Walking and Rolling-- Introdcution (or How Did I Get Here?)

I hate exercising-- I really hate it.  Every attempt I have ever made to impose an exercise regimen on myself has failed miserably.  However, I don't mind walking-- heck I even kind of enjoy it, within carefully managed parameters-- and after inheriting an iPod-type music playing device last Spring (my kids ridicule me 'cuz I keep calling it a "Walkman"), I started walking several times a week for about an hour while listening to albums (albums are the perfect musical structural form and, in a happy coincidence, also are just exactly long enough to fit into a 45-60 minute walk).  The walks haven't exactly turned me into Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I have been able to walk and listen regularly, and so, since I belong to the Church of Rock and Roll (and no other damn churches, that's for sure), the walks have become, well, a religious experience for me, as well as the first exercise routine I have ever maintained for more than a millisecond.

This past summer I also joined Facebook, with great ambivalence.  I’m not really a computer Luddite or tech-hostile— there’s plenty of computer time, email, texting, etc in my life, for sure-- but I am a bit standoffish and hostile to the Electronic Joneses telling me what I must do or join to keep up with them.  However, the point was made to me that, professionally, if I’m not hip to this kinda stuff and don’t have some kind of a social media persona and presence, then I’m marked as being behind the curve and a Luddite, whether I wanna be or not.  And so, into the FB quagmire I wandered.  While it's kinda fun to see cute pics of everyone's kids every hour on the hour, and has been nice to reconnect with some souls otherwise lost to me, I really haven't found myself motivated to broadcast much in the way of my own family’s triumphs or tragedies.  Actually, I have often been kinda repulsed by the detail in which people make their lives public (e.g. FB posts re: the changing color of people's mucus, etc), as well as by the extent to which some people are enamored of their own voices (or typing).   However, I have found that I have been moved at  various points to post musings on various musical stimuli (e.g. a documentary about the last days of Levon Helm, or recently purchased albums by Jack White’s various projects), and that I can’t resist replying to almost any musical tidbit that floats through the FB stream.  Last night, some friends posted that they were eating at a restaurant called Nellcote, and when I felt the overpowering urge to note publicly on FB that they were eating a place which shared a name with the legendary chateau where the Stones recorded Exile on Main Street, I realized that maybe what I really wanted to do was have a place to publicly ramble on about music.  And so: welcome to walknroll— Mike’s music blog about stuff he’s listening to on his walks and elsewhere.  I plan to post a couple of times a week, hope you find it amusing, and look forward to you all slinging some rock and roll mud back at me.