Curse

Zine Radio talks to Jane and Logan of the Baltimore, Maryland-based electronic doom wave noise duo Curse.

Also, Zine Radio is now a podcast available on iTunes. Subscribe here.

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Round table proposal

It has come to the attention of zine radio that some participants of the events I have recorded do not wish to make public their involvement. In fact, the events themselves may be at risk of extinction, should powers that be gain knowledge of the location or date and time of a given show.

This would devastate yours truly.

I rely on this outlet no less than any other member of our community. Even when I am not recording the music or documenting the enthusiasm and loving nature of persons involved in making it all happen, I get from attendance to shows something I haven’t put a finger on in twenty years of hanging out. 

…identity? …comradary?… Spirituality?

Whatever this casual network provides, zineradio is dedicated from the first to its preservation, cultivation and growth. I am excited to announce that anyone who wants to can help me decide how best to avoid doing harm to our precious cultural resource, while allowing access to my archive of the scene’s performing achievements.

My vision of the podcast is something highly segmented and listenable. Informative but not preachy. I also feel it’s important that more comprehensive, more raw content should be linked to the site. I recognize that not everybody who goes to a house-show wants to be party to my project, hence my policy of prior restraint concerning its content and its constituents. In other words, if you’re on the show in any way, you get to listen before it’s posted; at which point your approval or disapproval is absolute.

In the spirit of this collaborative approach, I am inviting interested parties to come to a local radio studio for a round table workshop of policies and practices to protect the privacy and integrity of the very thing we at zineradio plan to podcast, namely how badass our town is at putting on shows.

How this thing evolves before it’s even born.

I’ve been recording house-shows, public venue debuts and other DIY music and art events for over a year now. I have been that guy at a performance or showing or festival, holding a digital sound recorder or babysitting a laptop with conspicuous headphones around my head or neck the whole evening. It’s not enough, apparently that I’m insinuating myself into a scene of friends and colleagues where I stand out by a significant socio-economic difference, or else hella-age-gap; I have to advertise my other-ness with obvious gear in tow.

It’s worth it to me for some highly examined reasons.

  • I intend to compile my material into a cultural podcast.
  • I want to document the worthy and unique  offerings in my community.
  • I get bored sometimes.

Someday this blog/podcast could help me remember the names of all these people I keep meeting. So far it’s only been a dream and a frustration for people who follow up on the website I say I’m building.

I really have no special qualifications to make any reports on DIY music and other arts. I have no proven experience in the field. Pretty mediocre, really, considering the effort and its duration. 

I have been a drummer in a handful of bands of no note, written a little and drawn art for flyers seen by dozens of people.

That this lack of success doesn’t hinder my status in the community’s DIY scene is one encouraging factor to my feeling more at home among the house-show attendees. I like to tell my broadcasting colleagues that they, even they, would find themselves welcome at a show. ‘Especially if you bring smokes or booze,’ I add, and we laugh. But seriously, I sometimes wish more places could operate like some unofficial venues I’ve been a part of. There are some easy examples of more established and main-stream talents and facilities who belittle us nobodies in the media. Meanwhile, at a house-show one may feel safe in eschewing popular culture and celebrity talents.

It’s not all adversarial….