The Black Crowes: Locust Street
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For this writer, the main job of a music blogger is to contextualize the music. This can be accomplished by setting the stage with a theme, attaching personal experiences to a song or explaining its history. Very few bloggers do all three, Locust St does all that and more.
In 2005, while making the transition from UseNet to the Blogosphere, I came across Locust St and was blown away. It wasn't the first music blog I'd seen, but it was the first to contextualize the music on a professorial level with prose equal to the art of the songs discussed. Chris doesn't just write about music, he frames it with art, literature and movies from the day the songs were composed. One gets a chance to bathe themselves in the atmosphere they were written in. I'm not aware of any music blogger that has the knowledge of Jazz Chris possesses and his understanding of music from the Acoustic Era is unparalleled. This heady package inspired me to turn my online activities towards music - I can safely state it's the main reason why I'm blogging about it today.
Now, this is kind of backwards - the theme states songs that inspired blogs. In this case, I'm going to suspend disbelief and take Chris on his word that his blog inspired The Black Crowes' Chris Robinson to write Locust Street. If you're a regular reader, you'll know that's not a big jump to make.
Quite simply, Locust St is the gold standard to judge all serious music blogs against. That's a pretty bold statement, but then again, it's a pretty amazing blog. If you've never been to Locust St, there's no better time than right now to visit.