My tastes in music are very, very broad. Obviously, since I do a blues podcast, I love the blues. But chances are excellent I like at least some of the same music you do. Literate lyrics and a strong melody are essential in most of the other music to which I listen.
There are people here in MySpace who have long, long lists of musicians they like, but I've got more than 27,000 songs (yes, twenty-seven thousand!) on my iPod - can you imagine how long my list would have to be? Oh, Lord!
Currently, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Jon Dee Graham, Alejandro Escovedo and Elvis Costello head my list, followed by Andy Partridge of XTC and Bruce Springsteen.
While I like some metal (on a song-by-song basis), I find most of it repetitive and ho-hum boooh-ring. The guys in Bowling for Soup put it best - the metal genres are populated by "... singers who are mad at their dads," a line that absolutely slays me.
I'm fascinated by the pop music of other cultures.
Movies
There are so many great movies - where to start? I usually find many of my favorites on lists compiled by serious film critics.
No, I don't consider most of the writers quoted in movie ads in newspapers to be serious film critics.
I'll be impressed if you tell me (honestly) that you've heard of, let alone seen, "The Italian Straw Hat" by Rene Claire, "The Bicycle Thief" by Vittorio de Sica or "M" by Fritz Lang.
I find I'm almost always disappointed by movies that are hyped to the skies.
Television
Hmmmmmmmm ... great television, great television ... surely there must be some. Oh, yeah - The Sopranos!! But I'll be damned if I can think of much else. Oh, there's some *fun* television ... but I usually watch television in between doing other things, or during evenings when I'm too tired to do much else.
Books
Again, too many to name. If you choose your reading from the best seller lists, you haven't yet grasped the fact that, except in very rare cases, total sales and popularity are not guarantors of literary merit - and literary merit means a lot to me.
I've been called a literary snob more than once, and ya know what? Guilty as charged. There's too much great literature yet to be read for me to waste time on bestseller pop lit.
The Godfather of English literature is William Shakespeare, of course. If you have bad memories of Shakespeare from English classes - get over them - now!
My other favorite authors are (in no particular order): Nelson Algren, James T. Farrell, Ernest Hemingway, Robertson Davies, Mark Twain, James Joyce, John Dos Passos, John Updike, Phillip Roth, Toni Morrison, Richard Yates, Eudora Welty.
Extra points if you've read *anything* by J.P. Donleavy, another one of my favorites.
All-around writer with extensive experience writing hard news, features and advertising copy. My writing is clean and tight, with little need for editing. I will NOT massage the news to conform to any particular political viewpoint. As a result, I've
About me: I'm proprietor of Murphy's Saloon Blues Podcast, Podcast Home of the Blues, a free weekly podcast featuring the best podsafe blues and blues rock. I'm also a writer.
I've been podcasting for more than three years, and I'm in it for the long haul, because a great deal of radio sucks (c'mon, you know it's true), and they never play the blues. I welcome submissions from musicians, and suggestions from listeners because I want the music that's the foundation of rock music to be heard.
About my name - it's the Latin version of Jerome, and St. Jerome is the patron saint of libraries and librarians. Feel free to infer whatever you like about me from those facts. Yeah, and I also like the art of Hieronymus Bosch, which I find very apropos for our times.
Who I'd like to meet: I wish I'd known my paternal grandfather as I grew up. From everything I was told about him, he was a very interesting guy. Grandpa quit school at 16 after my great-grandfather died, went to work as a bank teller to support his family ... and within relatively few years rose to become (at the time) the youngest bank president in the history of the state where he worked. Imagine how small the chances are of that happening today - ha! And what people didn't know was that he was actually four years younger than he'd told them, a fact my father discovered years later, and only by accident. In my mind, Grandpa fit the definition of "self-made man" to a t. Unfortunately, Grandpa died just several months after I was born.
Contemporary famous people? Celebrities are just regular folks who got lucky in their chosen fields of endeavor. Oh, without question they're talented and deserve some respect for their talent, but I'm not inclined to get all goo-goo-eyed around 'em.
Also, anyone famous for being famous - I trust I don't have to provide examples - hold absolutely, positively no interest for me what. so. ever.
Please note:Anyone is welcome to be my MySpace friend (except for porn sites, of course), but do me a favor? Please don't view the opportunity to post a comment here as a chance to post a blatantly commercial ad for whatever your enterprise may be. If you post an ad, I'll remove it at my first opportunity.
If you have the phrase "helping people dream again" in your profile, your "friend" request will be denied. I am not, repeat, not interested in participating in any kind of multi-level marketing scheme. Period, end of story. I'm also not interested in being friends with attractive women whose suggestively worded MySpace pages prominently display a link to their "other" sites.
Gig or CD release notices from musicians are welcome, because music, musicians, and their friends and fans, are why I'm here.
..Sorry for being out of touch. I wanted to let you know that I'm in a new band called the Sunshine Collective. It is quite different from what you have heard from me in the past. Our full length CD will be out on January 19, however we have a new holiday single, Our Winter Wonderland, available on itunes, CD Baby, and as a free download on our site. I hope this song will become part of your holiday mix!
I would love your feedback on the new single as well as the two new Sunshine Collective songs we have posted on our page. Please join us on our brand new myspace, facebook, and twitter pages.
Your support means tons, so thank you! Hope you enjoy! Have a wonderful holiday, Stephanie..
Thanks for the Add Murphy: Really enjoy your podcast.Maybe you could play some music from our neck of the woods.Lots of good blues going down in the Northeast Ohio area. Thanks Again
Hello there Mr Murphy, and thank you for the add. I visited Chicago in 2001 and, by sheer good luck, found the Blues Festival was taking place that week in Grant Park. What a day...saw Chuck Berry and many other local bleusmen. Had a cracking time there and plan to go again soon. Good site you've got here. Keep up the good work!! Cheers, Kieran.
Here's a big welcome to Hieronymus Murphy From Brighton UK. Thankyou for the Add to friends, i am thrilled to be a small part of the audiance of Friends that you have. I look forward to being updated by you on all future venue's and the work that you do. I am proud to call you Friend and i wish you wealth and happiness in all that you do with best wishes from karel.
