All Things Music Plus

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Mission statement...

How often do you find yourself wistfully swept back by memory to the days when you popped that novel-sized 8-track into the gaping maw of a player so you could dance to the rhythm, just sit and get lost in a song, or sing out loud with your hair blowing in the wind rushing through the windows of your Gremlin? Do you remember hooking up the speakers with those magical red and black coded wires to your first stereo system, the one you looked at with reverence - two tape decks, a turntable, radio – an equalizer – there in your room, or maybe the basement, luring you to it, making you tap your foot and shake your leg when you were away from it, waiting to race to the record store to buy the new release, feel the plastic come away beneath your nails, uncovering the art you stared at until you pulled out that sleeve covered in lyrics and teasing bits of information about the people who were about to explode into your room, then reverently taking out that heavenly black, shining disc and putting it on the turntable, the needle placed on the edge, that first crackle and hiss before the notes resounded in the air around you….

What is your watershed musical memory? A rich guitar chord that was the aural expression of your fondest experience? A drum beat that set your cells on fire? Or maybe voices mingling together weaving tapestries that made your head swim or, instead, voices screaming out the embodimentof your angst? Whenever asked, quicker than the blink of an eye, my first true revelatory moment is relived.  I was only four or five, and as open as any child before school and society begins trying to dictate what is “good” or “bad,” what does or does not have quality, what we should find meaningful. My parents brought home the 45 RPM disc of the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” for myself and my older sisters. Youth was no barrier to the realization that here was something singularly special, something that could blow open doors within and without, and it blew my awareness open with a force that gave birth to a passion that has never diminished, that became as much an organic part of me as anything could.

Times have changed, but we can put back into the world the wonder our generations felt, the wonder that we need to pass on to our children, that we need to reconnect with as adults, that we need to infuse into our daily existence, to inspire our own present and humanity’s future. This is my mission. To provide an environment where listeners and artists alike can share, learn, find magic. Where people from all backgrounds with all variety of taste and knowledge can share their stories of inspiration and wonder; or how they are working on taking the gifts within them and getting them out into the world so that perhaps they, too, can touch someone near or far, faces they will never see, wheels they may never know they set in motion.

Even more than this, though, I want to create a living space for education, at a time when funding for the arts is being cut or completely withdrawn from our schools; when children do not have the opportunity to learn about music, or run their fingers down the wood or brass of an instrument that may call out to them; when we watch people learn about artists from a ringtone or car commercial. Artist websites, internet radio, and other internet resources have taken the place of those beautiful gatefold covers from the past, the backs of record covers, the inner sleeves – to find out about artists who move us, we often have to spend hours going from one site to another, to find the simplest information: what is the face of this siren singing out to me; what kind of keyboard is creating that rich layering; how many albums are out there; what is this person’s story, and on and on….

We can create a space where people can access information more efficiently; where the next generations can find something that touches them, that may change their lives in some way, that may show them that those feelings and thoughts, those words and rhythms and melodies inside of them are indeed meaningful, are powerful, and they can pursue something they love. Artists and those behind the scenes, sitting at the boards, can share their stories and give something of incalculable value – a sense of understanding, of community, of hope and of beauty.

Passion. Wonder. Education. Communication. 
Art. Creativity. Understanding. Magic. 
To some it seems like a dream, but for me, it is an achievable reality, and a much needed one. We can change the world, one note at a time, one word at a time, one spirit at a time. Let’s cast the pebble into the pond and begin the ripple that need never cease.

~ Richard Flynn