Give Me That Old Time Underground/Prog Rock

Okay, I'm late making a blog-post-a-day, but I just figured out what I want to write.

Firstly this is my "First" official post for the Blogathon thing. I'm a couple hours late, it being after midnight, though perhaps yesterday's "Test" post could count as the first, as I mention this there. So lemme tack that banner code onto the end of this post - there, now go click on it after you read this. :-)

If I didn't have enough forums and interests that take up my time, I joined two more online communities, these concerning audio equipment, stereos and such for good reproduction of music. There's AudioKarma that I'd seen off and on for years, much of it being a general discussion of what model is what and how people feel about particular models of speakers or turntables, then there's DIYAudio, a more technical site for high-end equipment design and modification.

But AudioKarma also has music discussions, and it seems much of it centers around the music that was popular when some of the older but good stereo equipment came out. I feel fortunate that at age 10, circa 1968, I tuned the radio to WPLO-FM, a station that I much later learned was part of the "Underground FM" movement. The station played many songs that weren't quite in the Top 40's, from the psychedelic era, progressive rock, and bands such as the Grateful Dead. There's some long story here with many emotions, partly concerning other things going on in my life at the time, but suffice it to say the music I heard had a great influence on me. One "problem" here is I want to know what all I heard, artists and song titles, so I can hunt down the music and hear it all again. But there's much I do remember, and with the rich content of the Web I've found most of the songs I remember, or at least info on the groups.

Here's a song I heard, as best as I recall, ONLY on WPLO-FM at the time circa late 1960's. I've only heard it ONCE since, on a Sunday Morning retrospective of WPLO as par of "Alex Cooley's Electric Ballroom" Sunday morning radio show on 96 Rock Atlanta, circa 1996. The band's name is The Left Banke, which I never would have remembered, but I did remember the song name from the 1996 playing, "Pretty Ballerina." I saw the title while seeing the 45 single on Youtube while the band's big hit "Walk Away Renee" was playing. I had no idea the same band did both songs, and I was excited to find "Pretty Ballerina and hear it again. So here it is:

This has been a True Blast From The Past. Had you been tuned to a modern radio station, you wouldn't have heard this.

This Is A Test.

This is a test. Had this been a real blog post, you would be reading it now.

Wait. You ARE reading it. Perhaps you shouldn't be reading this.

Okay, maybe this IS a real blog post. I'm testing posting because it's been a while since I made a blog post and I want to be sure I still know how. What prompted me to make a new post is something I saw on twitter (I was looking at the #fawm tag that I had just used, to see who else and how often it's been used lately), this blogging contest about blogging every day in May. Last Novermber I wrote an average of 16,666+ words per day of fiction that adds up to 50,000 words of a novel for NaNoWriMo, so I think I can do this. Except, that, like, other people can read my blog posts.

And yes, I've done some things since my last post here, back whenever that was. Maybe I'll write about some of these things in May.