I am a self-described music geek currently living in the Nashville, TN area. By day, I am an insurance executive. By night, you can find me at a live show or pouring through the bins of a used record store. Born and raised just outside of New York City, I spent two decades in South Texas before moving to Music City in 1998.
I have seen and heard a lot of great live music in Nashville and beyond, and I look forward to reliving some of those memories here with you as well as reporting on ones yet to come. In addition, you will find occasional local music news and some of my thoughts on music in general.
I first wrote about music as a record reviewer for my college newspaper in the late Seventies. From 1995 to 2001, I published Beyond Belief, a critically-acclaimed Elvis Costello fanzine. Many respect me as a music archivist and avid record collector to the degree that record labels have consulted with me on several projects.
Your input is important to me, so leave your comments here at the blog or e-mail me at musiccitymike@comcast.net. You will also find me on Facebook as Music City Mike and on Twitter as @MusicCityMike.
Looking forward to sharing my musical adventures with you!
Music City Mike
March 2013
P.S. If you like good pizza, you may want to check out my alter ego, The Pizza Snob.
Music City Mike 
That’s a lot of copies of “Born to be Wild” behind your right ear 🙂
That’s a bunch of “Born To Run”s behind you!
Correct! Some various odd pressings.
Thanks Mike. Delighted to have happened on your blog. Manna for a fellow music obsessive! Regards from Thom at the immortal jukebox (plugged in and ready to play).
Hi mike, my name is Mary, my husband and I are friends with your cousin Arlene. We are planning a trip to Nashville. We would lover to be in the middle of every thing….any suggestions?
As i was looking up info about which places in NYC did Willy Deville appear, up came your site.
What a treasure it is!
Thanks for posting it.
Susan originally from NYC now living in The Netherlands
Hi Mike! Just happened on your site via a link to your Walter Egan article. Very nice! As a child of the 60s and 70s, I too am an “archivist” (although my wife calls me a “hoarder”). I have enjoyed living in the Nashville area for over 20 years. Lots of great live music and lots of good record stores – what else do you need? I hope to see you out combing the bins! All the best! Mark Haggard
Thanks Mark – look for you at a show some time – what’s next for you? I’ve got Leo Kottke and Iron & Wine this week.
Hi Mike, just saw the great article from your “mystery taper guy” about the life and times of a bootleg taper that posted in April 2020. I also attempted to dabble in bootleg audio / video recording for a short time in early 90’s, but it was short lived. I was happy to just leave it to the experts, like your source, and be glad they were available to collect.
Yourself being a man of music for decades, I am curious if you were ever swept up in, specifically, the cassette era of bootleg shows from the 80’s & 90’s?
This is my dilemma now. I have a couple hundred. Do you know of people with these bootleg cassettes that actually go through the costly and time consuming process of upgrading them to current formats?
Do you think there could ever be a cassette resurgence, like vinyl is experiencing?
Chuck in Florida
I digitally copied all of my original live tapes that were on cassette using my home equipment. Cassettes were sure handy at the time. As for a resurgance, only because they are cute. Otherwise, aside from being the most brittle format of all time, they lose because there’s no instant track selection like punching in a number or dropping the needle where you want. Thanks for writing and I will let “mystery taper guy” you wrote!
Converting to CD doesn’t seem to be very time efficient, since each live show back then generally ran around 100 min.
I’ve heard of people transferring multiple shows to DVD’s for less inventory in the end.
A story to pass on to your “mystery taper guy”.
I had a friend years back in Miami who travelled to shows and videotaped. He was a fireman, and he rigged up a fake cast that he would put on his leg before going into the show. Security would never check him and he was able to stuff all of the equipment (tripod included) into the cast and he came away with some incredible shows.
Thanks for taking the time to chat. If I’m ever in Nashville, I’ll give you a shout.
Chuck in Florida
I knew a guy who would put his recording equipment inside a Fed Ex box labeled to himself. He would tell him at the gate that he had a jeep and he couldn’t leave it in the car.
BTW – CDs still come in handy for listening in my car but all my live shows are on a hard drive that’s backed up into the cloud.