Scrapbook

Found while purging huge amounts of crap from my now-slightly-less-cluttered apartment: my earliest “professional” clips, from when I began contributing to New York Press in 1998.

They had run a solicitation on their front page bulletin-board column, which said something like: “Even though we know we’re going to be flooded with hundreds of pages on ‘heaven rock,’ we are hereby looking for music writers; send in a sampling of what you can do.” I went out and reviewed an Oblivians show at Maxwell’s, and faxed it in. John Strausbaugh, still one of the best editors I’ve had, told me to keep them coming, and the first one they printed was on You Am I.

Also accomplished on last week’s much-enjoyed staycation: finally figured out how get my printer to scan. So one plus one here equals a bunch of non-Googlable 10-year-old clips scanned and uploaded for your enjoyment, Kind Reader.

Included: that You Am I review, which appropriately enough begins with talk about temp jobs; more “Live Dates” on Daniel Johnston, Michael Hurley, Brad Mehldau, Pharoah Sanders, and the reopening of Maxwell’s with Neutral Milk Hotel and Fugazi; an early review of Fantômas, accompanied by a brilliant Mike Wartella illustration; a review of an S.O.D. reunion show, with wonderful art by Roy Tompkins, which I later bought from him and has hung on my wall ever since; an angry CD review of my beloved Pastels (Illuminati, their remix album); and a Q&A with Nick Lowe.

There’s plenty more, from both New York Press and the defunct New Times L.A., which I contributed to for a couple of years (here’s a Freedy Johnston CD review); I’ll post more when I can.