16

the gay crowd. We did that for a while, and then I moved to Albany, NY with a girlfriend. I did work for like, the New York Rocker, a lot of free publications, various music publications, Slash, I would do various articles for these magazines when I was in my late teens, early twenties. When I moved to Austin, I started writing for the Chronicle almost right away. It was nonmusical stuff first. The first big article I did was called "Musical Like Me," and it was about how I'd just moved to town and I told everybody I was a musician to get women. It was this really cheesy article. It went over really big, it was really funny. It was kind of a takeoff on the whole loser musician lifestyle and why women like these cads. I started doing a column in the Austin Chronicle in 1985 and it was called "Don't You Start Me Talkin'." It was a gossipy satire music column, but it encapsulated the whole music scene. At first, people were wanting to beat me up. A lot. I had a lot of threats, like people looking for me and this and that, for about six months I was terrified. The skinheads were looking for me because I did this article, "Why Dragworms Are Better Than Skinheads."

Is this something that you would be proud of?

Not really. When skinheads look for you it's a little different than angry letter writers. I wouldn't say that I get off on the negative attention, but I get off on the attention. I think it's good that if your business is critiquing others, I think it's really good that you go under some criticism too. As hard as I criticize bands or other people, I should be criticized too. Probably the only thing that bothers me is when people write that I'm a lousy writer. I don't mind so much when they say, "He's an idiot, he doesn't know music, he doesn't know what he's talking about," but when I get letters about how I'm just a dreadful writer, that's the only thing that bothers me, because I think that's the one saving grace, that's the reason I can get away with what I do, is that I put a lot of time and effort and energy and creativity into what I do, and so I think I'm allowed a little more room to criticize others. It was really important to me, once I reached the point where I thought I was the equal of the musicians, because when you start off it's all stacked, like they're the gods and you're the media, you're the person who stuck a microphone in front of their face, following them around and basically sniffing up around musicians, but once I got to the point where I thought, "Wait a minute, what I'm doing is as creatively viable as what they're doing," I got a lot of confidence in my opinion. I thought, "I have as much right

the gay crowd. We did that for a while, and then I moved to Albany, NY with a girlfriend. I did work for like, the New York Rocker, a lot of free publications, various music publications, Slash, I would do various articles for these magazines when I was in my late teens, early twenties. When I moved to Austin, I started writing for the Chronicle almost right away. It was nonmusical stuff first. The first big article I did was called "Musical Like Me," and it was about how I'd just moved to town and I told everybody I was a musician to get women. It was this really cheesy article. It went over really big, it was really funny. It was kind of a takeoff on the whole loser musician lifestyle and why women like these cads. I started doing a column in the Austin Chronicle in 1985 and it was called "Don't You Start Me Talkin'." It was a gossipy satire music column, but it encapsulated the whole music scene. At first, people were wanting to beat me up. A lot. I had a lot of threats, like people looking for me and this and that, for about six months I was terrified. The skinheads were looking for me because I did this article, "Why dragworms Are Better Than Skinheads."

Is this something that you would be proud of?

Not really. When skinheads look for you it's a little different than angry letter writers. I wouldn't say that I get off on the negative attention, but I get off on the attention. I think it's good that if your business is critiquing others, I think it's really good that you go under some criticism too. As hard as I criticize bands or other people, I should be criticized too. Probably the only thing that bothers me is when people write that I'm a lousy writer. I don't mind so much when they say, "He's an idiot, he doesn't know music, he doesn't know what he's talking about," but when I get letters about how I'm just a dreadful writer, that's the only thing that bothers me, because I think that's the one saving grace, that's the reason I can get away with what I do, is that I put a lot of time and effort and energy and creativity into what I do, and so I think I'm allowed a little more room to criticize others. It was really important to me, once I reached the point where I thought I was the equal of the musicians, because when you start off it's all stacked, like they're the gods and you're the media, you're the person who stuck a microphone in front of their face, following them around and basically sniffing up around musicians, but once I got to the point where I thought, "Wait a minute, what I'm doing is as creatively viable as what they're doing," I got a lot of confidence in my opinion. I thought, "I have as much right