Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 53

Getting Toasty In Defense of Middle Aged Music Fans

Last night I had dinner with a group of friends to celebrate a birthday, and here are the two things that got us really excited: a pair of reading glasses that were super chic, and a lip gloss that had a light built into the cap. Theoretically the light is so you can apply your lipstick in a darkened restaurant, but we used it like a flashlight, in combination with the glasses, to read the menu. Picture six blonde women over the age of forty, passing lipgloss light and readers around in a counterclockwise direction and doing trombone arms to get the placement of the menu just right, so we could figure out what to order.

I have become that which I used to make fun of, is what I’m saying.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t still love a good concert. And I’m over on The Toast this week, talking about why bands should not just tolerate middle aged music fans, but embrace us with specific intent. Hope you’ll click through and read In Defense of the Middle Aged Music Fan! (Feel free to use readers and a gloss light if that makes it easier.)

                   
CommentsIt was a nice Beaujolais, if you must know. And could we help ... by Nancy Davis Kho1. I pictured that easily as that could be my group of girls. I ... by chickens consigliereRelated StoriesMidlife Mixtape Concert Review: Book of LoveMidlife Mixtape Concert Review: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, 2013Midlife Mixtape Concert Review: Grouplove and The Rubens 

Favorite Music Books of 2013

Here’s hoping that part of your Plaid Friday shopping is at the local indie bookstore where everybody knows your name. (And in my case, with Great Good Place, the exact balance on the gift card my husband gives me for Christmas, so they can make sure I use up every penny of it on their recommendations.)

In case you’re heading out today and shopping for music-loving readers (i.e. yourself), I thought I’d share a quick roundup of the best music themed books I reviewed in 2013 for my monthly Turn Down The Music and Read feature. Click through each link for the full review, and make sure you read all the way to the bottom…

1.) TURN AROUND BRIGHT EYES: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke (HarperCollins, 2013) The latest from Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield, this memoir finds Sheffield training his observant, funny, music-besotted eye on karaoke in all its forms.

Buy it for: Anyone who has a favorite Hall and Oates song, even if they’d never admit it in public.

2.) VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV’s First Wave (Atria, 2013) Gavin Edwards wrote an oral history of the channel that changed music, full of delicious insider detail, from the viewpoints of Martha, Nina, Mark, JJ, and Alan.

Buy it for: Anyone who has a strong opinion about whether the better Live Aid lineup was the US one, or the British one.

3.) Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division (It Books, 2013) The tell-all book by New Order bassist Peter Hook is an eye-opening glimpse into the early years and the creative tension that produced such artistic and commercial success for Joy Division and its successor, New Order.

Buy it for: Young, penniless musicians who need a reminder that even the biggest acts started out small, and anyone whose onscreen nickname is BlueMonday83.

4.) How Music Works (McSweeney’s, 2012) Yes, I reviewed this in 2012, but it just came out in paperback and I am recommending it again. David Byrne’s wide-ranging and fascinating look at the science and industry and magic of music, as illustrated by tales from the Talking Heads.

Buy it for: Anyone who’s wondered, well, how did I get here?

5.) Rocks Off: 50 Tracks That Tell the Story of the Rolling Stones (St. Martin’s Press, 2013) Ok I haven’t finished this yet, hoping to post a review for December. But author Bill Janovitz takes a deep dive into the processes and inspiration for Rolling Stones songs that everyone know and loves.

Buy it for: Anyone who needs more ammunition for the eternal “Beatles vs. Stones” argument.

And finally, one more self-serving review:

The Family Mix: Essays on Family Life from MidlifeMixtape.com. My own little eBook, it’s a compilation of all my favorite “Family” themed posts from the blog archive, bundled into one nifty little package. Parenting, school days, home life, pet ownership: I tackled them all, and swaddled them tight in the occasional ’80s music reference. Includes bonus video playlist at the back…

Buy it for: Anyone with a family.

And just to get your holiday shopping started on the right foot, I’m going to give away five (5!) copies of The Family Mix to Midlife Mixtape readers! To enter, just leave a comment below – shall we say, the name of your favorite book of 2013, music themed or not – and I’ll pick a winner on Monday, December 2 at 5 pm PST.

If you’ve already bought a copy, THANK YOU! You can still enter, I’m happy to send the freebie to anyone you designate. (And if you already read it, I’d be super grateful if you’d consider leaving a review on Goodreads, or whatever outlet you purchased it from. That helps my book be higher profile in a very, very crowded field of eBooks…)

Good luck, good shopping, and good reading!

                   
CommentsJanovitz's book is terrific. Not a straight biography, there's ... by KevinSheer genius writing yet again! You totally got me with the ... by Mary A BrownVJ was a great read, so thank you for that one. I've got to ... by Linda Roy - elleroy was hereRelated StoriesThe Five Stages of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”Decorative FiascoEight Things I Wish I Didn’t Know About Other People 

Decorative Fiasco

From Elle Decor, where they know about these things

My strategy to upgrade the dining room of my last home seemed like genius at the time.

Our Oakland bungalow was built in the 1940s and had all sorts of character in the form of cute curves and arches and nooks, but I’d recently read a feng shui book (it was the early Aughties and that’s what people did) and learned that red is a color that stimulates appetite. Also, every time I drove between my house and my best friend’s house in Oakland, I passed by a row of stately homes set far back on their lawns in Piedmont, the fancy doughnut hole community that sits in the middle of Oakland. One stone manor, set on a sprawling corner lot, appeared to have dining room walls painted the color of purple-red velvet, and was hung with a selection of antique looking wooden crosses that I can only assume rode over on the Pinta or the Santa Maria – Piedmont has that kind of money.

I couldn’t afford the priceless art collection or the stone manse. But I could paint my dining room dark red.

And not just paint it red, but paint wide red vertical stripes. Just on one wall. You call that an accent wall if you read design magazines, which I still did at the time. (Soon, you’ll understand why those and the feng shui books got kicked to the curb.)

So with my husband’s blessing and a part-time, work from home job that left some free time for fiascos, I got out the step ladder, a measuring tape, and a pencil and began framing the wide red stripes that would stimulate everyone’s appetite. It was harder than it looked; I kept losing my spot and the walls are tall, man, it’s hard to draw a single straight line without a couple of stops.

It was not made easier by the fact that our nanny, who watched our then-toddler on my work days, got my daughter down to sleep for her nap and then settled into one of the pushed-back dining room chairs to supervise me.

“Not straight,” she’d bark as I drew a line.

“MARIA. Stop it. You’re making me nervous,” I’d say, realizing with a sinking feeling that she was probably right.

Then quiet, while I squinted at the wall and drew more lines. But only for a short time.

“It’s gonna be red?”

“Yes, red.”

Another pause.

“You’re sure you want to do this? Stripes?”

“MARIA!”

I have never liked the feeling of being judged. I decided to fill in the red stripes with paint only after she’d left for the day. The color was gorgeous. I did get that right. A dark shade of red with just enough blue in it, a perfect match to seats I’d reupholstered with red silk printed with gold ginko leaves, with my mother-in-law’s help. We had to do something to spruce up the second-hand dining room set. This was going to be a Piedmont-fancy dining room smack dab in the middle of keeping-it-real Oaktown.

But when the painting was done and I finally stood back to survey my new red and white striped accent wall, I got the distinct feel that I was about to tip over. It wasn’t my equilibrium. It was that the stripes were uneven, and canted ever so slightly to the right. No one would be able to sit eating opposite that wall without feeling slightly queasy. I singlehandedly ruined future dinner parties and knocked $3k off the price of the house with one home improvement project.

Of course I wasn’t ABOUT to paint it over, not when Maria came the next morning and immediately told me it was uneven. I just told her she was wrong, it was perfect, it was exactly how I wanted it. We were two stubborn women working in the same house and sometimes it wasn’t pretty. I stuck by that wall and refused to admit there was anything wrong with it. But I was humiliated every single time I passed that Scarlet Letter of a room, my misguided attempt at high design.

Until that glorious day our realtor said, “If you want to sell the house, you’ll need to paint all the interiors a nice shade of cream.”

I’ve never been happier to be judged in my life.

One day, one topic, five bloggers: see what other writers have to say about the topic of Fiasco. And check out the post that inspired this blog hop, by the always funny Alexandra from Good Day, Regular People.

Smacksy

Peace, Love & Guacamole

Ann’s Rants

The Flying Chalupa

Here’s a teenage Neil Finn in specs with Split Enz, seeing Red…

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Eight Things I Wish I Didn’t Know About Other People

There’s a new meme on Facebook this week: Things You Don’t Know About Me. People use their status update to list hidden talents, unexpected language fluency, surprising back stories, awards you never knew they earned.

Me? I’m an open book: I’m a blogger. There are probably at least 23 things you wish you could UNlearn about me. I don’t blame you.

And that made me think of the Eight Things I Wish I Didn’t Know About Other People.

1.)    Which of you spend half your workday playing Candy Crush. It’s fine with me, but next time you tell me you’re stressed at work, I’m immediately going to picture the Facebook newsfeed with your Candy Crush score from last Wednesday at 2:14 pm.

2.)    Which of my friends kiss their pets on the lips. I’ve witnessed it, and if it’s you, there’s a reason I duck my head when you try to pucker up and land one on my cheek in greeting.

3.)    Which of the gentlemen on the outermost edge of my circle of acquaintances takes manscaping to the outermost edge of smoothness. Ever since someone passed that tidbit of info along, and don’t ask me how they got it because it wasn’t his wife, I have had a hard time making eye contact with that man when I run into him at the grocery store.

4.)    Which of my friends is going to get really, really ranty on both the left and right end of the political spectrum during Election Season. In the spirit of “can’t we all just get along?” I am an equal opportunity un-Friender every fourth autumn.

5.)    Which of my former co-workers went to a prestigious business school for his MBA, because he announced that fact on every single work phone call he took in his cube three feet away from me. It got to a point that other co-workers and I took bets on the shortest amount of time it would take between, “Hi, this is NAME” and, “Well, back when I was getting my MBA at Kellogg…” I think the record was fourteen seconds.

6.)    Which of my friends can’t hold their third drinks. Actually, I’m fine with knowing it. It’s the aftermath that gets me.

7.)    Which of my friends listen to Top 40 and get profoundly moved by lyrics that are so cheesy, I could use a grater on them.

8.)    Which of my friends don’t read my blog, as outed when they say things like, “I really miss your blog! I wish you still wrote it!”

What about you? What do you wish you could unlearn, FB meme or no?

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Still in Rotation: Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)

Still in Rotation is a feature that lets talented writers tell Midlife Mixtape readers about an album they discovered years ago that’s still in heavy rotation, and why it has such staying power. 

I don’t remember how I first discovered Val Haller of Valslist.com, a website that help busy adults keep up with new music. I just remember knowing right away she was my musical soul sister, my brother from another mother. We met online and bonded in real life when I snuck away from BlogHer in Chicago for a few hours to catch a concert with her (of course). And I’m thrilled to have her doing a guest post today.

Born to Run (1975)

The tunes I listened to during my “formative music years” (high school through college) from 1971-1979 made such an impact on me that I started a music business at age fifty. The obsession started young with me; I was different when it came to music. The oldest of five, I distinctly remember every Thanksgiving—amidst the frenzy of relatives coming over, helping mom in the kitchen, my dad and brothers glued to football—how I would go to the cupboard and pull out the Christmas albums. Adding holiday music to the scene just made everything better.

In second grade I used to sneak over to my junior high neighbor’s screened porch to listen to records with the older kids. I learned the F word from the Standells’ 1966 hit “Dirty Water”. My first 45 record (I was allowed to buy just one) was “Penny Lane” (Beatles) and “On a Carousel” (The Hollies). In high school my tape deck, turntable and stacks of vinyl occupied our living room floor (my mother was a saint) as I put together mixtapes for friends and events. If something required music, I was your go-to girl. And I never let go. Even when I grew up.

My kids (I have four grown sons) will tell you that family road trips included serious games of Name that Tune with my husband Mark. When I drove carpool we played Name that Band (okay, I made it up, but hey, it takes a village to make sure the kids in the hood are well-rounded.)

When Nancy approached me to write about my favorite album of all time I knew that would be impossible. Not the writing part, the choosing part. Then I had an idea.

Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, was released in August 1975 – the exact month that bridged my high school and college years. That transition to college will forever be etched in my soul with the Born to Run soundtrack. Even now when I close my eyes to listen, I see the past in all its glory: the Cutlass Supreme I drove to college, my freshman dorm at Miami University (Oxford OH), a photo of me out front by the packed car, the outfit I wore that day – hip hugger bell bottoms, Dr. Scholls sandals, a polyester paisley top, a feathered hair style, my complete album collection on the back seat of the car with me.

The sounds: oh, the sounds. I stepped out of the car and radios were blaring–a warm welcome to a music lover like me. Anxious parents with smiles masking tears were carrying wooden crates and big stereo speakers up the stairs, guys in (short) cutoff jean shorts – long layered hair – large rimmed glasses, girls in halter tops – bare midriffs – tanned from their last summer of carefree fun, we smiled as we passed each other – the background music was the universal language that connected us.

Born to Run was everywhere during those four years. “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out“  blasted out of screen-less frat house windows on Fraternity Row (as we freshmen were ushered en masse to orientation.) “Born to Run“ screamed you can do anything from large stereo speakers precariously propped on dorm rooftops. Music was our community, the earliest form of social networking; it drew us together. “She’s the One“ confirmed your newest crush, “Thunder Road” detoured a bad test score. Back then there was no individual listening, no iPod, no earbuds…We knew every lyric to every song, intimately, because there was no fast forward button, no skips; you just listened to the album from start to finish.

And while you waited for your favorite song to come (“Jungleland”), you grew to love the other songs along the way (“Meeting Across the River”). Lucky for you. And really lucky for the artist. When I listen to the songs now, thirty years later, I hear new things I didn’t notice back then. I love that it still sounds new, and still speaks to me.

One admission… you’ll probably find this strange. I won’t go to a Bruce Springsteen concert now. I think I’m the only Boomer who hasn’t. His newer catalog doesn’t compare to the old days. I don’t want to ruin the memory from back then. You see, Bruce Springsteen played at our campus every year. He filled a quarter of the arena. A concert the old school way: we called our friends from the wall phone to make plans, met up with them to tailgate (yep, that’s our word, kids), everyone went because there weren’t a million other distractions, and we watched and listened and danced to Springsteen music. No cell phones, no video, no texting/tweeting/Instagram/Vine. We were 100% present.

Rah-Rah old-school. You rock.

♪♪♪

Val Haller, a music-obsessed Baby Boomer and founder of a boutique music website Valslist.com (and new mobile app ValslistRadio) has one mission: to help busy adults keep up with new music. Unlike Pandora (which is algorithm based) Val hand picks every track for her curated playlists. Author of a music blog “mini music note” and monthly music contributor to Make It Better magazine, Val authors a weekly music feature for NYT’s “Booming” blog called Music Match, introducing readers to new emerging artists. She recently launched a grass-roots project, Music Club – to encourage adult music-lovers to get back out to live music. She believes strongly that the music industry needs to pay attention to the important adult audience (who buys music.)

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California Snow Day

At the risk of incurring the wrath of my readers on the East Coast or in the Midwest, I’m going to tell you that there is something that I pity my kids for, and it is this: They will never know the glory that is the Snow Day.

I know, you guys have more of your fair share. (Done a carbon offset lately? Now might be the time to invest.) But kids in temperate regions like California, Texas, and Florida will simply never understand what it is to station yourself next to a radio, still in your pajamas, and listen as the DJ lists the closed schools in alphabetical order. You hold your breath when they get to the letter before the one your school starts with…holding…holding…YESSS! They said your school name! School’s OUT, baby!

My husband and I, both upstate New York born and raised, tell our children of these magical days from our childhood like they were fairy tales. The injustice of never ever being able to expect a weather-related surprise day off grates on them.

So I’ve put together a list of suitable situations that I think merit an unplanned school shutdown around these parts. You can thank me later, kids.

Righteous Indignation Day. What are YOU pissed about? The naked guys in the Castro, the continued usage of Native American symbols by professional sports teams, the inequities in graduation rates across race lines, the procedure used to make fois gras? When the fury of injustice is six feet high and rising, we’ll call it. You get a whole day to protest. Go.
Drought Day. 2013 is thiiiiiis close to being the driest for Northern California since they started keeping records back in 1865. Instead of having the kids shovel the driveway, have them dig up your lawn, because by next summer water rationing will kill it dead anyway.
Dungeness Crab Day. The crab fishermen and the buyers finally settled on a price per pound for the season, and the fleet is finally on the water. Everyone needs to skip school and go down to the wharf to buy some fresh Dungies off a boat. Take some common sense precautions for this one, kids: stick the chardonnay into the ‘fridge before you leave.
Snow On Mount Diablo Day. The highest peak in the East Bay got sixteen flakes last night! Quick, everyone drive up and look, but do it before 9 am when they melt again.(For those of you in Marin, this is of course Mount Tam Day.)
Republican Presidential Candidate Day. You’re more likely to see five feet of snow than a contender for the Republican presidential nomination around the Bay Area, so it makes sense to close school and get on down to Atherton or Woodside, the big secret money towns, to catch this unicorn in the wild.
Rain Day, aka No Snow Day. Just force the issue of a precipitation-related shutdown. What say we all agree that on the fourth rainy weekday after January 1st, we just close up shop. Everyone. Hot cocoa and board games all around, and maybe a Back to the Future movie marathon.

Just like the old days.

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Poo-pooing This Trend

I watch a lot of video during the day, because sometimes when I’m writing something, I need to remind myself of the exact lyrics of a Hoodoo Gurus song, and then I’m going down a lyric video rabbit hole and clicking “play” left, right and center. And that means I watch a lot of 5- and 15 second pre roll commercials before the video starts.

Lately I’ve been bombarded by an advertisement featuring a prim and proper young British woman, dressed like she’s going to tea with the Queen. Only she’s talking about her bathroom habits in terms that would make a pro football player blush. It’s all in service to selling a spray that purports to eradicate any olfactory evidence of her visit to the loo.

I mean, I get it. Ad revenue is a necessary part of keeping the machinery of digital artistic expression and commerce moving. I also get that Americans can be a little, shall we say, prudish when it comes to discussion of the earthier things in life. There are situations in which calling something what it is can be refreshing, and nobody appreciates subversive humor more than I do.

But this toilet spray woman is just GROSS. She whips open the bathroom stall door and although her frock and petticoat cover up anything incriminating, she gladly tells you what you just missed.

I’ve actually never heard her whole spiel because as soon as I see her face, I’m grabbing for the mouse to find the tiny, nearly invisible “X” box on the ad that allows you to close it, and if I can’t find that I just close the entire browser and every open program, including my household budgeting software, for good measure. If for some reason I were unable to do that, I’d simply unplug my computer midsentence and hurl it out the window, rather than listen to this woman sell me toilet spray by describing exactly why she needs it.

Why, Poo-pouri, why? It’s not funny. It’s not subversive. It’s disturbing and stomach churning. Is there nothing that we can agree to leave to the imagination?

The bar of gross advertising has been dropping ever since the first Viagra-taking spokesman threw a football through a hanging tire swing. In the pages of magazines, in sidebars and interstitial ads, I’ve learned more than I ever cared to about toenail fungus and erectile dysfunction and vaginal dryness. It makes me long for the more inhibited and repressed ‘70s, when ads for Kotex never once mentioned the word “menstruation.” If you saw a woman laughing like she was on uppers and kicking one leg of her white bell bottom pants to the side, you knew it was a tampon ad. It was code. No one had to explain it.

My kids find Poo Pouri lady hysterical, which is, I suppose, a signal that I’m out of date. Once a door like this has been opened, it’s hard to close.

But when they’re my age and an ad pops up somewhere for Preparation H, I’ll bet they’ll wish they hadn’t given in to the lowered standards of decorum so easily.

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Strangers with TV

On Facebook the other day I saw a video that tugged at my heartstrings. A photographer in NYC puts complete strangers together for portraits, in poses meant to suggest that the strangers are in fact deeply in relationship, as family members or romantic partners. The awkwardness is tangible before the posed shots are taken, but the final photos evidence what such chance encounters can draw forth: humanity and compassion.

 

That clip meant a lot to me, because I spent part of last Tuesday watching TV with a complete stranger in my family room, and I like to think we parted as friends.

See, because everyone’s always talking about Breaking Bad and Orange is the New Black and blah blah blah, we bought a Roku, so we could get Netflix, which exposed the fact that our home WiFi is horrible and our high def tv is showing low def programming. So I asked our wireless provider to send someone over to help figure out how to fix things so that we wouldn’t get the “…Loading…” message ten times per thirty minute show. (Yes, #thirdworldproblems.)

That someone was a young man named Ian, who was about six foot six with long braids and looked like a tackle from the Oakland Tech football team. Achilles gave him the customary “bark like a rabid dog but only because I so, so want to meet you, chum” treatment. And then Ian and I went to the family room, where Ian tested various fixes and I assessed whether it improved the television’s reception. Which meant, in effect, that Ian and I watched tv together, and discussed it, for a solid hour.

The tv was tuned to HBO when Ian flipped it on, and there on the screen was a shirtless man in bed taking a phone call, and I thought, oh my lord in heaven, do not let this be a sex scene that I am watching with Ian. Thankfully he switched to a science fiction show on Netflix called Terra Nova that I’d never seen. He’d do something on his iPad customer service app, then we had to watch for a while, because it took a little time for the High def to kick in. Then we’d both go “Hey! I think it just went to HD!” whenever we could suddenly see the pores on an actor’s nose or, as Ian pointed out once, “I just saw the window reflected in her tears!”

We watched the first ten minutes of the Terra Nova pilot episode twice, so that we could compare picture quality, and it was gripping both times. Black suited secret police types rampage through a family’s post apocalyptic apartment and find Kid #3 (Ian explained that in this society you could only have two kids, “kind of like in China”) stashed in a Underground Railroad-style hiding place. Handsome Dad is carted off to jail and Vaguely Ethnic Mom must figure out what to do next.

By the end of the second time, I was begging Ian to tell me whether the family makes it to Terra Nova alive and would they be reunited with Kid #3? “Cancelled after one season,” Ian explained mournfully, and we both shook our heads at the injustice of good programming, gone too soon.

Next up, after a few more changes to the settings, was “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” starring Neil Patrick Harris.

“You seen this one?” he asked me. “It’s awesome.”

“No, but I heard it’s great!” I said.

“It’s kind of like a musical Super Villain scenario,” Ian said.  We watched together, rapt, as Neil Patrick Harris simultaneously tried to hijack a car with a remote and flirt with the girl from the Laundromat, singing as he went. I can’t speak for Ian but by this time I wasn’t even paying attention to the picture quality, just the whimsical lyrics.

Half an hour later, Achilles was stretched out on the carpet between us and we were trading recommendations for Game of Thrones parodies and talking about which Dr. Who actor we liked the best. I was THISCLOSE to making us some popcorn and Ovaltine so we could settle in on the couch to finish the Terra Nova season.

Eventually his workday ended and Ian had to leave. But not before he gave me a new remote, for free, and his cell phone number in case I had any problems.

I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again. Maybe I’ll call him when I get to the end of the single season of Terra Nova.

But it made me wonder whether the negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians couldn’t be jumpstarted by a remote, a Netflix menu, and a comfy couch on which to find some common ground.

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The Five Stages of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”

Number of Times Heard Per Season vs. Reaction

1-15:  “Oh! My favorite holiday song! I’m going to go dig out a wooly cardigan and make some cocoa.”

16-25: “Dean Martin could pour me just another drink more. I just looked at the calendar for December and there is not a single free evening.”

26-50: “We get it. It’s cold outside. Has it occurred to either of them that getting cold is what happens in winter?”

51-70: “This song is rapey-er than Blurred Lines.”

71-infinity:  “Oh fer cryin’ out loud TURN IT OFF! IT’S NOT EVEN THANKSGIVING YET!”

Whaddya know? There ARE Christmas songs that don’t get overplayed! Here’s my new favorite, an oldie from Paul Kelly that I heard for the first time at Hardly Strictly. If nothing else, it’s a nice reminder than winter weather for Australians is when it’s >100% outside.

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Where to Read (and Submit) Music Writing on the Web

As someone who describes herself as a music/humor blogger, I have a confession to make: I hate reading album and concert reviews. When a critic starts talking about a musician’s seminal influences and comparing songs to obscure releases I’ve never heard of and using words that end in “-esque,” I feel really dumb and old.

But I love essays about how music makes the writer feel. Because studies prove that music really does take a grip on your heart and mind in a way that few other things can, evoking memories and feelings that can be a full body experience. And there is so much great music writing to be had, on and off the web, to take you on that kind of multidimensional journey.

For the sake of readers who visit Midlife Mixtape, I thought I’d compile a list of my favorite sites for that sort of musical storytelling. And for the music-loving writers in the bunch, these are all sites that accept outside submissions, so you have a one-stop-shop list of places to submit your work. Let me know in the comments if there are any I’ve missed. Note: there are obviously lots of other great sites for the musically minded (Slicing Up Eyeballs and Large Hearted Boy are two of my faves) but the ones I list here accept submissions.

The Rumpus ( TheRumpus.net ) Founded in 2009 by author Stephen Elliott, this gem of a site features essays, reviews, interviews, advice, music, film, poetry and comics. The Music section has an ongoing feature called Albums of Our Lives where writers talk about the role that individual albums have played in their lives. One of my favorite things to read – and to submit to. Writer’s guidelines here.
KQED Pop (http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/category/music/). Skews Gen Y, but if you are a twenty-something and have something fresh to say about pop culture in general and music in particular, give them a try. Email pop@kqed.org to request a copy of blogger guidelines.
NPR Music ( http://www.npr.org/music/ ) Beyond All Songs Considered which you may hear on your local NPR affiliate, there’s just a ton of good music and storytelling on the NPR site. I am partial to the Nerds! section where editor Stephen Thomas writes about things like whether using Spotify makes you a bad person, and when is it ok to wear headphones in public. This is the one site where I don’t have submission guidelines…if you do, send ‘em my way huh?
The Weeklings (http://www.theweeklings.com/): I’m late to this year-old party but am playing catch up with its fabulous stuff. This daily online magazine of cultural criticism publishes one essay a day, 365 days a year. I love the Power Trio feature where writers give three songs that define an idea, like “3 Songs to Play When Westboro Baptist Church Shows Up at Your Event” by music editor Joe Daly. And a Dear John memory inspired by the Katrina and the Waves song “Walkin’ On Sunshine. Writer’s guidelines here.
The Toast ( http://the-toast.net ): Music editor @mallelis is fast becoming one of my favorite Twitter people. She also writes a very funny series comparing song lyrics for authenticity and feeling, like “What Girl Is Most Like a Child?” (Billy Joe’s Always A Woman lines up vs. Good Girl Gone Bad by KISS) and “Who is the Saddest Girl?” (Lullaby by Shawn Mullins vs. Ed Sheeran’s The A Team.)  Plus I loved this essay by humorist Whitney Cummins, The Zen of Gen X: How We Went from Jaded to Sated. Trust me on this: very funny site. Submission guidelines here.
Caught in the Carousel ( http://caughtinthecarousel.com/ ) CitC founder Alex Green (and past Midlife Mixtape guest poster) is the most in-the-know music man I know, hands down. His recently glamified site covers all kinds of reviews so if you’ve got something you’d like to cover, pitch Alex at alex670(at)earthlink(dot)net.
Raised on the Radio (http://raisedontheradio.com/) The newest of the bunch, RotR is the brainchild of a slew of names you’ll recognize from their guest posts in the Midlife Mixtape Still in Rotation series: Lance, Linda, and Jen. The site is chock full of memories of albums, musicians, concerts, mixtapes and yes, and they’re looking for submissions. Read more here.
Ryeberg (http://ryeberg.com/) More of a moving pictures kind of person? Check out Ryeberg: video clip/s + written text = a Ryeberg.  Details on how to become a “Ryeberg Curator” here.
Paste Magazine (http://www.pastemagazine.com/): They’ve just introduced a new feature called “Your Worst Concert Experience” in which “we share our readers’ lowest tales of shame and degradation from the sordid world of live music.” Send them your story at mailbag@pastemagazine.com.

What did I miss? And aren’t you glad that music gives us something to write (and read) about?

                   
CommentsThank you Nancy The fact you read me, and us, at Raised on ... by LanceThank you so much for the shout out for Raised on the Radio ... by Linda Roy - elleroy was hereOh man, now I am really never going to get caught up on all my ... by EllenLooks like a cool site, Barry, thanks for sharing. Poor Gary ... by Nancy Davis KhoOne of my favorite reads is Aquarium Drunkard ... by BarryRelated StoriesAnnouncing My New eBook: The Family MixIt’s My Funeral, and I’ll DJ If I Want ToTop Nine Top 9 Lists