Ornery

I’m ornery, or so I am told anyway.
Actually I know I can be ornery when it has comes to music.  For a long time I resisted listening to the “popular” musicians.  I would go for the obscure folk.  Actually their music is really good (to me anyway).  I remember writing to an artist saying how much I enjoyed their album, and they wrote back thanking me for buying the album!  I guess getting the album is old fashioned these days.  Often just a song is bought.
I have always liked listening to an artist singing their original songs.  Certainly sometimes a cover version can be better than the original, but I still prefer to hear how it sounded at the start.  Apparently it was Joan Boaz that encouraged Bob Dylan to sing his own songs.  His argument was that he did not have a singing voice.  That is true, but he has given me hope.  Many albums later he is still going.
Sometimes I buy albums just to encourage the artist.  Becoming a popular artist is not easy, but my thinking is that, if someone has a song to sing, they should be encouraged. Cliff is one local singer I know.  Fair Dinkum I reckon his songs are great.  To me he deserves a wide audience (wide as in a group of people, not wide individuals only.)
There is one fella called “Toby Mac” that I resisted getting.  He is very popular.  One day on the way to the Table Tennis hall, I heard a song on 96.5 that I thought was fantastic.  The artist name and the name of the song was not given.  I was compelled to do research, and found out it was Toby Mac singing one of his songs.  Since then we have seen him on you tube, and bought a couple of his albums.  His songs to me seem so natural and are so good.  I have also bought someone on his record label that I like. (“record” seems old fashioned in this age of downloads and cd’s and usb’s, but I am encouraged that records persist.)
This may not seem a natural fit for this, but I have found with artists I like, the latest does not necessarily mean the best. There is a group called Building 429 that I really like.  They had an album called “Iris to Iris” I loved.  Their producer said how much he enjoyed working with them.  I did not like their next album, but my voice is in the minority.  They have never been as popular.
I’m now on a roll but I like a follow up album to be different rather than more of the same.  I found “Life is Beautiful” by the Afters to be more of the same as “Light Up The Sky,” their previous album.
This sounds way worse than it is, but once upon a time, popular did not equate to quality.  Now the two are together, and to me the music quality has never been better.