This is the first piece of writing I’ve done in seven months, so go easy on me.
When I stopped writing new reviews seven months ago I told y’all that I wasn’t sure I’d keep the site open after February 2022 and didn’t know if I could work up the time and energy to compile my reviews in book form.
Here’s the deal: a book is definitely not on the immediate horizon, but I have decided to keep the site active for at least another year.
The two decisions are related. The site will continue to fill up space in the blogosphere because I’m not in the mood for a book and altrockchick.com is a convenient place to store my stuff.
I’m also thinking of coming back for an encore . . . of sorts. There are still some albums I wish I’d covered, but I’d also like to do a few pieces on individual songs that are: a.) great songs stuck on crappy albums I wouldn’t review in a billion years or b.) songs that are on decent albums but are clearly head-and-shoulders above the rest or c.) songs that I haven’t covered in my reviews but have achieved iconic status for one reason or another (like when you drove your Chevy to the levee but you really should have known when to hold ’em because you should have come down off your throne and not said to your squeeze, “Baby, do I feel high.”)
I won’t know if I still have my writing chops until I start writing, so I can’t promise anything.
My apologies to those of you who posted comments and didn’t get a response from me for weeks or not at all, but I’ve been very, very busy! After long discussions and a few failed experiments, my partner and I decided that the most promising path to more meaningful work was to shift our client base from corportate clients to NGO’s (non-profits). We were making headway and landed a couple of NGO clients before Omicron paid a visit to the continent and fucked up the works (today we broke the all-time daily record for new cases—vive la France!). As a consequence we have put all our marketing efforts on hold until this latest phase passes into epidemiological history.
With a more manageable workload, I have some time available to continue my exploration of music. This may involve writing about it on altrockchick.com and/or trying my hand at composition. We’ll see.
The family remains healthy, vigilant and frustrated with the never-ending restrictions. The only music-related news I can share is that I lost a bet with my father on which team Max Scherzer would pick (the Mets?) and the penance he exacted was excruciating: watching all seven hours of the Get Back documentary. I had no idea that The Beatles could be so phenomenally boring.
Somewhat on the plus side, dad found an unopened box from the move to Nice SEVEN YEARS AGO and part of the treasure trove was my high school graduation picture. My rather tepid expression can be interpreted as part resistance to a silly ritual and part anger at the beautician whose approach was late 70’s/early 80’s.
Dad calls it my “Charlie’s Angels” look. I call my dad an insensitive asshole.
