Welcome to my Substack.
(Those words may sound better if you can imagine the marvelous Caroline Polachek deadpanning them like so.)
A brief summary: I’ve been making music for more than 40 years and writing about music for more than 30. My professional career, for want of a better term, started at the late lamented Musician magazine in 1989. Most recently, I was editor-in-chief of the possibly late, certainly lamented JazzTimes for five years. In between, I wrote a book about Radiohead—Exit Music: The Radiohead Story—which has been published in 12 editions and five languages so far. I also edited several publications and wrote countless words for many others. In my spare time, I played guitar for seven different bands (though only three simultaneously). In the mid-2010s, I finally got around to putting out some songs myself. Last year, I put out a lot more.
I have no idea what I’m going to do with this particular platform. All I know is that many of my writer and musician colleagues have already staked out territory here—people like Ethan Iverson, Peter Catapano, Lewis Porter, Nate Chinen, Bob Doerschuk and Tony Scherman—and I’ve been spending more and more time this year catching up on their dispatches. Ever the late adopter, I’ve come to the conclusion that I may as well join in. At the moment, I have no plans to charge anybody for anything, but if that changes, you’ll be advised.
And now, without further ado, I’ll be getting on to my first “real” post, which is rather timely. I hope you’ll deem it—and this page in general—worthy of your time.
Late, but great, I'm sure. Look forward to reading, Mac.
I rejoice in this news, my journalistic colleague and band mate. And thanks for the shout. Write on! Going to dive into Gabriel now.