Resurrecting Mr. 411
Posted by mr411 on May 29, 2007
In honor of the forthcoming epublication of my eleventh book, Working Musicians: Defining Moments from the Road, the Studio and the Stage (Harper Collins, 2002), I am dedicating this blog to all the musicians, songs and stories I’ve covered in my long career in what was once known as “Rock Journalism” and to all the readers who have accompanied me, even inadvertently, on the journey.
Taking its title from my early days as the deranged, always misinformed answer man at Rock Magazine, this blog will closely follow my path from article to interview, from book to book, detailing the grotesque misadventures and accidental triumphs that led me to this place of near-legendary esteem in the world of rock and roll letters. For those who were there at the beginning when I discovered Bruce Springsteen at Paul’s Mall in Boston and then a few years later invaded his table at the Bottom Line in New York–or drooled over my breakthrough interviews with ex-porn queen Andrea True in Viva or the then-current Miss USA, Amanda Jones, in Rock, this will be a delightful exercise in nostalgia. And I’m pretty sure you can all use the exercise, even if it’s only rummaging through a desk in search of your reading glasses.
Even those who joined late in the game, after the visionary piece I wrote in USA Today on the creation of the Bananarama music video for “Cruel Summer” under the Brooklyn Bridge, led to a post there as the paper’s first music video columnist, are welcome to peruse what they missed and then what came later, in the blink of an eye.
In addition to the assorted random musings and digressions for which I’ve become justifiably famous, I will try to cover all my personal high points, which, I modestly assume, mirror the high points in the history of what was then known as “Rock Journalism,” but which is now known as “spewing venom on the web.”
Having made much of my career as a compilationist, compiling interviews and essays for books, compiling songs for each issue of GUITAR: For the Practicing Musician, and finally, spending a dozen years compiling mix tapes for a living (if you can imagine that) at a major record label, this blog wouldn’t make sense to me unless it were also a compilation. So eventually I will deliver many of my favorite mix tapes to this space, as well as the mix tape of my own greatest writing hits.
Stay tuned, fans of the Ignoble Prize, Mr. 411, a Parent’s Guide to the Top 40, Working Musicians, The Rock Song Index, and more, for my particular view from the Middle of the Dirt Road.
