Friday, January 16, 2009

Lately I've found myself curious about what music writing in L.A. was like during punk and after. I remember seeing Kristine McKenna, both of whose Fantagraphics-published Q&A books are among my favorites, putting a note on Rockcritics.com about no one ever talking about West Coast music writers, and it stayed with me. I have some idea about Seattle's history, and obviously the Bay Area would have a giant footprint on the beast if only for Rolling Stone. I once came across an early-'80s issue of Wet, an L.A. rock/lifestyle mag McKenna helped run; it looked really good, a very hip, no bullshit variant on the template of, say, Interview, only with a meatiness closer to Trouser Press. And McKenna's really good singles list in 1981 was printed in that year's P&J, as was her line about it being "An amazing year for singles--easily came up with a list of 30 that totally killed me." If nothing else I'd love to know which were the others.