Around the time that I wrote this post, I reached two life milestones that, while mostly unrelated, can’t help but make me think of them in tandem. The first is that I reached the age of 40, a number that has long filled me with some sense of anxiety and dread. The second is that, on my custom-modded iPod Classic, which has a 512 GB SSD hard drive (472 GB available for use), I finally passed the 50% level (236 GB) in filling it with music to listen to.

by John McFerrin

My name is John McFerrin, and I’m a shuffle-holic.

by John McFerrin

“What grade should I give this album?” This question has been asked by all of the members of the Discord & Rhyme family at some point in our lives; as mentioned many times in our episodes, we all first became aware of each other through a collection of Web 1.0 music review sites where the writers gave grades to various albums with supporting text to accompany them. Some of these sites graded on a scale of 1-10, some used star ratings (up to *****), and some used letter grades. Since these sites generally accepted reader comments, it became regular practice to include our own proposed rating for a given album in addition to our own written thoughts. Later, at some point or another, most of us went through the process of writing our own reviews and providing our own grades, some within the context of a collective site (i.e. Music Junkies Anonymous), and some within the context of our very own review sites (e.g. CosmicBen’s Record Reviews, The Disclaimer Music Review Archive, John McFerrin’s Reviews of Music). Each of us in turn chose our own scale to use; most followed the typical 1-10 approach; Will used letter grades; and I eventually shifted to using hexadecimal (base-16), a rating system that makes perfect sense to me but is an acquired taste for others.

by John McFerrin

As of July 2019, “John McFerrin’s Reviews of Music” (otherwise known as “John McFerrin’s Rock and Prog Reviews”) has existed in some form for 20 years (initial writing began in late July, and the site first went public, with a whopping 4 artist pages, in October, 2019). The site has grown slowly but steadily from humble beginnings into something I am genuinely proud of, and it has served as a gateway for me to many personal connections I would otherwise not have (not least of which are the other members of Discord & Rhyme). In commemoration of this anniversary, I wish to tell the story (a story that I have most definitely not told in public previously) of why I began this site in the first place, and why I continued with it despite every opportunity to discard it.

by John McFerrin

As has been the case for many a self-professed “rock lover” through the years, I had little use for jazz as a whole into my late 20s. I didn’t exactly mind its existence, but I only had interest in consuming it second-hand, through rock musicians that either came from a jazz background or who had been influenced by jazz in regards to compositional or playing style. The idea of actually listening to a jazz album for fun seemed completely foreign to me; I had a couple of Miles Davis albums on mp3 that I had listened to once or twice, but they seemed far too diffuse and too focused on superior instrumental technique at the expense of discernable melody and structure for me to enjoy them. In late 2008, though, I decided that I hadn’t given the genre a fair chance, and I asked my brother and some online acquaintances to offer me recommendations, both for individual albums and for overall listening and purchasing strategy. By the end of 2009, I could reasonably be called a jazz enthusiast, and my jazz collection and love for the genre has continued to expand at a steady pace ever since. In this post, I want to share some insights that I have picked up through the years that might help somebody unsure of how to proceed when venturing into the vast rewarding world of jazz.