Jazz & Blues Lounge

I have struggled with whether or not to write about myself in this particular blog.  This blog is supposed to be your one-stop shop for all things blues and jazz related, particularly in relation to the Chicago jazz and blues scene.  Should I actually be a part of it?  Maybe I should be nameless and faceless.

Then I got an e-mail forwarded to me from a guy I wrote about when I wrote about the schedule for the Chicago Jazz Festival.  He sent the message indicating his name had been spelled wrong to b5media instead of to me.  This is fine, of course, since b5media is the company that ultimately controls this site, but the fact is, this site is essentially a one-man operation and that one man is me.

So, who the heck am I?  Why am I suddenly supposed to be the expert on the Chicago jazz and blues scene?  How did I end up writing this blog anyway?

Well, first off, my name is Bryan W. Alaspa and I am a full-time freelance writer in the Chicago area.  My  normal area of writing is not music.  I write a lot of website content for various website developers.  I wrote press releases and business writing.  I write movie reviews.  I write novels and have my first non-fiction book coming out by Schiffer Publishing this month.

However, I also have a love of music, particularly jazz.  Of course, this was not always the case.  There was a large portion of my life when I did not listen to jazz and found both jazz and blues painful to listen to.  You may have had the same situation when you were growing up.

I grew up in Chicago.  I had always wanted to be a writer.  However, the parents always said I needed to find a career to get into in case the writing thing didn’t work out.  So, I thought I would take a detour into journalism.  I soon found out, however, that I hated writing for newspapers.  At the same time the school was getting a campus radio station up and running.

The first station Webster Univeristy started was a simple AM, carrier current radio station that, essentially, broadcast to the dorms across the street from the studios.  The format was essentially rock and pop.

By my third year, however, the university had entered into an agreement with the St. Louis Public School.  See, they had an FM radio station at 91.5 FM that covered the entire St. Louis area.  They were thinking of selling the station and the license, but they needed the station to stay on the air while the considered what to do with it.  So, Webster agreed that they would put content on the air while the public school system figured out what to do with the license.

There was one choice to be made:  classical or jazz?

The decision was for the station to broadcast jazz.  Thus, I became the music director and afternoon drive host of a jazz radio station that covered the entire St. Louis area.  It was a music I hated when I started, but I was anxious for the exposure.

Then came the day that not only changed my views about jazz, but my views on music all-together….

…to be continued… 

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