Time and technology change everything. I launched DebbieKruger.com in 2002 long before “blogging” became the norm for everyone to have a presence on the web. I lovingly expanded the Debsite to include both personal and professional information, and while by today’s sleek design standards my site looks kind of quaintly old-fashioned, I still love its layout and ease of use.
But updating it regularly with all of my news, particularly in the music world, has been challenging, especially since Facebook ate up most of my online life several years ago.
So now Debbie Does Music is here. I’ve been posting concert reports and photos on Facebook regularly in recent years, and people have always said I should put them on a blog. I’d already started a fashion blog a few years ago (Flights Of Fashion) and didn’t get too far with it, but it does make sense to have a separate outlet for my music writing. I’m starting with adding in all the concert reviews and photography I’ve already posted on Facebook in 2016, and will also link to some of the fun and informative stuff on the Debsite over time. And then I will keep adding new pieces on a regular basis, as my life in Los Angeles is based on my love for music, and that in itself is a story worth telling.
I’m originally from Sydney, Australia and spent my teenage years in a fertile and thrilling period of popular music – the amazing 1970s. I was profoundly influenced by the radio station I listened to during those years, 1270 2SM, which I have a huge section of my website dedicated to, and by the glorious diversity of music that was played on radio back then. There wasn’t the segmentation you have today; you could hear Led Zeppelin followed by Al Martino, then Eagles and Chicago and Dolly Parton and Roger Whittaker and the Bee Gees and Tony Orlando & Dawn. Yes, I loved “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” in 1973 and still do and I make no apologies for that. Just for some balance, I was only ten years old when my favourite song was Procol Harum’s “Conquistador” – it was all about the drama in music for me! And of course I was passionate about all the great Australian artists and bands of the day, such as Sherbet and Little River Band and Dragon and oh my, it was just so extraordinarily exciting all the time!
It all contributed to my lifelong encyclopaedic knowledge of popular music and although my career first went in the direction of The Arts (with caps for emphasis and an M.A. in Theatre Studies in hand), focusing on writing, communications and PR, my deepest love was always for the music and my greatest joys in my personal life and career were adventures in music – usually rock and pop, but sometimes classical, jazz, avant-garde or something else . Going to concerts, meeting and interviewing musicians I admired, writing about music in the press and in my weighty 2005 book Songwriters Speak, representing musicians and music organisations through my PR work, producing and hosting a radio program (Debbie Does Breakfast, of course) and at different times living and working in Sydney, Byron Bay, Brisbane, London or Los Angeles. Always it was about the music.
Debbie Does Music will focus on all of that, past and present, and hopefully technology will allow me to keep this going for as long as music continues to run through my bloodstream, infiltrate each breath, fill my world with joy and sadness and every other emotion that gives life meaning.
And the photo in my banner above? Yes, that’s me, with 80,000 other people at a 2SM free concert starring Thin Lizzy on the steps of the Sydney Opera House in Rocktober 1978. Life was just that good. Below are some other examples of me doing music through the decades.
DEBBIE DOES MUSIC 