Aficionado: a person who likes, knows about, and appreciates a usually fervently pursued interest or activity

I started buying and collecting music when I was 8 years old, a habit that still takes up most of my free time. Back in the day when the music you bought had a physical presence, going to a record store was my favorite activity. This was the place to spend most the entirety of my meager allowance on vinyl records. In those ancient times the record store was not just a means to pay for music, but a place to meet other music lovers who voiced their opinions about their likes and dislikes, talk to store owners who were versed with most of the music they carried, and browse endlessly through stacks of LPs in the bins. The store was were you learned about new music and socialized with fellow music aficionados, many of them introverts who you would not otherwise meet. In short – it was a place to socialize, with music driving the conversation. Back then there were no recommendation engines, no playlists and no blogs to spark your interest in music you were not familiar with. This blog, and its face on facebook, is an attempt to recreate that sort of engagement in today’s virtual world.

Music moves me, and I particularly respond to melodic and melancholic music as you will notice when you browse through the posts in this blog. My tastes are quite eclectic, with soft spots for the British folk scene of the late 1960s, acid folk, the classic era of Progressive Rock, jazz from the 1950s to the 1970s (bebop, post bop, cool, free, jazz/rock), classic blues and blues rock, lush orchestrations in popular songs, romantic and modern classical music, early music. As I said, eclectic. If the music was made primarily to fulfill an artistic urge rather than someone’s pocket, and is made with a high level of proficiency and skill, I’m all ears.

The posts in this blog are a journal of the musical pieces that left the most impression on me. As the cliché goes, this is the soundtrack of my life. There are thousands of those pieces that affected me at various stages in my life, so this is going to be a long process. As another cliché goes, it is all about the journey, not the destination. I hope that this blog informs you of music you may have not known about, or reminds you how great is the music you already know.

If you like the music articles I share here, you may also be interested in daily music recommendations I post on my blog page on facebook.