Reasons for doing this:

1. To make a groan-worthy title.


2. In the last few months, several relatives and friends have asked me for music recommendations, and I haven't always had great answers.


3. Other people have asked me what I've been listening to lately. Usually I say, "oh, I dunno."


4. Get influence points on lala.com. It seems hardly anyone I know uses this site, whereas I use it daily. It's free to sign up, they have a huge database, and you can listen to any song all the way through once without paying. If you listen to something based on my recommendation, I get points and my face shows up next to that album so everyone can see how cool I am.


5. For the first time in my life, I finally own a turntable (props to the wife). Now that I listen to music on this once-neglected format as well as CD and digital, I can make new discoveries to pass on to you the reader.


6. Now that I'm no longer have a show on XDU, perhaps this can go a small way toward filling that void.


7. Speaking of XDU, I used to have flowsheets of my shows that I could go back and look at to see what I was digging at the time. Now this can be a record of my genius picks and head-scratching selections, '010 style.


8. I know my friends back home must miss my long-winded diatribes, or "earfuls of Stinge" as they have been called.


9. 'Ric once told me to get my own blog.


10. Someone else once told me I was a good writer, now I can prove him wrong.


11. There are only so many new articles on Duke Basketball Report each day, I gotta have something else to do online once I've read them all.

With that, I'll post my first song. It's the fourth track on Kompakt's Pop Ambient 2002 compilation. Contrary to the title, it's actually a very calming piece of ambient techno.

Dry Retch - Donnacha Costello