The Hopeless Journey: A Modern Music Lover's Journey Through the History of Western Music

"I think I'm approaching a complete knowledge of music," said a certain friend of mine whose identity I will take to the grave. "Is that so, Tiberius," I said, "then what about the Beatles and Radiohead?" A look of disdain crossed his face as he carefully formulated his response. "Music that matters," he said.

Poor taste aside, this exchange got me thinking about the limitations of my own musical experience. What about those genres of music that I had completely written off? For that matter, what about the cultural and musical origins of my favorite artists? Surely they have something to offer me. As it turned out, my failure to grasp Tiberius' use of hyperbole as a rhetorical device had inadvertently led me down a path of destiny. No ordinary path of destiny, mind you, but one so absurd and tedious that its only likely claim to a destiny was one of abject failure. As such, I will call this, "The Hopeless Journey."

The Hopeless Journey is my attempt to explore the entire history of western music, or at least the important parts of it... that we know about... and that I can purchase on iTunes in some form. Although I'm sure to give up on this quest in the very near future, I will share with you here its beginnings. Clearly, it would make little sense to structure these "reviews" in the traditional sense, as I'm no more qualified to judge the quality of a medieval motet than I am qualified to compete in the 200m wheelchair dash at the Special Olympics. As such, rather than try to ask, "How good is this music?", I will try to answer the question, "What does this music have to offer me?" By "me", here, I of course mean "myself". Any resemblance the content of this blog has to the value the music might have to, say, "you", is purely coincidental.