Chez

I'm old -- depressingly old. I learned about new music through word of mouth (I had a couple of friends who not only had great taste themselves, but older brothers with even greater taste) and the radio. When I got to college, I started reading lots of reviews in Rolling Stone, Spin and (later) CMJ. My college had a decent radio station and the student newspaper had good album reviews (they significantly improved after I started writing them -- a major benefit of that "job" was free albums and free concert tickets). My senior year I took a course on the history of rock and roll which grea

^^^ Completely agree. I don't do stadium shows for that very reason. United Center is the largest venue I'll go to and then only if it's a bucket-list band I've never seen previously (e.g. Radiohead).

I've been hate-watching the last season of House of Cards.

I just finished "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini. Both were extraordinary.

That book opened my eyes (and ears) to many bands I had overlooked. It's fantastic.

^^^ 50 shows in any year is impressive. Congratulations on your retirement and on achieving your post-retirement mission..

Even though I was warned repeatedly not to go back there, today I'm going back to Rockville (MD) for a meeting.

Au Cheval is pretty great for burgers too. Love Kuma's and was shocked they closed the store in Lakeview.

I abandoned vinyl in 1987 and haven't looked back so I'm not as familiar with post-1987 album sides as I once was (prior to 1987). That said, Side 2 of "Who's Next" is pretty great.

My wife worked hard on the Casten campaign and was invited to and attended his victory party last night. I shudder to think what my house would have been like this morning had Roskam won! Underwood's victory was even more surprising to me. Some of the races on the state and county level were decided by les than 500 votes. Crazy.