Don’t hold it against me, but before I started Rogomo with Neil a few months ago, I used to work as a lawyer at a large firm in New York. In fact, I spent nearly 8 years in that job, and I gotta tell ya, I disliked just about every minute of it.

That’s not to say that law isn’t a good field for some people — it just wasn’t good for me. I found the practice of law, and especially the litigation practice I was in, to be far too adversarial (duh!) and destructive. Far too often I saw clients and their adversaries, who should have been moving on with their lives and their businesses, getting sidetracked by lengthy, expensive litigation. While it didn’t necessarily destroy their businesses, it definitely distracted many of them from their bottom line and kept them from making the progress they ought to have been making.

One of the things that got me through the day, and through the countless calls with opposing counsel where one or both of us would be yelling, was music. I was lucky enough to have a door to my office I could close, and speakers to my computer that I could turn up (a bit), and drown out the nastiness of litigation with a little rock and roll.

Now that I’m on the other side of the fence, actually trying to build a business and keep our eyes on our goals — and hopefully avoid the morass of litigation — I find that music is just as important to me, but for a different reason. Since we don’t have an office yet, I’m working out of my home. I find that keeping music playing throughout the day keeps things moving pretty well and keeps me from ever feeling too isolated in my apartment. Plus, I can crank it a lot higher than I ever could in the office.

Here’s a few of the songs I’ve been listening to lately. As you’ll see, I’ve been going for a very raw, “garage-y” rock sound lately. If you don’t know any of these bands, I strongly suggest you check them out. While a lot of other, less interesting (IMO) “indie” bands are starting to have a good deal of success (e.g., Death Cab For Cutie, The Shins, The White Stripes), there’s a lot of great, deserving bands out there that haven’t gotten the notice they deserve (yet). These are five of those bands.

Note: Links have expired.

The Broken West, “So It Goes” [BUY]
The Makes Nice, “Cop Killer” [BUY]
The Manhattan Love Suicides, “Suzy Jones” [BUY]
Reigning Sound, “She’s Bored With You” [BUY]
You Am I, “Gunslingers” [BUY]

PS: The title to this post is a reference to one of the greatest movies of all time. Recognize it?