The things you'll find...

I'm doing a vanity Google search and found a site that archives the two articles I wrote for No Depression Magazine in the 90's. No Depression is the primary magazine for the Alternative Country music scene (named after an old Carter Family song). One is on the band The Geraldine Fibbers (featuring Carla Bozulich), and the other is about Pittsburgh band The Deliberate Strangers.

I had no idea these were still out there.

http://archives.nodepression.com/author/wayne-wise/

Writing Part 3 (Getting Paid)

I'm going to go a little out of chronological order with this. My experience writing, drawing, and eventually self-publishing comics sort of falls into the general category of “getting paid” but it's a story in and of itself. I'll come back to that later.

I moved to Pittsburgh in the early 90's for a job. Lots of people in my life at present don't know that have a Master's Degree in Clinical Psychology. It doesn't surprise me that they don't because that feels like a lifetime ago to me, another life entirely. I had followed the path of getting a good education to get a good job and at the time I still thought that being a Psychologist of some kind was my primary vocation. I don't regret the education, or the time spent getting it. Some of my best memories are of that time period. But the jobs... well, let's just say that Psychology was not my primary vocation.

One day, in a fit of pique... rage is a better word, I walked out of my professional career and never looked back. I had some money in the bank, but not another job to go to. Not having anyone other than myself to support allowed me to make this hasty decision. It was one of the two or three best decisions of my life.

So began six or seven years of living from paycheck to paycheck from unpredictable temp jobs (including the seasonal job of department store Santa... If you saw the Pittsburgh Christmas parade around 1993 or 94, that was me that John Fedko interviewed on the float). It was stressful and maddening and free. Within the first six months of leaving my career I had sold my first freelance art and writing. Now, I want to stress, I never made enough from either to live on it. But I was doing it.

The art was mainly comics related stuff, so that belongs in the next blog.

The writing, like a lot of things in my life, seemed to fall in my lap (people say I'm lucky, and maybe so, but I believe a big part of luck is putting yourself in it's way. Make connections, reach out, let people know what you're doing. Every bit of luck I've ever had can be traced back to specific connections I've made to set things in motion). The Spirits of Independence Tour came to Pittsburgh. This was a small press comics con, featuring Dave Sim of Cerebus fame, among others. Phantom of the Attic Comics (my current employer, though not yet at that time) was one of the only retail sponsors of the show. A friend of mine, Dean Focareta, was writing an article about the con for In Pittsburgh Newsweekly, the free weekly City Paper kind of thing at the time. Another mutual friend, Chris Potocki, was working as the assistant Arts and Entertainment editor for the paper and had given Dean the assignment. Dean called me up and asked if I would introduce him to some of the comics pros at the show (I had met and befriended a number of them over the year at various conventions). I said sure. I also asked Potocki if I could write something as well. Chris said to give him a couple hundred words as a sidebar for the article.

On the Friday night of the show, Steve Bissette (artist of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, among many, many other things), was giving a slideshow lecture on the history of the Horror genre in comics. Dean was unable to attend this, and Steve is one of those artists I had befriended, so an article was born. I wrote it over the weekend and sent it to Chris. On Wednesday of the following week it was published exactly as I had written it, with no edits whatsoever. A week or so later I received a check for fifty bucks. In those days of temp work, fifty bucks was significant. I called Chris up and asked what I needed to do continue writing.

So began several years of being a fairly regular contributor to In Pittsburgh. I guess I should address that, yes, Chris was a friend of mine and he was doing me a solid. That said, he was an assistant editor with people above him who also liked my work. Chris left the paper not long after, but I kept on writing for it. I went through several editors; Margie Romero, Steve Segal and Mike Shanley. They were all very light-handed when it came to editing my work.

I wrote mostly entertainment based articles. CD reviews and concert previews for the most part, sprinkled with the occasional local comic book themed story. The pay wasn't great (though broken down to an hourly wage it wasn't bad for the time I actually spent on it), but the swag was great! I received a lot of free CD's to review. I saw a lot of free concerts. I went out to more concerts during this time when I was working as a temp and had no money than at any other time in my life. I interviewed the singer Jewel when she was 18 years old, about six months before she broke really big onto the national scene. My first cover feature was a phone interview with Frank Black, lead singer of the Pixies. The Pixies rank pretty high on my list of all-time favorite bands, so this was amazing. A couple of years later I met and hung out with him with a group of friends at the Squirrel Cage (a bar in Pittsburgh, for you out-of-towners). I met and hung out with Alt-Country star Robbie Fulks a dozen times or more. There were others. No one really, really big or famous, but in the world of Indy Rock they were people I was pretty excited about.

In Pittsburgh was eventually bought out and closed down by the City Paper. Within a year, maybe a little bit more, a new independent newsweekly called PULP came to life in Pittsburgh. Mike Shanley was Arts editor for this and called me up to see if I wanted to write for them. I did for the whole two years of the paper's existence. During this time I also sold a couple of articles to Pittsburgh Magazine, and had a few articles published in two different nationally distributed music magazines, Kulture Deluxe, and the Alt-Country bible, No Depression.

About the time PULP went out of business I was feeling a little dry. I felt like I had said pretty much all I had to say in that format and that, even though I was writing about different bands or subjects, I was writing the same old things over and over. By that time I wanted to move on to other projects.

This was a great experience for me. Getting a financial reward (as well as CD's and concerts) is always motivating. Seeing your work in print is always a good feeling as well. It's validating. For awhile I was one of the voices of Pittsburgh. Every so often someone still recognizes my name from something they read. It also taught me some discipline. I had deadlines I had to meet, and though all of my editors will tell you I pretty much always sent articles the day they were due (I had usually written them that morning), I never missed a deadline. It was good working with editors. Though they left most of my work unmolested they did occasionally ask for changes, or edit my work. I can only think of one time that I really disagreed with their choices, and even that was a good learning experience.

I'm not sure I'll ever go back to it. Nothing against it, but I just don't feel the motivation the way I did then. I might not turn down a gig if it was offered, but I'm probably going to need more than CD's and concerts at this point.

Old Lloyd Cole Article

Time to reprint another of my old articles from Pulp Newsweekly. I wrote the following review for singer/songwriter Lloyd Cole's album "Music in a Foreign Language" in 2003. Lloyd is a long-time favorite, and intrinsically tied into some very specific memories for me. I really can't be objective about this artist. Lloyd Cole Music In A Foreign Language, the latest CD by singer/songwriter Lloyd Cole, marks the twenty-year anniversary of his recording career. Rattlesnakes, his first album with his band the Commotions, was released in the post New Wave, pre-Alternative days of 1984, spawning the minor radio hit Perfect Skin. What separated Cole from most of his contemporaries were his well-written, literate lyrics. He was able to combine intelligence and emotion in clever turns of phrase. His voice was plaintive, emotional and sexy, angst-ridden without being whiney. It was the perfect combination to appeal to what was then called College Rock. In spite of this strong start, wider success continued to elude him. Still, true to his muse, Cole continued to work and record. In 1990, after three albums, he dropped the Commotions with his eponomously titled Lloyd Cole. The 90’s saw him experiment with different sounds. Both Bad Vibes and Don’t Get Weird On Me Babe featured richer sounds with full orchestration. His last major label release in the US, The Negatives (with Jill Sobule), featured the return of a more traditional band structure. Since then Cole has continued to record without the support of the music industry. He sold albums directly from his website, maintaining a close personal contact with his fan base. Music In A Foreign Language was originally released in Europe in 2003 on Sanctuary Records. In 2004 an American label, One Little Indian Us, picked it up. For the first time in years Cole is getting airplay. The sound is stripped down, focusing primarily on Cole’s voice and guitar. The other instrumentation serves to underscore these strengths. His lyrics are still literate and intelligent, laced with melancholy and yearning. His cover of Nick Cave’s People Ain’t No Good is delivered as a simple statement of sad-but-true, obvious fact. “I learned the language of the self-obsessed,” he sings in Shelf Life, the album’s final track. His voice is older now, more experienced, accepting of life instead of resigned to it. The last lines of the album seem to reflect that more mature attitude. “No longer waiting for my prayers to be answered/No longer waiting for my publisher’s call/No longer charming in my reminisces/Only immersed in a faint afterglow.” The following video is a live clip of his first single, "Perfect Skin" from 1984 with his band The Commotions.

So I'm not good at blogging on a regular basis (I'll get better, I swear). It occurred to me though that I have a lot of old writing that a lot of people have never seen. I wrote for years for In Pittsburgh Newsweekly, and then for PULP when IP went out of business. These articles were mostly music reviews of some kind or another. I have a lot of those articles archived, and since those papers are now defunct I might as well run the stuff here. So, with that in mind, here's a concert preview I posted for the Neo-New Wave band The Epoxies. I don't have a date of when this first appeared, but I think the album came out in 2002. The Epoxies

Break out your skinny ties and duct tape; the 80’s are back. It’s been twenty years since the airwaves were filled with the sounds of synthesizers, so the time is right for a new wave of New Wave nostalgia. From its opening burst of static it’s obvious that the Epoxies are all your favorite bands from 1982 rolled into one. Filled with the beeps and blips of electronic keyboards, the Epoxies self-titled first album continues the musical heritage of Devo, Thomas Dolby, the Vapors, and Gary Numan. Lyrically, they exist in a world of plastic and glass, looking for love amidst the nuclear fear of a Cold War era. But it is the voice of singer Roxy Epoxy that is the most evocative of the period. With slight changes of inflection she is able to summon the spirits of Blondie, Missing Persons, and Bow-Wow-Wow. Throw aggressive drumming and the signature Adam Ant tribal yodel into the background and the package is complete. While the Epoxies wear their influences openly, they manage to make it all seem fresh and exciting again. The challenge is to continue to do so without devolving into a Sha-Na-Na like novelty act.

Wayne Wise They released a self-titled album and a second full-length release called Stop The Future. Singer Roxy Epoxy formed a new band called The Rebound and released Bandaids on Bullet Holes. I saw The Epoxies three times in about a year at the Rex Theater on the South Side and met the band. The shows were great.

See what Roxy's doing now at her website.