Johnny Appleseeding
3-18-08 Johnny Appleseeding
The Comments on yesterday’s blog that Brian made, about “Johnny Appleseeding” – great stuff. Just exactly what I have in mind. Blam Blam Blam – that’s what I must’ve “Johnny Appleseeded” to you, Brian!
Recently, I had fun looking through the thousand or so documents that I keep on my computer – all of my writing about music. Sometimes, it’s just lists of purchases, other times I tried to evoke a certain ‘nostalgia’ – mostly of 60’s & 70’s record stores where I visited as a young man. To me, all of it is interesting – and, if carefully re-written – it may be of interest to someone else. And I got a “Blog Index” out of the deal – let me know if you’d like to see it!
I started doing this in the summer of 2002…that’s a lot of blogs. My ‘nostalgia’ stories tend to get good reactions – but I always run the risk of repeating myself unnecessarily.
I don’t really want to do a ‘vanity press’ book – but I wish I had a publisher to hawk my stuff to. I used to write for some magazines – but that is usually a temporary set-up. The guy who likes my writing always moves on – or is fired, apparently. Or the magazine quits, folds up shop.
It’s fun to tease that I will not write about music anymore – instead, concentrating on restaurant reviews, travel journals, observations on bird-watching etc. But, it looks like I shall continue writing about music.
The best part of this blog (for me, anyway) is the comments from the readers – notably Jim D. and Brian W. I tried to get Jim to agree to collaborate with me on a blog, but… sensible man that he is, told me he was “too busy to do it properly” (or thereabouts).
My old blog, “20th Century Music” got nearly 1,000 entries before I put it to bed – and the “Ron Kane Files” is now well over 300 entries. How much more of this stuff can I write? I love leaving up the old “20th Century Music” blog – I still get ‘comments’ from it all the time!
After creating the index, it became clearer to me which artists I hadn’t written about yet. So real soon, it’s going to be 100% new stuff.
Also, I enjoy having a Flickr (photo-sharing) site, even though it costs. I do not have anything to do with YouTube. I keep a journal on a Japanese social networking site, Asoboo, but I don’t update it very often (only when I’m going to or having just been to
As always, thanks for reading my stuff. Any other “Johnny Appleseeding” stories to tell?
posted by Ron Kane @ 7:05 AM
4 Comments:
Not just the Blams my friend. If not for you would I have ever heard The Models, Mental As Anything, Jenny Morris, Coconut Rough, Mondo Rock, Scribble, The Mutton Birds, etc.??? Certainly my years of friendship with Jim D. directly brought artists like China Crisis, Scritti Politti, Stephen Duffy, The Lilac Time, and The Blow Monkeys across my path.
Thank you.
Brian:
I thought you had been aware of at least "Working With Fire & Steel" prior to our meeting. Was my memory faulty?
Coconut Rough I take full responsibility for - that was definitely one of the groups I made sure everyone heard. Otherwise, no way - nobody would ever have heard them up here.
As it stands - I understand that nobody down there cares much, apart from the single. Sad, it was a great album.
Gary in NZ hipped me to The Models, he gave me a cassette of "Local and/or General", and I merely followed up.
Mentals...I saw one of the early animated videos somewhere - maybe TVNZ or maybe MTV? Jenny Morris was in another one of 'my bands' - The Crocodiles! I would never have known, if it weren't for my initial visits to NZ.
Mondo Rock I just knew by osmosis - I somehow heard them before my '87 visit to Oz - and we both know "Boom Baby Boom" is a class record. Scribble was another one I bought because of the cover (XL Capris, too).
And we did Front Lawn / Mutton Birds because of Blam Blam Blam, which I had the good fortune to meet and see perform in '81/2.
Re: China Crisis -
Jim, now that I think about it you're probably right. In fact very early on Still Obscure was covering that very song (1985-ish), but that's also the year we met, so I'm not certain which came first.
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