Why Johnny's Musical Soapbox?

The truth is, this isn't my first attempt at blogging. In fact, this isn't even my first attempt at blogging using this URL. Back in 2014 when I started what eventually became OmniChannel Communications, I launched this site as Johnny's Marketing Soapbox. I'm proud of the content I put out, but as much as I enjoy my work, writing about it got boring after a while. As my business took off, I rationalized that I had less time to blog and Johnny's Marketing Soapbox became little more than an afterthought.

The thing is, I do find writing enjoyable and therapeutic. I just needed to find a topic I really felt passionate about in its own right.

This site almost became Johnny's Mighty Sandwich Blog. Almost.

Don't get me wrong. I do love sandwiches. I envisioned a blog that would allow me to travel around town and around the country and around the world writing about the sandwiches I ate and the sandwich shops where I ate them. It was a glorious vision. Except when I, as the world's most famous sandwich eater, looked down and couldn't see my feet because my enormous gut was in the way.

Hey, I could just eat healthy sandwiches, right? As an avid sandwich eater, I'm ashamed I ever had that thought.

So what could I blog about? Then one afternoon while I was listening to the one and only Jim Ladd on SiriusXM Deep Tracks, it hit me. What's the one thing (other than food) that I've been passionate about since I was a young boy? What's the one thing I've enjoyed virtually every day since the fourth grade? What's the one thing I never get tired of (and can't make me fat)? Listening to music!

I know I was in fourth grade when I got hooked on music because that's when my dad turned our family home into a college bar called Papa Joe's Hide-Away and I got unlimited access to the jukebox (not to mention the pool table and the Smarty pinball machine). That would make it 1971.

When my parents got divorced, my mom got the console stereo. When I got tired of listening to Herb Alpert albums (which I still love, btw), I hooked up an external antenna to the console, discovered FM radio, picked up a rock station from New York City, and really submersed myself in rock music. The year was 1973. I know that because my favorite song, by some band I'd never heard of called Led Zeppelin, was D'yer Mak'er.

So why Johnny's Musical Soapbox? Well, partly because I'm lazy and didn't want to mess with a new URL Beyond that, however, I'm celebrating 50 years of listening to great music -- on the radio, on records, on cassettes, on eight-tracks, on CDs, on streaming services and, of course, live and in person.

What can you expect if you happen to read beyond this first post? Randomness, for sure. I'm going to write about whatever musical ideas pop into my head. I'll probably post some good memes, too, because God knows I love a good meme. Eventually I hope to catalog my vinyl collection on here and maybe even start a little online record store. Who knows? Certainly not me.

If you wanna come along for the ride, please by all means subscribe.