Is this thing on? Is there anybody out there?
It's been exactly one year since this here blog has seen any action, and it seemed appropriate to fire it up again in honor of my plans to see Hall & Oates tonight at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre.
Hall
& Oates were an indirect inspiration for me to start a blog. Three
summers ago I belonged to a mix CD exchange club which only lasted for
a few months, since we were burning CDs and mailing them to each
other. The group of us kept in touch via email; many of us had never
met face to face but all shared an interest in music. I remember
composing an email for the group about the wonders of the still-fairly-new iTunes music
store, because it enabled me not only to purchase Hall & Oates'
17-song greatest hits album for a bargain price of $9.99, but it also
let me avoid the judgmental eyes of, say, an Amoeba Records clerk, as
well as eschew the CD artwork, which no doubt would have featured
several photos of both Hall and Oates, whose music I truly love but
whose puffed up mullets and pastel blazers I could do without having to
look at.
I can't recall if I ever sent that email to the list, but I remember thinking I wished I could archive that thought in a form more permanent than email and more public than my own written journal. I was also looking for an outlet for my long-held music obsession, since I was no longer doing it as my day job as I'd been for the past seven years. Ahoy, blog! art is the new religion was born at the end of July 2004.
Three years later, I've got under my belt one intense blogging dayjob and an ongoing stint as SFist's Music Editor, and while I've been blogging to larger and larger audiences it's gotten to be less personal. I've missed this blog, and I'm back in case anyone would like to listen. I'd hoped to bring you a new and improved blog design, but you'll just have to suffer through this one for a little while longer.
If you care to bookmark this blog, you can now do so at http://www.artisthenewreligion.com.
To circle it all back to Hall & Oates, I leave you with the most brilliantly unenthusiastic video I have ever seen:
