Neile
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Neile Graham
Music has always been an important part of my life—ever since I was five and sang along with Gypsy Rose Lee ("If you want to bump it, bump it with a trumpet") in front of the bass speaker (taller than me at the time) that my father had built. We were the kind of family that sang in the car on our road trips.
I can't sing worth beans or play any instruments, but as one person on the ecto list once said, I play a mean stereo. And I sublimate my lack of musical creativity into writing poetry since there is a kind of words and tune thing that happens there. (If you want to know more about that, check out my home page.)
As I was growing up I had the usual musical loves (The Beatles, The Monkees, etc.), but in 1980 I discovered first Marianne Faithfull's Broken English and Peter Gabriel III, then Kate Bush and shortly after that Dalbello and have never looked back. Discovering Happy Rhodes (through lurking on rec.music.gaffa) in February of '92 was a major event for me, because shortly thereafter I joined the ecto mailing list and found a whole world of people who love the same music I do.
I have fairly narrow tastes, but I like to think they're deep. I mostly like music with an edge—my favourite artists generally fit into the beautiful & fierce genre, but I do like some gentler and simply pretty stuff, too. I don't have much tolerance for the mainstream pop/contemporary folk sounds—it's just too smooth for me, no matter how much I can admire the craft or an artist's voice.
It's a tough call, but I would say my current favourite artist of all is Veda Hille. I don't want to go into a long list of others I like—as you can see, I have reviewed a lot of music on The Ectophiles' Guide, most of which I like enough to comment on it.
I keep a series of long lists of my favourite albums of the year on my personal page, as well as a weekly journal that comments on my current listening.
My love of music is what led me to start compiling The Ectophiles' Guide to Good Music. I hope you love it as much as I do!
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