PAST IS PROLOGUE
Street Noise: Unearthing Sonic Youth
Forty years ago, New York Rocker sent me to review a new, unknown downtown band.
About two days after I’d moved to the Meat Packing District in fall 1981, from my first NYC apartment in Greenwich Village, the urge to write about music resurfaced. Though I’d maintained a sporadic journal since leaving Ohio that spring, I longed for the motivation of an official assignment, not to mention the ego gratification of being published and hopefully read. Inspiration — the variety and quality of music in the city — was everywhere. It was inescapable.
First step in becoming a freelance journalist: replace the graduation-present electric typewriter stolen by a junkie neighbor at 78 Washington Place. On one of my frequent walks in the East Village, I’d noticed a storefront window full of secondhand guitars on Third Avenue around 11th Street. What I assumed was a rundown music store turned out to be a pawn shop. So I dropped thirty bucks there, and walked out with an aged-but-functioning Royal manual. Heading home on the 14th Street bus, I felt like a real writer.
Next step was summoning the courage to query New York Rocker. Editor Andy Schwartz rapidly responded with an assignment, and then another and another in fairly quick succession…
