About: Introduction

about

tjr
● Wm. Sheridan t/a TJR


Greetings from Glasgow

quote.png let that boy boogie-woogie… becoz it’s in him… and it got to come out

^ Wise words, as told from John Lee Hooker's papa to mama… his old man knew the score. Hiya pals! It's me, William, – on-hiatus DJ and avid record-collector – and it's great to have your company here on my music review website.

Basically I'm evaluating my entire collection – the good, the bad and the ugly – with a view to producing a decent guide (or at least an interesting aside!) for jukebox rebels the world over.

I promise you consistency of opinion, unashamed subjectivity, and a truly eclectic tour-de-monde, literally from all ages of recorded music.

john peel
● John Peel; at the epicentre of all post rock n roll explosions

So, what sort of music are you into?” is the one question that I can never give a straight answer to. I subscribe to the generality that Pop Culture sucks, Counter Culture rocks – it’s where the creativity’s at, almost always. Throughout the decades, Peel was at the epicentre of the interesting new developments and, like him, I’m especially keen to hear something that I haven’t heard before. I’m looking for drama and character. There’s a certain beauty to be found in the darkness. Ferocity and fragility are equally powerful to me. I dig repetition. I love melody. All of this I find best in Punk, in Techno, in Folk, in Indie, in Reggae, in African, and in Blues music.

The Rock n Roll earthquake of ‘56 made a huge impact. It pales, however, to the real big bang of ’76. The Punk explosion empowered the left field with a sense of “can-do” – a DIY culture which didn’t answer to a man in a grey suit. The effects from this continue to resonate some four decades later, the weird and wonderful floating nebulae nestling and nuzzling its way into hundreds of sub-genres of sub-genres. The world of music is stronger, richer and more imaginative than it’s ever been. Slowly and surely, more and more quality art is being produced – and from a wider range of countries – than ever before.

at Buster's
● Suggs sent me to Orange St. The Prince wasn't home!

This project itself has existed in some form since the late 1980s, since when I've rated over 160,000 tracks and 8,000 albums. It’s taken me more than half a million minutes to listen to the whole thing from beginning to the end – all the way from Electro Hippies' 1 second magnum opus, "Mega-Armageddon Death", to Julian Cope's snappy little 73 minute 40 seconds ditty, "Breath Of Odin".

My best-of playlists are my huge reward; a real pleasure to my ears. All of which is very well and good, but preparing that amount of music for an online presentation is something else altogether, although my amateur website building skills have improved greatly since I joined this Wikidot thingy back in 2015.

In the long-term you can expect to see over 10,000 albums fully profiled, and charts galore covering albums, songs, genres and artists best-ofs. Supporting these profiles, you can now see a great many video and audio embeds, highlighting individual tracks or grouped as playlists. As well as all that, you can see full artist profiles (25% fulfilled @ 05-Nov-2020) with at-a-glance discographies compiled. Enriching the presentation, is content from Wikipedia, YouTube and Spotify.

My ravenous appetite for new discoveries from both the past and the present remains, though it continues to stress me that the collected albums from the recent years are stockpiling, awaiting my care and attention. We'll get there when we get there, eh?

John Peel also had this dilemma; the musical richness that flowed forth from his output could only come from someone with a lifetime devotion to digging, listening and reporting. He was the leader of my kinda church, and it's right that he’s with us pictorially, as he is spiritually, on every page of this site… keeping it Peel.

Hopefully, in among-st all of my documenting, you might find something new that rocks your world – that would be pretty damned awesome to me. And Peelie.


William
24-Sep-2018
updated 05-Nov-2020

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