I am extremely thankful for this chance to drop in my two cents in the antiMUSIC universe.  If you are reading this, rest assured that you are at the right website to learn about music you need in your life and about the stuff you need to avoid.

AntiMUSIC has given me the opportunity to live out one of my dreams and actually be involved, even in a small way, in rock music.  Maybe someday I will figure out how to repay Keavin for the awesome opportunities he has given me.  But for now he will have to settle for this.

I was a musical snob.  Back in junior high I discovered rock and roll.  I held aloft my copy of Led Zeppelin II and nothing could sway my devotion to the almighty gods of rock.  It didn�t matter that my music collection featured only four albums that didn�t date later than 1978.  Your music sucked and mine was the best.

Country music was particularly revolting to my 8th grade mind.  It didn�t rock!  I wanted loud guitars and long-haired singers who sang of �witches at black masses� and fictional whales.  My narrow mind had one goal in mind, to find the loudest music I could to bother my teachers and share with my misguided friends.

I gradually began to expand my horizons as the horror of teenage years became a reality.  I was on a mission to devour any information that even remotely involved rock and roll.  My studies brought me to an enlarged number of bands with loud guitars and long-haired singers.  It seems like I was always 10 years behind the current music trend.  When my friends found grunge, I found AC/DC and Dio.  Frequently a newer band would sneak in.  Bands like Korn, whose simple-minded anger touched my fragile teen psyche.

When I entered college I felt like my musical identity was firmly established somewhere between U2 and Motorhead.  But in this new world of glaring self-importance and pretentious behavior I fell prey to other kinds of music.  I started listening to Radiohead, Bob Marley and politically charged bands that ultimately made no sense to me.  I have since continued with a love of Marley but turned away from an increasingly boring Radiohead.

I might add that the previous artists I have mentioned are quite a step when you have grown up in a town with an oldies radio station and two country music stations.  So, despite my hillbilly past, I soldier on towards the discovery of new bands that affect me but I had never heard before.

And that brings me to the purpose of my future columns.  I am on a search for knowledge and have a desire to celebrate the great qualities of rock and roll.  The qualities that make me want to quit work, drop out of school and start a band just so I can give people the same feelings I am feeling.

I remain exceedingly optimistic for the future of rock and roll and I hope that I can help anyone who reads this become more excited about music.  Maybe even learn something.  Just because the current crop of bands are as exciting as dry cornflakes does not mean there is not something out there you have never heard before.

I still remember the feeling of hearing a Black Sabbath riff for the first time and how the guitar was so heavy it made my bones ache.  Or the anticipation of cracking open a new cd and being blown away that a simple band could write a song that defies any expectations.  I am a firm believer in the power of rock and roll.  Albums have found me in times when I needed to hear exactly what was being said.

I finally found Iggy and the Stooges just the other day.  Raw Power is the most recent album to knock my socks off.  Where had this been my whole life?  

I am on a life-long quest for music that matters to me.  I have a sickness that can only be healed by more music and greater understanding of that music.  I have a feeling you may have the same sickness if you are using your time to read a music column written by some guy who you have never heard of before.  

From Zeppelin to Iggy, and several tangents in between, I have traveled (at least to me) an exciting path.  Where have you been?  Where are you going?