EC Turns One

This is my 196th post.

To take part in the celebrations, scroll down to the end of this post and press play.

Can you believe it's already May? How crazy is that? Does it seem as though the year is flying by? (Oh, man. I shouldn't admit that. It's the kind of thing my mother would say. Guess it happens to all of us, doesn't it?)

But I digress.

Anyway, so a year of blogging and these many posts later and I’m not making it a big deal. Life is so great, isn't it? I braved hours of great music over the past year, and enough cigarette smoke to shave several months off my life. Check out the blog’s first few posts to find out who rocked, who sucked and how the blog just fit into my world.

Last year I was scheming a way to write about music on my own conditions and for my own gratification...and of course put all those views out there for other people to peruse at. Bearing in mind that a regular blog’s existence is a couple of months, you could say that I'm more than a bit pleased. We began this space with a healthy little outburst on ‘The Best Part about Music’ and have since whirled through artist releases, movies to see, new sightings, random thoughts, unfortunate findings, and the sporadic music industry’s review. It's been great and a lot of fun to watch a tidy group of readers form.

2008 certainly got some mixed reviews music-wise, but from an EC perspective, it did alright for itself-- nothing too incredible, but not unpromising either.
After all, last year there were many alternative acts, to name a few reasons why 2008 was a good year to launch a music blog. And they weren’t the easiest acts to follow. On the flip side, this year gave us new bands, Paramore’s third release, King of Leon’s fourth album, and tons of backlash controversy to last us all a few decades (or weeks in the music world). But enough of that! Can I Just Tell You - I tried an experiment over the weekend. I turned off all the lights in my house. I have never done that. And, if I call my Mom right now while she's washing dishes, she'll let the water run and run and run. It doesn't occur to her that the planet is running short of water or there are folks in the world that don't have the access to water that we have but... I'm doing the best I can to educate myself and my parents as I go.

I'm still interested in your comments about the blog and any recommendations are welcome.

What's great is that this well is far from dry and Evuhleen’s Corner is going to be speeding along for many more years to come, thanks to all it's readers.

I’m not entirely sure about the choice of music on this post but this is what one of EC’s readers chose (thanks Kima) and as promised I shall play it. As I listened to it again today I thought I would share it with anyone out there that has yet to hear it. And through some clever use of the internet, I ripped the video, extracted the audio, and now you’re presented with an appetizing mp3 for your ingestion. Here’s Lunatica with ‘Song for you’. Enjoy the music and tell your friends.

EDIT: It kills me that I can’t play one very special request of Mayer’s ‘Slow dancing in a broken room’ today because it has already been featured on EC.

Peace kids. Stay tuned ... Cheers!

Today, my older sister and her husband celebrate their anniversary. They went out for 3 years and have been married for 4. I would like to have a relationship like theirs, but I will not mention any names lest I prematurely terrify that particular someone.

At the moment, I feel like plucking out my throat to relieve myself of the pain I feel every time I try to eat or drink something. I rarely fall ill and when I actually do, it’s really bad. The symptoms of a sore throat have resulted in blogger's block and I’m consumed with worry that people will start finding my blog boring and then stop reading it because they've come to hate me.

Wish me luck.

Unless you've come to hate me, in which case, is there anything I can do to win you back?

And moving on to the music-

Just when I thought I was out, he pulls me right back in. For those who read yesterday’s post already know and are probably anticipating the man with the dreamy voice. It is once again time for me to dust off my spectacles and devote myself to exploring and revealing true music’s latest offering. With that in mind, onto the mystery heartbreaker.

Ray LaMontagne

For the record, he looks like this:

So there’s that.

Really, though, I’m actually pretty excited about this one.

Ray LaMontagne, the singer of ‘Let it be me’ is set to release his much-anticipated third album, ‘Gossip in the Grain’, on October 14th. His music is a fascinating cocktail of pastoral folk, railroad blues, front porch country, and plangent balladry. The song I posted on my blog yesterday proves what quality music is.

So what took me so long to write about this guy? Because he’s brilliant. Most of the time the word brilliant being associated with a track makes me want to post about it immediately, that day, on the spot. This time around, though, everyone I know agrees that it is brilliant. As such this song has been played out, heard by quite a few people, and garnered almost universal acclaim amongst my friends and family {I think even my mother likes it}. Trust me when I say that every single track this man has come up with is worth listening to and you’ll be grateful you’ve added Ray LaMontagne to your 2008's artist collection.

And that takes care of the majors. If anything caught your eye this month or week–or more importantly, if you want to talk about whether Ray LaMontagne is just radiant–feel free to let me know about it in the comments section below. Now if you’ll excuse me, the new episode of The Mentalist dropped in this week and I still haven’t watched it.
Peace out. Stay sweet. I’ll keep posting music if you keep pretending to care. That’s it today.