etnobofin

Derek Bailey – What’s New?
From Ballads: Tzadik [Buy]

Happy New Year ! - I wish that 2007 brings with it everything you hope and dream for.

For 2007, things are going to change around here. Recently, doing some maintenance on etnobofin.com, I got thinking about what the heck it’s all about. For a short time, while peering under the bonnet, (that’s “hood” in many North American dialects, comprenez-vous?), hands smeared with excess oil and burning my nose on steam hissing from the radiator, I did seriously consider driving the whole rickety contraption off a cliff to join the estimated 2.72 million abandoned blogs drifting about in cyberspace.

After all, if etnobofin were abandoned this blog would be in good company – for some really interesting music blogs shut up shop in 2006 as their authors found that other lives and other people required more attention – the work of david fenech, ecrivains.org, samizdjazz, and ianB’s various projects notable among them.

However, the decision was eventually taken not to throw the kitten kaboodle out with the bathwater.

Instead, etnobofin.com will become more inclusive in its subject matter. Music has largely dominated these pages since March 2005. To be honest, there are so many great music blogs out there now doing a better job that I can ever do, and ultimately it’s not clear that I can continue to spin a cohesive narrative out of personal musical interests that are increasingly divergent. (More on that another time).

What will etnobofin.com be about in 2007? Well, like everything it’s a work in progress. It’ll adhere more closely to its mission statement. While music will not disappear from view, it will break the “only-cover-one-topic” rule of blogging and will possibly include more about journeys, writing, naïve stabs at politics, spiritual bits and bobs, ripping yarns, stupid stuff.

Miles Davis will have to learn rub shoulders with Marc Chagall and Ingmar Bergman and BBC Radio Four and scottish islands and cups of tea and candles and the necessity for sleep.

My hopes for etnobofin.com in 2007 are that:

- it will become more interested in people

- it can be honest and humble

- it will smile and laugh at itself

- it’s readers (no matter how few) will be interested and entertained

So that’s where we’re at. If none of this sounds like fun, delete your RSS feeds and Favourite links right now.