Hello hello

Steve Hogan here. I'm humbly accepting John's invite to contribute to his music blog. I do so as a guy who, like John loves music, but unlike John sucks at actually creating any. Seriously, I still need to get beyond merely learning how to tune the ukulele my wife bought me. I blame my parents for being too cheapjack for me to get a band instrument, as well as elementary school music classes having us sing stuff like this: Yes, yes, it's all very cute when there's an adorable moppet involved, but when you're a man cub pushing ten, this is the sonic equivalent of Ralphie being forced to wear the pink bunny costume at Christmas. I went through classes sullenly mouthing words and not singing so much. When I started to do a lot of theater in high school, I'd swear they staged "Once Upon a Mattress" just so they could have a musical where I'd play a mute king who sang in pantomime.

So as I post here keep in mind that at best, a friend in high school taught me how to play the main riff from Black Sabbath's "Paranoid". That's right, a song whose guitarist was MISSING TWO FINGER TIPS. Whuckachuckawhuckachukca dahdahdah!