What is Monsoon River?

Monsoon River was originally a website for my web design company (the files are still there behind the scenes). I did a few websites for friends and family mostly, but it never went anywhere. The name came from a couple of trips to India. We always seem to be there when the monsoon rains started, and when that happens – it rains. A lot. The picture in the header image was taken by me near Darjeeling  while on a bus trying to get out of the foothills of the Himalayan mountains. The monsoon rains create several rivers where there were just valleys, and this one was causing traffic delays. Our driver said “look – monsoon river!” and I liked the word.

You could just look at this website and say “another day, another blog…” I have been wanting to start a blog like this for a while. Like many people, I began to find a lot of stuff from my childhood being memorialized on websites, Flickr, YouTube, and other places. These trips down memory lane are often popular because they bring back nostalgic memories of the 70s, 80s, and 90s for myself and others. I kind of wanted to do a blog to jump on that bandwagon (because that was really what the whole 80s was about, anyways). Then the 80s got a huge popularity boost through shows like Stranger Things – and it seemed like a whole “nostalgia culture” sprang up over night around fondly remembering the past. But the past wasn’t all that great for everyone. So while I will talk about my past, I also want to take on this 80s attitude of thinking we “fixed” the world just because we recorded “We are the World.” Because “us” being a part of the culture change was also part of what the 80s sold as well, leading to the realization in the 90s that we weren’t doing that great in fixing the world after all just because we had a lot of feels during some cheesy teen flick. But more on that later.

For now, I will probably talk about what I remember and what I liked back in the day and probably even critically examine styles and trends that led us to where we are today. Sorry if I go too “head in the clouds” or “the sky is falling” in any one particular post. That will probably all be based on how I am feeling each day.

However…. I had wanted to originally talk about some of the less well-known music I find, so there will be a lot about that here as well. My focus will be on non-standard styles of music. We already have enough coverage of twenty something white males doing rock. I want to look at Mongolian folk thrash, Indonesian Hajib funk metal, Asian underground electronic music, Indian rap metal, black feminist punk rock, and so on. I will keep a YouTube playlist with most of the artists I find, but I will probably come here to talk about them.

And… years and years ago, I had a blog called Your Official Portal to Geekdom that was basically me geeking out about new technology. Then, that technology got more invasive and surveillance capitalist, and it wasn’t so fun anymore. I still want to blog about interesting technology things, but maybe also look at the problems so I can add to those that are trying to swing the conversation away from just accepting the invasion of privacy that has become default these days.

So there you have it: Music, Nostalgia Culture, and Modern Geekery. Just FYI – this is not my only blog. You can also find me blogging about Education and Technology at EduGeek Journal, as well as politics and religion at Metamodern Faith.

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