The Days the Music Lived

Here's the reason for this blog.
Like many, quite possibly most, people, I have spent a lot of my life listening to music. For this blog, I'll be writing about rock, popular, contemporary, alternative, soul, some rap and even bubble gum music. Radio music. Album music.
The music we've listened to in our spare time, occasionally even on someone else's time and dime. The music that in part defines our lives, but which definitely has shaped our lives.
I tried a number of other names for this blog -- Music of Our Lives, Music of My Life, The Best Music -- but all were already taken. That tells me that a number of people have had similar ideas for blogs.
So far there has been only one Day the Music Died, and that was a sad day indeed. On every other day of our lives, the music also has been alive. Let's celebrate it.
Here's how I'd like this celebration to go. I'll listen to music as I go about my days. Mostly, that will be during time in the car while I'm driving to assignments. Most of those are drives of half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour, even more if I'm stuck in Metroplex traffic.
I will document what I've heard. Through the magic of Sirius XM radio, I'll be able to listen to a variety of formats at different times. Before long, I'll have set up a schedule to make sure I give myself exposure to any format I can find on the satellites.
As I listen, I'll record notes to myself about what I've heard. Then I'll give each piece of music a number from 1 to 5,000. By the end of the year, I'm hoping to have a 1 to 5,000 listing of the favorite songs of my life in a database full of album-liner-type information and possibly in book form.
It doesn't all have to be my ratings. I welcome input from family, friends, anyone else who happens to read this. And I would incorporate that additional input into my ratings. So it will be the music of our lives and not just the music of my life.
I have started that database, in an attempt to make it easier to find information about the music. As a framework, I began about a year ago to enter Billboard Hot 100 lists beginning with 2012. I realize the Hot 100 is just a slice of the musical spectrum, and there will be a number of different types of music, album cuts, etc., added to it. Ideally, I'll end up with a chronological database as well as the 1-5,000 list.
The data entry has been stop and go as I've had other things to work on or music to listen to. So I've barely made it back into the '80s.
For that reason, my initial listening will be heavy with '90s and 21st-century music, whose titles already have been entered into the chronological database. I'll adjust the schedule so that I won't be listening to those decades as much -- or the '80s, which should all be entered within the next week.
I started my listening today on my drive to Dallas for a high school football game. Sirius XM Channel 9 had Downtown Julie Brown counting down the Back in the Day Replay for 1991.
I remember recently entering 1990 and '91 and thinking what a musical wasteland the early '90s were. There were a lot of 4,000-plus ratings for the music I heard today.
My method of recording my thoughts will be refined over time. I was using the voice recorder on my phone, but it was cumbersome to make a short recording, turn it off and then get back to it after my phone's screen had gone dark while I was waiting for the next song. That while making sure to drive safely.
I'll either get better at that, or use a small digital recorder. Something to make it more efficient to make my observations.
From time to time, the music will raise questions. Any questions I raise in the daily blog would be addressed in the resulting book.
I'm charging my phone now. Later, possibly after midnight, I'll post the thoughts from today's listen.