a_book_that_changed_my_life raze i woke up one morning in my fourteenth year and almost all the music i thought i loved sounded like shit to me. every song on the radio and every cd i owned was part of the same homogenous sonic smear. it was like some sadistic microscopic man stepped into my brain while i was sleeping and dismantled my dopamine receptors with a pair of cuticle scissors. i didn't know what the hell happened to me. all i knew was i needed new things to listen to. and i had no idea where to find them. i didn't have a computer. not that one of those would have done me much good. it was 1998. the internet was little more than a strange, sleepy city with makeshift shacks where houses should have been and newspapers taped to every window. while hanging out at the devonshire mall and trying to decide if i wanted to buy both volumes of peter guralnick's exhaustive elvis presley biography, a blue_and_red behemoth of a book caught my eye. it was the first edition of "rock: the rough guide". there were pictures of prince, paul weller, and courtney love on the cover. a pull quote described it as a "sexy, all-conquering guide with big, brash entries colourfully written by opinionated maniacs willing to auction their souls merely to get the world to listen to their record collections." i left elvis on the shelf and took the maniacs home with me. that book became my bible. it introduced me to the likes of laura nyro, jane_siberry, mary_margaret o'hara, tim and jeff_buckley, kate_bush, roxy music, brian_eno, talking_heads, david sylvian, mark_hollis, scott walker, wire, pj_harvey, robert wyatt, the blue nile, john_cale, nico, tom_waits, big star, john martyn, nick_drake, morphine, the band, maria mckee, emmylou harris, my bloody valentine, slowdive, bark psychosis, pixies, kevin coyne, sinead o'connor, the auteurs, television, yo la tengo, xtc, pere ubu, suicide, the jam, peter hammill, robert_fripp, husker du, fugazi, slapp happy, robyn_hitchcock, the triffids, throbbing gristle, thin white rope, the stooges, the replacements, ride, the penguin_cafe orchestra, the manic street preachers, mercury rev, tindersticks, and more. i noticed new things in the rolling stones and beatles albums i was sure i knew inside and out. i learned about neil young's ditch trilogy, miles davis' electric period, and got an education in the blues through robert johnson, muddy waters, elmore james, and other giants. music is the marrow of my memory. it's always been the way i orient myself in the world. the soundtrack of my life would be profoundly different if i hadn't grabbed this least likely of rock and roll encyclopedias on a whim one afternoon when i felt like nothing i heard would ever turn me on again. i don't think it's a stretch to say i wouldn't be who i am now without it. 260618 what's it to you? who go blather from