Happy Anniversary 50THIRDAND3RD -The Power Of Rock ‘n’ Roll

What is it and why do we all need this fix of music everyday . How did we all get here , what unites us and keeps us searching for the next kid who will rock our world . Why is this music our driving force , our ‘Oxygen’ if you will. Why do we spend hours doing something that doesn’t pay us for our time and thoughts . Let me tell you my side of the story of 50thirdand3rd.
Around 2008 I found myself on a site called Blipfm, Blip was a site where you could take a song , any song you wanted from any platform and play it. As the song was added to the incoming flow, you would get ‘props’ from the choices you made. You could type little notes back and forth to each other , you could RT their pick and this all revolved around props. The whole prop thing is a little fuzzy for me but here’s what happened. I would play songs that I liked and I would notice who was playing songs I liked. After a few months there was about 12 of us that broke away from the pack and we spent hours just playing and talking music trying our best to impress the group that we really did belong with the cool kids. This went on on for our hours every day at all times of the day but even more so when we stayed up late to be together. Kristen was the first to start to include me as part of the group. She liked my love of all things Detroit from The MC5 to The Dirtbombs and she would RT to the rest of the group and they slowly began to include me in this tight band of some of the best DJ’s I have ever met. One of my first friends was this DJ who went by the name Last of my Kind . He noticed that I liked the Dolls so we would spend time talking glam, punk and the beginnings of rock ‘n’ roll. Like me he could play something from Gene Vincent one minute , then some Bowie, back to Johnny Cash and then end with Iggy. Last of my kind is Ben . Next up for you to meet is Cribs. Cribs wasn’t on as much as us but when he was on you could tell he really understood the history of rock ‘n’ roll. Cribs at times leans a little more toward Metal. He was in a Metal band back in the day and he has pics of long hair and spandex to show his kids just in case they question his creds. Cribs also had a love of poets and writers which made him an instant friend of mine, we bonded then and still do over Jim Carroll. And then all around us where these other DJ’s with big personalities, Jimmy Stagger from Boston , the guy who never slept if you went on BLIP after 1am , Jimmy was there. If you went on at 7am , Jimmy was there. He was always there . And there was Tara (Shakeyourmop) and Jenny who knew more about ‘Covers’ then anyone I have ever met. And there was Doug , and Greentrees , and a cast of characters that were funny and smart all with a love of rock ‘n roll. We all stayed on Blip for the next few years from 08 to 10 this fun went on night after night and month after month. As blip grew they changed what you could put up and that started to limit our choices. I think Ben was the 1st to leave with some of us following over the next few months. But then we started to discover other sites and so we spent some time at The Underground Garage which was very cool , then Ben said let’s go to Tumblr. We spent the next few years there basically doing what we did at Blip but the group was broken up and it was never as much fun. A little more than 4 years ago I said to Ben you know we really should do something together like a site we were following Get Bent. But we wanted to include more of a variety then Get Bent. Ben was down with it and seeing that he was the tech guy he took the ball and was off . A few days later we were still kicking names around like expectant parents never quite happy with what the others were bringing up , one morning I had a text from Ben he had decided the name was going to be 50thirdand3rd. I liked it but pushed back a little because of the lyrics of the song. It was major cool that it was a Ramones song but standing on a corner looking for a fix I wasn’t too sure about. Ben said look man no one cares about the lyrics it’s a destination and he convinced me he was right and 50thirdand3rd was born. I wrote up the mission statement and that part about us being the kids who wrote the lyrics on the back of their notebooks. Ben had a friend who designed the site and before you knew it 4 years ago this month we were up and running. Cribs was in Grad School with a whole lot on his plate but seeing that the three of us had talked about wanting to do this for years it was only right to add him as part of the original 3 .After Grad School Cribs joined up and has been a guiding force since. Now let’s talk about why we are still here and what makes 50thirdand3rd special.

First and foremost our site is relevant. We are not hung up on past history or any kind of dogma. We simply try to bring you the best new music and some great stuff from the past . We have a group today that is hard to beat. We all do this for fun, we are serious music junkies, all of us , it’s our bond and we share our passion with all of you. This group today is the best we have had in our four years. I want to thank all of them for their time and dedication to making 50thirdand3rd one of the coolest sites on the planet. I’ve been thinking for a few days about what kind of music I want to accompany this post . I still can’t really decide so it’s going to be a gut level call here , these are the songs that led to the creation of 50thirdand3rd and every one of my blip friends can vouch for my memory on this one…. Thanks for listening and staying with us these four years . We love all of you!!