A New Beginning. Really This Time.

It’s been more than a year since I’ve written here, but it’s time to get back to it.

One main reason why I stopped writing here was that I’d gotten it into my head that I needed to write long posts on this bloge, often about serious or personal topics, and those can be hard to write. And how many more pieces need to be published about the really important issues in the world right now, like the risk to American democracy, or the war in Ukraine? Particularly if written by a non-expert, like me.

The other main reason why there hasn’t been much new content here for a while is that I was semi-committed to writing at least weekly, and at least every other week or so, at Star Maker Machine. But that venerable blog, which goes back to at least 2008 (and which I joined in 2011) is on hiatus now, giving me more time to dedicate to writing features at Cover Me. And to reboot Another Old Guy.

So here’s the plan for the new beginning (at least the third incarnation of this relatively little noticed blog): I’m going to try to post something at least every two weeks, and hopefully weekly. And the posts might be short and superficial, although if I have something to ramble on about, I will. My hope is that what I post will be interesting and engaging. But in the interests of full disclosure, the main reason that I write is because I enjoy doing it, and it provides a nice outlet for me from real life. That being said, I invite your engagement in the comments.

To kick off the new, let me go back to the old–a few pieces that I’ve written recently at my other blogging homes.

Most recently, at Cover Me, I wrote my first feature article in many years, honoring Maggie Roche on the anniversary of her death in 2017 by looking at Five Good Covers of her most famous song, “Hammond Song.”

And for what are likely my last three posts at Star Maker Machine, I wrote three In Memoriam posts about drummers who died in 2022, ending with Foo Fighter Taylor Hawkins.

Our featured song today is “New Beginning,” the title track from Tracy Chapman’s fourth album, released in 1995. One interesting fact is that the song features a didgeridoo, an instrument developed and originally played by Aboriginal people in Australia. Apparently, in some Aboriginal groups, it is not supposed to be played by women, and her use of the instrument was reportedly controversial. However, the credits to the New Beginnings album list Scott Roewe as the didgeridoo player, and he’s a man. But Chapmen learned to play the instrument at the Didgeridoo University in Alice Springs, which is a thing (although I’m not sure how good their football team is), and you can see her playing it live on the song here:

By the way, one other thing about the new beginning here is that I’m not going to post links to download the feature song anymore. It’s just easier to embed YouTube videos, and is probably less questionable from a copyright law perspective (which is not my area of legal specialty). And I’m not going to put in the Amazon link anymore, either, since I suspect most of you could find it without my help (or simply rent your music on Spotify or other streaming services).