Author: J T. Ramsay

  • There’s a first and last time for everything.

    This will be my first and last SXSW Music Fes­ti­val. I was ini­tial­ly very excit­ed to cov­er the event for my day job, only to be denied press cre­den­tials. Our pitch was to cov­er the fes­ti­val as a trav­el­ogue with a cranky crit­ic — think Three Sheets with a some­what more sober Zane Lam­prey —…

  • Best music writing.

    I just sub­mit­ted this for con­sid­er­a­tion. If you haven’t already read the Deci­blog’s scathing, suc­cinct take­down of the mar­ket­ing plan for the Mars Volta’s new album, you should. The usb stick gim­mick gives the mid­dle fin­ger to the envi­ron­ment in ways I can­not com­pre­hend. Has the record indus­try not heard of email? Try meet­ing the…

  • A farewell to blogs.

    If you’re into read­ing brainy music blogs that don’t get mired in jar­gon, you already miss Woe­bot tremen­dous­ly. I’m one of those people. The past year saw the dis­ap­pear­ance of Sty­lus Mag­a­zine too, a webzine that got me back on my music-writer­ly feet after a mis­er­able audi­tion at Pitch­fork. Sty­lus was the Mon­tre­al Expos of…

  • Still under construction, still listening.

    I’m find­ing that one of my excus­es for not writ­ing here more reg­u­lar­ly is that I’m real­ly tired of look­ing at the cur­rent incar­na­tion of Black­mail Is My Life. I’m real­ly psy­ched to update the links to all the new blogs I’m read­ing now that I’ve been intro­duced to a num­ber of great local food…

  • Looking ahead.

    So far this has been an incred­i­ble year. After get­ting my full-time gig at Com­cast, I’ve been very excit­ed and ambi­tious about what my job can mean to me. In just a few short months I’ve been able to do things I nev­er thought I’d be doing as a job, like cov­er­ing SXSW for work…