This will matter to pretty much no one, but I'm going to go ahead and cite it anyway, because why not? It's my blog, etc.
I've spoken about it here a few times, but starting in about 1989, I started writing and performing editorial triage for a tiny, independent music mag here in New York called The New York Review of Records. I wrote about it at greater length on this post, if you genuinely care. It didn't really pay at all, and it never really took off, but I made a lot of great friends and connections out of it, learned a bunch of stuff and heard tons of great music from it as a result.
In any case, along the way, I was afforded the opportunity to regularly contribute content to the magazine, providing me with a multitude of bylines. That our distribution was piss-poor was another matter, but at least my stuff was getting published. That was a genuine bonus. As a result, I conducted numerous interviews with artists like Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Wayne Hussey of the Mission UK, Andrew Eldritch of the Sisters of Mercy, Matt Cameron of Soundgarden, Shaun Ryder of the Happy Mondays, all four member of Sonic Youth and a slew of other folks. That was always pretty exciting. I also penned countless reviews of the albums of the day, unleashing my slavishly overwritten opinions in bona fide print.
In time, however, the NYROR and I started moving in different directions. I still wrote for them, but I needed a steady gig that actually paid. Eventually, I moved on to other things. At some point in the mid-90s, the New York Review of Records simply stopped publishing, and that was pretty much that.
Being that the magazine's overall impact was pretty damn modest, I'm always amused, these days, when I see its unlikely invocation here and there. As I mentioned back on that other post, I was pretty shocked to find that someone was trying to sell old issues of it on eBay, at one point. Actually, as of right now, someone is trying to pawn an issue of same for $25.00. See that Buzzcocks interview cited on the cover? That was one of mine.
Anyway, this long and needlessly winding preamble is basically all just to set-up that while I usually regard my involvement with the magazine as a pivotal experience, in the grand scheme of things, I believe the rest of the world regards it as something of a footnote, and that's being exceptionally generous. Imagine my gobsmacked surprise, then, when my ex-patriated Londoner pal Miles (you might remember him from this post) shot me the photo below...Click on it to enlarge.
In Joe Gross' new edition to the excellent 33 1/3 series about Fugazi's In on the Kill Taker, my review of same is actually quoted ... and before an invocation of Rolling Stone's review, no less. I thought that was somewhat remarkable. Hooray.
If I am being entirely candid, however, I have the sneaking suspicion that I may have liberally helped myself to the colorful flourish "brutal stride" from another source, albeit not one regarding the merits of Fugazi. It's a descriptor that certainly applies to this album's tightly-wound, frenetic battery, so I can see why I might have chosen to borrow it, but I do not think I can claim its true provenance as my own. While I cannot be sure, twenty-five years after the fact, I feel remiss for appropriating it (if that's indeed what I did).
Anyway, cheers to Joe Gross for including me. Buy his book here.
Here, meanwhile, it a taster of that "brutal stride".... enjoy. Some of this live footage was shot at the late, lamented Roseland Ballroom.
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