If you take over a job from a person, who did it with as much passion as the lady did, who made the music column before I took it over, it's always hard to decide where to start. I personally thought, the best idea would be not to try to continue with the same concept, because it would not be the same anyway. I spent one sleepless night and then I decided to do it "my way".
With the upcoming music columns I will present you artists from different countries and different musical genres. Some of them might be stars, some of them are probably only known to a lucky small group of fans, but all of them will have on thing in common: I personally think, that they are interesting and worth a closer look. So I will present you some information about the featured artists, links for further information and my personal thoughts. If you like an artist's music or not is finally a question of taste. It will be impossible to write always about an artists you ALL like, but I hope that I will sooner or later present something interesting for everybody.

For those of you, who probably don't know so much about my CV, I will tell you a bit about my personal, music related background:
After the normal "musical socialisation" nearly every teenager goes through with listening the same charts crap like all the other folks at school did, I for several reasons came in contact with the Blues. My life was pretty difficult that time and I figured out, that I found a lot of myself in this kind of music. One day back in late 1991 I for the first time listened to the music of the US band "The Black Crowes" and I loved their bluesy rock sound like nothing before. One year later (I make it short here!), I saw them live on stage and this was the day, I decided, that music is essential for my life and would be much more than a hobby. I was working for the local daily newspaper around that time (I was still at school) and I started to write about the small but ambitioned music scene in my little, sleepy hometown.
When I was a student at the Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet in Munster, I worked in a record shop to make my money for a living. I did that for so many years and I LOVED it. During this time I also made a two months student job at Rough Trade Records, Germany. To try something different I worked parallel to my studies at an advertising agency from 1998-2000. I guess ... my mom hoped, that I would now give up the silly music thing, but the opposite was the fact. When I had my master degree, I felt like shit, because I was missing the music in my daily work life so much. So I concentrated my job-hunting in music related jobs - and finally I suceeded: Since April 2000 I am working for bol.de as a product manager music! And here I am ...

I won't tell you now more about the music I love personally ... see - I still want to be able to surprise you with the column! I hope, that my passion for the music, the things I learned about it over the years and my personal reflections about my favourite topic will make the column interesting and enjoyable for you.

With love

Tina.