olivia newton-john | We Are in Xanadu

For my first blog on We are in Xanadu, I just wanted to give insight into the who, what and why of this blog.

Music and photography are two of my passions and I decided to bring them together to create what I hope to be a successful blog. I have a photography blog but have basically abandoned it at this point. I am beginning a career as a photographer currently under the business name “Shandopics”. To the side of this blog, you will see the Flickr links, etc.

I became bored with the photography blog but also, the thought of being technical, explaining how I take photos, etc really was a boring concept to me. There are soooo many photography blogs (well ok, there are so many music blogs as well) but I thought by combining my two loves that I would be more invested in keeping the blog up to date.

The main purpose of the blog will center on music reviews, some music news and hopefully introducing people to new music as well as older music that you may have never heard of or forgot about. The photography is more of a showcasing of my work along with the blog. That way I will give more exposure to my photography while at the same time commenting on music.

When it comes to music, I pretty much like every genre except for polka, opera and other not so popular genres. Well, who am I to say that polka isn’t popular, it just isn’t in my world. If one listens to my Sansa Fuze + (that’s right, I do not own an IPOD currently and am trying not to, I will talk more about that in other posts), I am all over the place musically. From dance/club music to classic rock, to vocal/pop standards to country. And when I speak of country on this blog, I will mainly be referring to country music I grew up with that came from the 50’s through the mid 80’s and maybe some 90’s. Current country is really just plain boring to me and most of country today seems to have lost its roots with the past. Most country to me sounds like a pop song with a “twang” here and a “twang” there for country flavor. I like my country with ALOT of twang and for the most part, alot of depression! But more on country and depression in another post.

In each post after this one, I will attempt a review of some kind whether it is of a current song/album or past one. I will try and list some songs I am currently listening to at that moment and links to where you can find the music. Of course my concept of what goes into each post could change at any given time but that is the basic idea at this time.

As for the name of the blog, We are in Xanadu, it harks back to the awful but wonderfully awful movie “Xanadu” starring Olivia Newton-John and what unfortunately was Gene Kelly‘s last movie. The song “Xanadu” holds a very special place in my heart. It is in my top 3 of all time favorite songs and no matter what, always makes me smile and almost everytime, dance in some form or fashion like I’m on roller skates! “Xanadu” was also one of those roller skating movies of the late 70’s and early 80’s. The soundtrack is amazing with the combination of ELO‘s production and lyrics added with the delivery of Olivia’s vocal talent!