JOHN SINCLAIR
RECENT WRITINGS (August 2000)
I write about music for a living -- anything from feature stories and interviews to liner notes, press releases and artists' bios. I write poetry for kicks and perform my verse with musical accompaniment every chance I get, but these performances barely pay for themselves, since the poetry racket is even less lucrative than the field of improvisational jazz or free-lance journalism.
Moreover, I write in New Orleans, where literacy is little cherished and the payment for writing is even smaller than everywhere else. But our musical community is so very rich that it's rewarding in itself to get to write about its denizens for the occasional fifty or a hundred dollars or two.
Some time ago, Jason Gross asked me for some of my writings to reprint in PSF, and by the time I had a chance to respond, I had written several new pieces which I thought to send him to choose from. He suggested printing them all, and here they are.
Each piece is discrete and has nothing to do with the next; each was printed in a different context; but they flowed one after another in a frantic attempt to meet a series of stringent deadlines leading up to and continuing through JazzFest 2000, where I also work as a broadcast anchor for WWOZ's
live coverage of the festival at the Fairgrounds. This year I also conducted on-stage interviews at JazzFest with Bernard Allison and Lazy Lester; the Allison interview will eventually appear in Blues Access magazine, where I serve as Managing Editor.
- JAZZ FUNERALS was written April 26th
- LES GETREX (Liner Notes) was written March 26th
- MARDI GRAS INDIANS was written in mid-April for Where Y'at magazine, a local monthly tabloid paper
- NIGHTCRAWLERS (Liner Notes) was written April 10th
- WARDELL QUEZERGUE (CD Review) was written April 24th for Gambit Weekly, another local tabloid
- SOLEDAD BROTHERS (Liner Notes) was written March 29th for Touch & Go
Records
Also see: John Sinclair's own website
and see an interview with John about the MC5
MAIN PAGE | ARTICLES | STAFF/FAVORITE MUSIC | LINKS | WRITE US |