Introduce Yourselves!

I'm John Magee, from Boston, MA (originally Detroit, MI). I'm a former college DJ (WMBR, "Breakfast of Champions") & I focused on late 80s - early 90s indie rock. I'm also into plenty of 60s and 70s rock, krautrock, various avant-garde stuff (Red Krayola, etc.). I'm 33.

But my real hero is Neil Young. I think I'm quite the Neil scholar, but there are some people around here who blow me away.

Some of the other classic stuff I always come back to: Richard Thompson, Elvis Costello, Steve Earle, Dylan, Talking Heads, Joni Mitchell, Television, any proto-70s-punk, Replacements, The Who, Stones, etc. etc.

I soured on indie-rock, and I spent a good part of the 90s focused on alt-country and its roots in 70s rock. I pretty much ran the gamut on that and have been spending most of the 2000s catching up on electronic music 1985 - 2003, modern hip-hop, and listening to as much new music as I can possibly get my hands on.

I also enjoy tons of classic country music - I have a decent collection there - and even some modern stuff. I'll listen to anything coming out of the Nashville machine and usually find one or two good records per year (Alan Jackson Drive last year, for example).

I'm also way into recording engineer stuff. I have a full PC-based studio with some great outboard equipment. I love making music even more than listening to it.

Soulseek: find my base collection, which i am progressively digitizing and am through L at the_magster. Find my recent downloads at scrimshander.

That's enough.

Right now I'm working at an independent animation studio in Canada making a low-brow funny TV show. I'm surviving on zero income for a while while this studio is getting established, doing work thats too good to be real work, & I like it like that. I'm way into self sufficiency. I bike everywhere & I'm obsessed with dumpster diving. Latest thing I'm proud of scoring, is two huge bags of day-old bread to feed a dozen people this week.

I listen to lots and lots of music every day while I work. Music is the ONLY thing I spend money on- esp. in mass quantities of old records and tapes from flea markets & garage sales. Can't love them enough. People drop all kinds of wierd stuff there. Accordingly my collection centers in the 80's. Especially post-punk stuff. Screw lists, I'll just name my top favorite album of all time: Chameleons "Strange Times"; and last one bought, Rational Youth "Cold War Night Life."

Well, I guess thats all that matters I guess. Maybe I should mention that my greatest unfulfilled wish is to give birth to tadpoles. Also, my balls are slammed in a cop car trunk & I accidentally swallowed the key, won't somebody please free me?

wow! you know custos?!

Whew, life can be a bit crazy sometimes. After all that I am still a music geek looking for the best new sound.
Cheers.

23 Positions in a 1 Night Stand

I Don't Serve Ribs

ok, so i'm intense, random, my brain is in overload and my attention to detail is sh*t right now. yeah, but ridilin doesn't help, never did. music is an (at times) overwhelming emotional/physical/psychological experience; daily a song or album will just fuck my mind all up. i'm a total naive idealist romantic, partly, at least. so, uh, hi, again:)

I grew up listening to '45s on the kitchen floor. My recollection is hazy, though I recall enjoying: the Monkees, Johnny Cash (Boy Named Sue), Georgie Girl, and somewhere along the way, "Boogie Nights." I listened to transistor radios a lot in my youth and thought disc jockeys wielded enormous power and influence. This was before I met some of them.

First record purchased with my own money: Kiss Alive at K-Mart sometime in 1977. I saw Kiss that same year, or '78, at the Chicago Stadium with my parents and a friend from school. . I soon tired of them and sold all those records at a garage sale. Records that mattered since then: Back in Black/Moving Pictures/Quadrophenia/Stop Making Sense/It Takes a Nation of Millions/Doolittle/A Love Supreme/Mummies Play Their Own Records/Reverse Willie Horton/Teenager of the Year/Mass Romantic/One Beat and literally hundreds of others I can't think of this instant.

I am, to one degree or another, a rockist, but my tastes now are more catholic than ever and I'm open to anything with a great melody/good texture or tough beats. I don't have the time to listen to music like I once did. Basically, I live for the spine tingle that music delivers sporadically. That, for me, is what it's all about.

I've written a few music pieces that ran in Chicago recently (one on the impending demise of the Checkerboard Lounge) that I have been working up the nerve to throw up here for commentary or ridicule.

alright then, that's me.

Jaymc: I write primarily for Crain's Chicago Business. They pay well and I have a family to support.

I hope that's not mutually exclusive. Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

Rockist, I was not suggesting mutual exclusivity, just answering your call.

Regarding name recognition, give me something more to go on and we'll see if we've crossed paths. There are clips I'm proud of and there are others I'd rather not revisit, if you know what I mean.