Hey What’s Up? Glorious Noise Is 17

Time flies. Seventeen years? Crazy. GLONO is the same age as the lead singer of my favorite band. There are kids in bands today who weren’t even born when we started this. That blows my mind.

I remember turning 17 the summer before my senior year of high school. John Cougar had told us to “hold on to 16 as long as you can” and I took that advice seriously. But that was almost 30 years ago. That blows my mind too.

Over the past year we’ve been trying to publish something every weekday, which has required seeking out a lot of new music. That’s been rewarding for me, personally. Too many grownups get stuck in the rut of feeling like there’s nothing good being made anymore. As if music peaked your senior year of high school. When you were 17. The same age as this website.

That’s baloney. Of course it is, but the older I get the more I realize that you have to consciously and actively look for good stuff. It doesn’t just fall in your lap like it used to when you were always hanging out with friends and listening to records together and going to bars and shows all the time. It’s work now to find new music.

Is it worth the effort? Yeah, for sure. It’s awesome. We’ve found tons of great new songs by artists I’d never heard before, and many of them happen to be young women. There’s still plenty of old dudes kicking out the jams (and GLONO will always love classic rock), but most of the exciting new music is being made by girls. (Neil Portnow’s a moron.) Look back at the past year’s worth of songs we’ve covered and you’ll see that about half are from bands fronted by women. And way more than half if we’re talking about brand new bands. So that’s cool.

But I get why my fellow grownups don’t want to put in the effort. That’s fine. I am happy to listen to 80s music and drink wine while our kids play videogames in the basement. That’s fun too.

On the other hand, if you want to be exposed to some good new music, we’re here for you. At Glorious Noise we work hard so you don’t have to. Like Scrubber Bubbles. Tune in, and we’ll turn you on to good music.

And if all goes well, we’ll be doing this for another 17 years. I hope I’m still digging new music in my sixties. I have no doubt that kids will still be picking up guitars and playing rock and roll. The only questions are: Will my ears still work, and if so, will they still be open to hearing new sounds?

We’ll see…

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Previous birthdays:

• 2002: Happy Birthday to Glorious Noise!

• 2003 :Terrible Twos: Happy Birthday to Us!

• 2004: Happy Birthday! Three is a Magic Number!

• 2005: Glorious Noise is Four Years Old

• 2006 (belated): The Black and Orange Ball: GLONO’s Fifth Birthday Party

• 2007: Happy Sixth Birthday to Glorious Noise

• 2008: And if the Devil is Six: GLONO is Seven!

• 2009: Glorious Noise Turns Eight Years Old Today; Eight Years Ago: It started with emails…

• 2010: Glorious Noise Is Nine Years Old