The Blues
I love the Blues. I think the Blues are like poetry: either you love it or you hate it. And, like poetry, the Blues are universal.

We all know what it feels like to have love go wrong, to feel like life is out to get us, and to know, deep down in your soul, that you are the only person in the entire world awake and alone at 4:17 am.

Because Blues is the sound of someone saying, "how could you do this to me?" It's the slam of a door with you on one side and your lover on the other. It's the soundtrack to the realization that in your necessity to earn a living you've given up on your dream to climb Everest or write the great American novel. Blues sets loneliness and regret, fear and desperation to music, and invites you to pour a shot and wallow in it.

But the great thing about the Blues is that it also has the power to remind you, when you wonder if the night will ever end, that there will be another day.. It makes you feel less alone, in a "misery loves company" sort of way. And it lets you know that everyone, with the possible exception of Keanu Reeves, knows what it's like to feel that the universe has a grudge against you.

So heres to Muddy Waters and Lightning Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf and Big Mama Thornton, and everyone who had the courage to share their pain with us in the hope that it might help get us through the night.