Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated...

Or so goes the famous quote by Mark Twain. He was thought to have passed when he was merely travelling abroad. Me? Nothing so exotic I'm afraid. Not unless you count travelling to Milbrae as "abroad". It is somewhat akin to that as frankly it feels like a foreign country sometimes, alas without the exotic locales, superb food and tropical weather. Hold on, I hear you think - foreign country does not necessarily equal tropical weather! Well listen here sunshine, it sure does for me! 

So it has been one day less than four months since my last post (not including the one I just finished a minute ago that has been sitting in drafts for ages). Far out. And here I was, at the beginning of 2023, setting myself blogging goals and reminders in my to-do list. For the first couple of months, all good. I got far ahead, whimsically dreaming of getting this legacy blog where it needs to be, and becoming the prolific writer I have always wanted to become. Alas, work and life got in the way yet again, like it always seems to do. But yet here I am, still with the same goals - the same intent. I am having a couple of weeks off soon, one of which will be at home in peace, so I am hoping to get ahead. In the meantime I am going to try and put some time into getting the bones of my Top100 data set together, and maybe even make a vlog or two! Wish me luck...

The New Top 100

New top 100 idea, where I put together a database of all the top 100 or 200 even from the 1960's onwards. Then I start at the bottom or maybe pick random numbers and review every year's entry at that ranking, deciding which will go into my own Top 100 or not. 

I Will still need to review my iTunes list as no doubt there will be some songs I love that don't make any hit list. Also, thinking lately I may yet stick with iTunes. I have tried Spotify and am currently trying YouTube Premium, but it does nothing for me. When I need my music is in my car. So it's my iPod. Yeah you can download onto apps and such, but looking for some specific songs on these apps, I could not find the versions I want. That had knobs on it frankly! So the jury is still out. I may yet go the whole hog, or at least go back to iTunes fully.

This project is a tough one for me. A bit like the photo organisational goal, it just sits there year after year, with very little effort put into it. Man, tough is a fucking understatement and a half. It has taken me years and I have still made so little progress. Ok it doesn't help that I am usually tanked when I get the urge to delve into music stuff, but this is a project that matters to me, so I need to progress it.

I had a thought today, actually I have had this thought before, but today prompted me to post. I have thought a few times about exploring artist's back catalogues in order to see if they have any undiscovered tunes that I might love. Knowing my fav's as I do, and knowing that I know my fav fav's inside and out, well there are definitely good chances to find more good music. After all, it was exploring INXS's full back catalogue that gave me so much love for their music. Same for Hoodoo Gurus and Green Day. But the artist today that took me by surprise, in so much as having the huge back catalogue that I was not aware of, is Billy Joel.

You see, Billy Joel was certainly an artist from my formative years. My dear Mum loved him - actually Billy Joel and Lionel Richie were her fav's, at least those that I was willing to bop along to in the background! I think there were others like Neil Sedaka for instance that I was less into. But hey, maybe I'll give him a try one day, now that my tastes and personality have matured as well.

Anyway, I have always loved Billy Joel. I also knew he had a long career, and numerous albums. On top of this, I knew that some of my favourite songs of his were not chart toppers. My Life and You May Be Right being chief among them.

So what spun me out was this. I was listening to the song Say Goodbye To Hollywood, and thought to myself, when was this written? I was thinking 1982-1984'ish. Turns out it was 1976, far earlier than I thought. But here's the kicker - the entry I saw that stated the year of release also mentioned that it was on his 11th studio album. 11th!!!! In 1976!!!! Holy shit, that means that by the early 80's when I thought he was a breakout artist, he was in fact already a legend. The awesome part about it is that I have a lot of songs to listen to that I have either never heard, or not since I was a young boy in Hong Kong, when I first heard my parent's albums.

Earlier I mentioned Wild Gold. I went back to it to get a song that had corrupted on my iPod. Researching online to find the album, I soon realised they did a heap of Wild Gold, I didn't realise there were so many volumes!!! I may have to add a couple more on the journey, as I discovered a number of songs on here that I possibly would not have found otherwise.

Anyway, enough of this post for now, need to get it out on the blog and get the process of compiling song lists to review started.