spam-filled, incoherent and ugly forum. And being a good member takes effort.



This, then, is the collection of my threads. Like good forum threads, they're meant to be universal and spark discussion. And like a good sub-forum, my blog is themed. It's dedicated to providing serious, thoughtful discussion on the neglected and underanalysed subject of popular music, past and present. Posts will range from broad analyses of overarching themes to petty commentary on individual Youtube videos.

I've made the mistake of locking myself too heavily into a format before, but nevertheless I can't stay away from one regularly recurring feature: the Genre of the Week is a slightly critical, slightly narrative description of a genre of music, past or present, narrow or broad (I'm resolved to do "Pop" at some point). I like genres in much the same way I like forums - they're a bit communal, a bit laid back and not so ego driven. By that analogy whiny indie types who claim to have no genre are the bloggers of the music world. :)



I'm trying to keep this blog as ego-free as possible. (Hah! Fat chance! It's a fucking blog for god's sake.) Still, I have to tell you something about myself in this initial post. My name is Johan Palme, I'm 26 years old and currently a musicology student. (I'm contemplating going back to my real job.) I live in a post-gentrification area of central Stockholm, currently being slowly drained of its dozens of record stores and invaded by yuppie PR types. Besides Sweden, I've lived in Hungary, Britain and Tanzania. I have degrees in Philosophy and Politics and in Journalism.

I've got a very broad musical background with an interest in essentially all kinds of popular music. I've written extensively about the subject, taught a course in its history, and at various times have had at least three radio shows with different types of musical content on the student radio station of the University of Umeå. I keep an open mind and try to acquire deep and analytical knowledge about all of popular music, which could potentially make me an excellent musicologist were it not for the fact that the subject is more about medieval chant types and teaching musicians how to read scores than about actually listening.

As you probably can tell, thinking about music is one of my biggest hobbies (others are architecture and cooking). I hope to share some of these little ideas and thoughts that appear in my daily life through this blog.

Hopefully you will enjoy it, and post many comments and go off on interesting tangents.

Like I said, I much prefer forums.