Although you’re not going to find any insight or witticism from me this week around here I wanted to point you toward my favorite new (well, new to me) music blog. No, it’s not cutting edge or filled with must-know (HA!) news about whatever the hell Wolf Parade or Dan Deacon or some other such shit is up to but, rather, features long, thoughtful posts with extremely personal connections. I don’t even know the authors name -everything is credited to ‘Whiteray’ which may mean ‘Ray White” but I don’t know – but have spent hours reading his pages.

From what I can make out he’s in his mid-late fifties, lives in St. Cloud, MN and first started ardently collecting records and listening to the radio around 1969-1970. Most of his posts focus on music released between 1967 and 1989 but there’s the odd deep, deep oldie in there, too. The best part though isn’t all the great songs he’s posting. It’s the way he’s writing about them. In plain language (which is to say readable but in no way simple-minded), with a wealth of knowledge and history, he connects nearly every song he posts about to some specific moment or instance in his life. Everything on here is personal in some way. It’s the antidote for those confused or made ill by people for whom music is merely background noise or passive entertainment. It’s a gorgeously fun time that I can’t recommend highly enough.

Please go visit him at Echoes In The Wind. And leave a thank you comment if you’re gonna gab a bunch of songs, OK?