Mellotron Sounds

This Week In Prog

So I have a plan. I call it being proactive, taking the initiative, but it’s really more of a modern-day version of Fight or Flight. It’s me vs. the “real world.” Me vs. the ugly and terrifying prospect of graduating.

For years, countless encounters with family members and every time I ever told someone that I was majoring in English and had to watch their brow furrow and lips muster up fake interest as they tried to be supportive and went, “Oh… What can you do with that?” I had the prospect looming over me. Post-college. It was a safe and down-the-road kind of make-believe.

But then one day you wake up and you’re scared as hell. You look at your calender. And the pages just seem to stop after some time in May, that some time where you buy plastic robes and sit in folding chairs and wait to shake the hand of some guy you’ve never met, some guy congratulating you and handing you a sheet of nice paper with your name and degree title pressed onto it in glossy lettering. You look down at it. It really says, “Tag! You’re it.”

And you’re supposed to start chasing something.

I’m interning at a local paper and soon I hope to start freelancing, local music mostly. But really, I wanted to review movies, TV, and music. My first idea was to review Prog rock records. How cool would that be? Get paid to listen to interesting music all day, find new bands, get the word out to thousands of people who are maybe tired or complacent with their music. Complacency and music shouldn’t mix. The thought alone makes me cringe. Ugh…

But CD reviews are getting phased out over there, and right now my best shot at getting published is with the local music scene. Ok, no problem. It could still be fun–and more importantly, it may lead to something.

This is me riding the wave of my own enthusiasm, my frantic desperation masqeurading as motivation. And I have to say it feels pretty good.

I haven’t decided on a schedule yet but I plan on reviewing at least one thing a week, a movie, a show, an album. It just depends on how much time I have and what’s good that week. And for the time being, these things might not even be new–probably won’t be, actually. I want to go into back-catalogues, I want to write about what hits me–and if that happens to be a 30-year-old GENESIS album that I’m only just now discovering, chances are there are others that haven’t gotten around to checking it out yet, either.

But I also want to do somewhat of a ProgBeat. That’s where I’ll be posting on upcoming albums to keep your eye open for, as well as reviewing them later. In fact, that’s what I planned to start with this post, I just thought it needed a bit of a preamble first.

So consider this the preamble. And I’m excited. I think this is going to be a lot of fun.

Posted in: creative nonfiction, film, music, prog, television, whatever else

Tags: Reflective

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 8:16 pm and is filed under creative nonfiction, film, music, prog, television, whatever else. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.