22 Geek Weekly Fanzine

biggest theoretical bone of contention right now is the argument of mass significance versus cult band stuff. Which is more important to discuss. This is an important formative moment for a music critic. I was ust like a hipster separatist when I got to college. "Major labels are dumb!" I met a critic in college that completely rewrote my thinking about that, a guy named Rob Sheffield. I'm not just saying this because he's my pal, but I'm pretty sure he's the best rock critic alive. The point at which he sort of embarrasses, actually makes writers who are much better than I am sort of read his stuff and say, "Gee, maybe I should be a plumber," is the Pazz and Jop critics Poll. His raw ballots for those are extraordinary. I highly recommend doing a google search for his name and a zine called Radio On. The stuff that he wrote for Radio On in 1997 and 1998 is some of the best writing about art that I have ever seen. I owe him a lot, he introduced me to my wife, so my debt to him cannot ever fully be repaid.

S: But you're working on it by giving him a mention in Geek Weekly.
Tha's true. He'll be thrilled. He was a guy who also liked Forced Exposure, and a lot of that stuff, but he was a guy who wrote brilliantly about things like Tiffany and very mainstream music, and it just hadn't occurred to me that people did that. That was a huge revelation to me, this is a fabulous writing about stuff that more than three people have heard. I probably wouldn't be doing this right now if I hadn't met Rob, for a number of reasons, but mostly because I would never have bothered to listen to the radio and that was sort of stupid on my part.

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I mean, relevancy is another one I end up talking about - I'm really torn as to whether I give a shit if a band is relevant on a mass level or not.

J: But on the other hand, you can't say that a band is on the radio and so they're irrelevant. Even if they're totally irrelevant to you.
Hey, I think "I Want It That Way" by the Backstreet Boys is one of the best songs of the 1990s without question. Most of the smart, interesting rock critics who I know who are good writers don't have a lot of interest in obscurantist music anymore. They just don't have any interest in it.

S: I hate to think that people don't want to talk about that just because there's a limited audience for it. That's kind of the whole point of fanzines. I mean we had Brian Berger be a guest writer for us. Obviously we're interested in talking about John Fahey reissues and whatnot.
We can certainly talk about John Fahey reissues.

S: Isn't it great that those guys [Revenant, Austin-based label jointly founded by the late Fahey] won at the Grammys [three for Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton]?
Yeah, I called Dean [Blackwood] like three days later - "How was it?" "I threw up on Nelly's shoes!" I was like, "No you didn't!" "No, I didn't, but we had a

22 Geek Weekly Fanzine