Thursday, June 9, 2016

#BOE

Growing up and being a developing drummer myself, one of the greats I followed with zeal, was Buddy Rich. He endorsed Bose speakers and I used to keep the magazine ad up on my wall.

That was the first time Bose came to my attention. I eventually discovered their acoustic expertise firsthand, and not that long ago, Susan bought me my first a pair of Bose headphones.

Soon after starting an account on Twitter, I began tweeting lists of songs I was listening to with my Bose headphones. I began using the hashtag #BOE, which means Bose On Ears when I start each playlist, and Bose Off Ears, when I end it.

Last Christmas, my son was kind enough to get me the noise-cancelling version of the headphones! 

Sweet.

It's always great to hear from Twitter followers who are music fans and who "like" certain tweets containing certain songs, or suggest other songs I should listen to. 

I get a lot of "likes" from fans of artists who run Twitter accounts that pay tribute to those artists.

For the first couple of years on Twitter, I would just tweet out the name of each song and its artist. Then, a few months ago, curious to see whether I might get any response, I began tagging artists who had Twitter accounts.

I’ve had “likes” from all sorts of amazing artists, including Meghan Trainor, Lyle Lovett, Kansas, Monster Truck, Jon Bellion, Serena Ryder, Burton Cummings, Whilk and Misky and Everything Everything.

I’ve had “retweets” by artists such as Sass Jordan and Matt Dusk, who I had the pleasure of interviewing a few years ago (October 30, 2013 blog - "Fun Times Baby").




I've had several local artists I've interviewed "like" tweets in which I mention their songs, such as John Jacob Magistery, Bud Rice, Florence K, Made Them Lions, and Steve Hill. 

John Waite began following me. I followed him back.

One cool experience was hearing from the awesome band, Sola Rosa, who I first discovered in a television beer commercial. They’re a New Zealand group that blends rock, urban, latin, funk, jazz and electronic. Through tweets, I got to engage a little bit with Andrew Spraggon, the artist behind the band. 

My listening sessions are most often at night, with me listening to a song that leads me to another song, which leads me into a mood that conjures up a melody, that makes me think of an artist, and so on.

Not all artists are on Twitter, and not all artists on Twitter, respond.

Current American presidential hopefuls can attest to the power of Twitter. I got my own little taste, incidentally, when I interviewed Justin Bieber's musical director (April 29, 2014 blog - "Look Me Up"). 

Who knew that for an avid musician and music fan, Twitter could be so much fun?  I’m not tweeting songs just to see if I hear from artists on Twitter, but when I do hear from them, it’s the #bombdiggity!