Outsight A Quarter-Century of Music Journalism: Book 1

I am here reproducing interviews published in alternative publications, mostly Jam Rag, and live interviews conducted on my Internet radio program and podcast, Outsight Radio Hours. My published interviews go back to 1989, and my broadcast interviews start at the end of the following decade. I got into music journalism because bands had vans and I got into broadcasting because I was trying to get arrested to get broadcasting regulations laws changes. Contributing to and distributing Jam Rag got me in print. An act of civil disobedience spending hours behind the microphone of a pirate radio station failed to get me arrested, but I did end up becoming a broadcaster. As a collection, it is part time capsule to be unearthed by future musicologists. These are primary sources. As V. Vale says in his RE/Search Newsletter #170, "We're always interested in 'primary source material'-which is what interviews provide." On my most hopeful side, this is a curated special exhibition of lost folk art. Certainly, alternative periodicals crammed with artist interviews are no longer common. Internet-served audio entertainment now, such as popular music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify, queue up for people's digital selection bereft of live DJs back announcing and picking, let alone doing artist interviews. There is a sort of contradiction here. The plethora of material-hundreds of thousands of words-and narrow interest means the full scope may only ever be realized as a modern ebook while it hearkens back to a more remote era. In a way, it recalls the song "Call Me Mr. In-Between" composed by Harlan Howard and sung by Burl Ives and looking forward and back; a foot in each era.