NHT Blog

Today is exactly eleven years since the first episode of my “Now Hear This Entertainment” podcast was released.  I’m proud to have never missed a week once.  To-date, 574 episodes have been delivered on-time, every Wednesday since February 17, 2014.

It’s interesting as you get older to not only see how your musical taste evolves, not to mention music itself, but how you start to relate to the way you’d hear your parents reacting to the songs they used to like when one or more of those would start playing somewhere.

I’m not going to apologize for using clichés when they’re true.  In fact, an argument might be made that that’s how they become a regular part of our lexicon.  We find that we use these expressions often because they accurately reinforce a key point we’re trying to make.

“You have to spend money to make money” is a saying that has been around and stood the test of time.  And I just had a front row seat to practicing what I preach in this very regard.

I’ll give you until maybe the fifth paragraph of this week’s blog before you stop and think, “Wait, how long is this?” and your eyes drop down as you scroll to see where/when it ends.

In this day and age of short attention spans, you’ll hear some people say you have eight seconds to capture someone’s attention with your video.  Still others will say that it’s actually even less than that.

Yesterday I came back home from Orlando after having been there for the eleventh annual Podfest Multimedia Expo.  I was a speaker during the event but certainly attended lots of other sessions and, yes, participated in lots of networking, both formal and informal.

On my weekly “Now Hear This Entertainment” podcast I will, at times, tell the audience that I really like a certain song by the guest on that episode.  I will emphasize that it underscores how much I took to it when I heard it.  Although, to clarify, I add that it doesn’t mean that I don’t like the songs by other guests that I don’t talk about, and that it’s just more so a statement on how much of a good impression the one I’m referring to made on me.

That was a mouthful, but you’re with me, right?

Two nights ago, I went to see Jim Gaffigan.  Needless to say, he was hilarious.  And I’m not intending to write a review of his act.  Although, there were two jokes he was making that lead nicely into a problem that it would be wonderful to eliminate in this new year.

Pay attention to how many times this week you’re going to hear expressions like, “Leave the past in the past,” or “Look ahead and not back.”  Everyone will be encouraging one another to look forward to 2025 and what the new year holds.

I get all of that, but a major opportunity is being overlooked.

The day after tomorrow is Christmas.  It only happens once a year, making it a very special time.  Think of the 1 in 365 ratio, right?

The odds aren’t as long, but I don’t write song reviews with any degree of regularity.  And so, it’s rather against the odds that here I am doing so for the second week in a row.  Thus, the implication is that something was submitted to me that impressed me enough to be comfortable putting my name behind it.

Five weeks from tomorrow I will fly to Anaheim, California, for the annual NAMM Show.  The massive tradeshow centers around the music products industry.  Think guitars, drums, sheet music, retailers, manufacturers, artists, and an extensive list of attendees of more than one hundred thousand.