Format Frazzle
Posted By Carlo on April 25, 2012
My new acquaintance Alex Malkin, a recent attendee at the Bratenahl ping pong club I help manage, Friended me on Facebook after he saw my blog. He said he thought it was interesting but when I told him I felt sheepish about it, not having “fed” it for nearly five months, he agreed.
So this is my promise. I’ll write a blog entry once a week (I can’t commit to more just now) starting today. It’s a beginning.
The reason it’s hard to feed a blog is that a blog is more than casual. You have to have a topic; it’s not just enough to catch up or excuse yourself, as I so often have in the past.
God knows I have plenty to write about: the ongoing project I call Invisible Soul, a book about underground Cleveland soul music and rhythm ‘n’ blues from the late ‘50s to the early ‘80s (for a taste, visit my Invisible Soul story under The Story of Rock at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame web site) my travels, which have been amazing this past 12 months; changes in my household, like my wife’s imminent graduation from art school, and my daughter’s college search. And all this week, I’m covering the Tri-C Jazz Fest for Jazz Times. So I’m not lacking for material, verbal and/or visual.
But over the past year, I’ve been putting more and more on Facebook, mainly because it’s so much easier. It’s a bulletin board, it’s a conversation, it’s a market builder. But it doesn’t lend itself to depth. For that, you need this. Better yet, you need outlets in newspapers (endangered), magazines (hard to crack) and books (hard to write, especially when you’re like me, craving an old-fashioned publisher).
At the same time, my old book, Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories, continues to thrive. Tonight I’ll be touting it at a discussion of Cleveland rock ‘n’ roll with two other authorities, Michael Heaton and John Gorman. Should be lively.
Just giving you a taste of what I’ve been up to and hope to be up to. See you May 2.
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