Contributors
Editor in Chief / Co-Founder:
Michael Goldberg
Creative Director / Co-Founder:
Emme Stone
Copy Editor:
Mary Eisenhart
Cinematronic Editor:
Michael Snyder
Depth Of Field Editor:
Jim McGinnis
Twinklepop Editor:
Annette Loudon
Design Team:
Kylie Higgins
Jude Robinson
Contributing Editors:
Rikki Abel
Rosecrans Baldwin
Anthony Carew
Jim Connelly
John Darnielle
Brian Faust
Ben Gook
Kate Guay
Christian David Hoard
Kevin John
Lee Tran Lam
Kembrew McLeod
Jeffrey Morgan
Andrea Parra
Randy Reiss
Philip Sherburne
Yancey Strickler
Jennifer Tatone
Johnny Walker (Black)
R. Airiq Williams
Phil Wise
If you would like Neumu to consider reviewing an album, please send a copy to:
Michael Goldberg
P.O. Box 1270
Point Reyes Station, CA 94956
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Biographies
Rikki Abel
Rikki "Rik" Abel is a mildly hypomanic Web designer (and proud of it!) who lives in Cambridge, England, which is a weird little town and don't let anyone tell you any different. He wants to move to Vancouver, but soon. He likes: nice music, writing blurbs about himself in the third person, Japanese food, inline skating, Mac IE5, books, staring glassy-eyed and slack-jawed at a luminous glass square for 8+ hours a day, "froink," Jim Woodring, "Infinite Jest," cats, doing a bad Canadian accent, drugs, CSS, his lovely titanium PowerBook, and his even lovelier Canadian wife. He doesn't like: bad music, taxi drivers, Netscape 4.X, micros**t, jaded English shop assistants who never make eye contact with you (even though he should be used to it by now), liquorice, guinea pigs. He doesn't have any tattoos but talks constantly about getting one. He is a milquetoast.
Contact: rikki@neumu.net
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Rosecrans Baldwin
Rosecrans Baldwin edits The Morning News (themorningnews.org), lives in Brooklyn, and is preparing his first novel for sale. Previous job titles include: ambulance driver, creative writing teacher, copy editor, pizza delivery guy, graphic designer, post office clerk, and creative strategist, the last of which never made much sense to anyone.
Contact: baldwin@neumu.net
Website: the morning news
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Anthony Carew
Anthony Carew likes wielding hyphens and stringing irritating alliterations. He likes the rhythm words make when you type them. He likes the rhythm of the rock 'n' roll, and he likes typing words about music a lot. He started doing this as a boy of 18 and has yet to stop, which wouldn't be that bad if it didn't mean that he's spent his years avoiding real employment. Numerous publications in his home country of Australia publish his words, but that's not why Anthony does this. It's the free records.
Contact: carew@neumu.net
Website: gravity girl
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Jim Connelly
Jim Connelly has been involved with pop culture as a writer and general contributor since the 1980s, when he found himself working smack dab in the middle of the college-radio/indie-rock scene at his college radio station in Fresno, Calif. In the mid-1990s, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area just in time to fall in love with the pre-money World Wide Web and create barefoot jim's flat, which led to a career of building Web sites for evil multinational corporations and newly-minted startups. In the midst of all of that, his writing has appeared in Wired, the Village Voice, the Fresno Bee and the now-defunct Websight Magazine, where he was a regular columnist. Jim enjoys the irony of having been on the front lines of two world-changing events — the alt-rock explosion of the '80s and the Web gold rush of the late '90s — and still being flat broke.
Contact: connelly@neumu.net
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John Darnielle
Since 1991, when he founded his seminal death-rock band the Mountain Goats, John Darnielle has been playing an acoustic guitar and arguing with people about whether he can still call his music "death rock" when he hasn't even got a drummer. He lives in Ames, Iowa, half an hour's drive away from the Chicago Cubs' AAA team in Des Moines. When he isn't busy banging his head against a wall trying to figure out ways to get his bills paid without having to leave the house, he works at a home for abused children and spends his remaining waking hours writing about music for New Times L.A., the Philadelphia City Paper, Magnet and Spin.com. He is a member of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, although he has recently let his dues lapse and is worried that God is going to hold that against him. His self-published 'zine, Last Plane to Jakarta, appears sporadically, perhaps once or twice a year; an essay about Thai pop music from issue #4 was listed in "Da Capo Best Music Writing 2000 — The Year's Finest Writing on Rock, Pop, Jazz, Country, and More." He is persuaded that advertisement-free media will soon usher in a new age of enlightenment and stimulating intellectual discourse. His wife Lalitree is almost unbelievably attractive.
Contact: darnielle@neumu.net
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Mary Eisenhart
Mary Eisenhart grew up in Whittier, Calif., and in the days of her youth managed to attend all three Beatles performances in Los Angeles. Her first review — of David Lindley's first solo gig — appeared in BAM in the spring of 1981. She's been writing and editing stories about music and technology ever since, and for 14 years was the editor of BAM spinoff MicroTimes, California's Computer Magazine. She has written business, technology and music-oriented articles for publications including The Golden Road, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Knowledge Management and M-Business, and worked as a copy editor at SonicNet. Her interview subjects over the years have included Jerry Garcia and Neil Young, as well as assorted Silicon Valley luminaries. Two of her articles recently appeared in "The Grateful Dead Reader" from Oxford University Press.
Contact: mary@neumu.net
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Brian Faust
Brian Faust, who begins his senior year in high school this fall, is Neumu's youngest contributor at 17. He has a strong interest in the
arts, including film, theater, photography, writing and, of course, music. A favorite pursuit is watching films and then arguing about
their quality with others; his taste in movies runs to the Kubrickian. He's an avid photographer and an active participant in his school's theater program, which the Educational Theatre Association rated one of the country's 12 best. In kindergarten, his chief musical interest was David Bowie (in "Labyrinth"); by the fourth and fifth grades, he'd moved on to Nirvana, and now says he's drawn to anything that's good. He currently purchases an average of one CD a week. His favorite albums of all time include London Calling and Blonde On Blonde.
Contact: brian@neumu.net
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Michael Goldberg
Michael Goldberg, Neumu's co-founder and editor in chief, is a distinguished pioneer in the online music space; Newsweek magazine called him an "Internet visionary." In 1994 Goldberg founded (and named) the highly influential Addicted To Noise (ATN), the first music-oriented Web site with original content. At ATN, Goldberg created and oversaw the Addicted To Noise Music News of the World, a well-respected round-the-clock music news service with a global reach into over 40 million homes. Goldberg's other innovations included the world's first online album review with audio samples, as well as Cinemachine, the movie-review search engine. He was a senior vice president and editor in chief at SonicNet from March 1997 through May 2000. Goldberg both initiated and oversaw the yearlong investigation that resulted in SonicNet¹s series "Playing With Fire: The Untold Story of Woodstock 99" which was awarded a Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Award for Web reporting in 2001. Prior to starting Addicted To Noise, Goldberg was an editor and senior writer at Rolling Stone for 10 years. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Esquire, Vibe, Details, Down Beat, the New Musical Express and numerous other publications. The Bay Area native began his professional career — for which he prepared by running a poster business in junior high school, promoting concerts at his high school and publishing local rock magazine Hard Road — as a columnist for director Francis Ford Coppola's City of San Francisco magazine in 1975. In October 2000 he launched InsiderOne.net. He believes that music is art and that art can change the world. For more on Michael Goldberg, check out his expanded bio.
Contact: michael@neumu.net
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Ben Gook
Ben Gook is an Australian lad who has been reviewing compact discs for various publications over the past five years. He plays guitar in a rock group; he tries to avert any reviewing of the group because he knows how evil reviewers think. He has a hang-up about elitist folks who think "shit ain't good" unless it is released by Thrill Jockey, Quarterstick or whatever labels are cool at the moment. His favorite acts at the time of writing include Mineral, Bluebottle Kiss, Something For Kate, Ryan Adams, Whiskeytown, Red House Painters, the Gloria Record, The Lucksmiths, Low, Dirty Three and the Black Heart Procession. He likes to mix with the plebs, so feel free to contact him any ol' time.
Contact: ben@neumu.net
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Kate Guay
Kate's earliest musical memories include singing along to Neil Diamond on road trips and berating her mother for giving her Beatles records away. Other memorable moments include spending years as a high-school radio DJ, getting thoroughly saturated with every kind of music imaginable via MP3, combining her love of writing with her love of music, and receiving a pout for a pout from Thom Yorke at a Radiohead concert. Kate currently attends journalism school in Toronto. In her spare time, she dabbles in freelancing, mostly for Chart magazine. When she's not fanatically keeping up to date in pop/alt culture, she's fanatically watching the Kids in the Hall and sharing her thoughts on life, the universe, and everything on the Internet via Blogger.
Contact: kate@neumu.net
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Christian David Hoard
Christian David Hoard prefers any kind of music that challenges his stale u.m.c. whiteboy paradigm, though he'll rave about "lithe creaminess" or black leather if the price is right. His favorite record is "Friday on My Mind" by the Easybeats. He likes Indian food. He's been in love twice. He writes terrible poetry. He threw a mean curveball until he broke his arm, twice. He likes old T-shirts, dislikes many of his family members. He's paler than Morrissey, creepier than Norman Bates. He strives to replicate the prosaic burlesque of 19th-century playwright William Thomas Moncrieff. His work has appeared in The Metro Times,All Music Guide and Salon. Starting Fall 2001, he'll be a graduate student at Columbia University.
Contact: christian@neumu.net
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Kylie Higgins
Kylie Higgins is currently on a mission to check out the world. Her current residency in London is a change from her previous home, a tiny place in Oz where the local store doesn't sell much more than beer and dog food. Before becoming a New Media whore, she was music director for an indie radio station, where, thanks to CD promos and concert guest lists, every day was Christmas. She's the queen of HTML, has a weird way with language (current faves being "wodge" and "futz"), and has a thing for lomos, music, code, art, words, seahorses, beauty and damage.
Contact: kylie@neumu.net
Website: gusset
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Lee Tran Lam
Lee Tran Lam is a 20-year-old lass who does a zine called Speak-easy. She fills in the silences with samplings of Cat Power, Julie Doiron, Belle and Sebastian, Low, Life Without Buildings, and Australian bands such as Art of Fighting, Adam Said Galore, Sandro, and Light's Surprising Constancy. She enjoys anything that can quietly devastate or inspire a bedroom disco. She thinks the word "jeepers" is kind of cool.
Contact: lee@neumu.net
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Kevin John
Kevin John is a lonely planet boy who recently moved deeper into the heart of darkness, from Milwaukee to South Milwaukee, an actual city south of Milwaukee's South Side. When he's not devising an escape plan to grad school, John has every intention of forming a band called the Pregnant Chads, but he's not sure he has the conviction to push all the way through with it. Current obsessions: Jiminy Glick, Jackass, M2M and Napster (if Napster were a person, he'd kiss and hug it. Shawn Fanning will have to do). Favorite movie of all time: "Some Call It Loving." Second favorite movie of all time: "The Hart of London." His writing about music and film has appeared in CMJ-New Music Monthly, Boston Phoenix, Chicago Reader, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Addicted To Noise, Joey (check out joeymag.com), In Step and a few filthy gay porno mags.
Contact: kevin@neumu.net
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Annette Loudon
Once upon a time there was a girl who fancied working in the music industry and imagined a beautiful life immersed in new music. One seminar later, she was cured of such foolishness. So she secured a steady feed of new music by writing music reviews for the University of Wollongong newspaper, and set about developing an unhealthy addiction to the Internet. Hoping to channel this addiction in a positive way, she helped found Construct, one of the first Web design companies. The San Francisco-based company quickly earned a reputation for doing cool things with disturbingly new Web technologies. Five years later Annette left to frolic in the freelance world under the guise of The Nifty Corporation. Despite persistent protests from her cat, Annette's infatuations with music and the net show no signs of abating.
Contact: annette@neumu.net
Website: niftycorp
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Jim McGinnis
A native of the New York metro area, Jim McGinnis started his career at age 3, when he was handed his first camera. Since then he has studied in and around the United States, framing subjects to reveal an individual vision of the world. Such travels have landed him in Portland, Ore., where he currently passes his time photographing, snowboarding, and working in the computer graphics industry.
Contact: jim@neumu.net
Website: we clik
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Kembrew McLeod
Born on Halloween, 1970, Kembrew McLeod is an assistant professor in the communication studies department at the University of Iowa. He received his Ph.D. in communication from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His book, Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership and Intellectual Property Law, will be published in the spring of 2001. It examines the impact of copyright, trademark and patent law on everything from hip-hop music, folk music and celebrity fan culture to farming, genetic patenting and visual-based collage. In addition to publishing a number of chapters in edited volumes and articles in scholarly journals (Journal of Communication, Popular Music, Journal of Popular Music Studies), he has written extensively about popular music and culture in Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Raygun, Addicted To Noise, MTV.com, VH1.com and SonicNet. He creates experimental audio and visual collages, and publishes a long-running zine/artist-book series titled "Freedom of Expression" (a phrase he successfully trademarked). His media pranks have been covered by CNN, the Boston Globe and the London Guardian, among others. He's no square, and he vows to put the "ass" back in "assistant professor."
Contact: kembrew@neumu.net
Website: kembrew
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Jeffrey Morgan
Jeffrey Morgan is a rock critic and freelance journalist who specializes in all aspects of historical and contemporary popular culture. From 1975 to 1990 he was the Canadian Contributing Editor of Creem magazine. He is also the author of the definitive authorized history of Alice Cooper, "The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper." He resides in Toronto, where he has just finished writing his first novel.
Contact: contact@neumu.net
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Andrea Parra
It must have been for love. It certainly wasn't the weather that enticed Andrea Parra to move to London two years ago. A Bay Area native, she first journeyed to London in 1993 to cover the "13 Year Itch," a weeklong showcase of live performances and art exhibits marking the 13th birthday of record label 4AD. This first stab at music writing earned her a place at American Music Press, where she published stories on Portishead, Lush, and Aphex Twin before taking an assistant editor position, which she held until the magazine folded in 1995. Her career in the music business actually began back in 1986 with a local band's single, handed to her at a Los Angeles wedding. She thought: "I could get this on the radio." Three months later she was DJing at KZSU at Stanford University, eventually becoming the station's promotions director at the tender age of 17. The late '80s saw further DJing and co-management of a Rough Trade-distributed independent label; later gigs including purchasing stints with a Bay Area dance distributor and Virgin Megastore USA. Along the way she's photographed Jarvis Cocker, punched Graham Coxon and raved to Paul Oakenfold. She currently works as editor and marketing coordinator for a London-based music exporter.
Contact: andrea@neumu.net
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Randy Reiss
Randy Reiss is a pop-culture vulture based in San Francisco. His uncontrollable addictions to music, TV and film have led him to writing gigs at Reel.com, Listen.com, SonicNet, Addicted To Noise, MTV.Com and to a stunning array of failed or business-model-shifted dot-coms. He currently toils as the Content Production Manager for Kick.Com. Prince, Frank Sinatra and Public Enemy rock his world, but he still has a deep affection for vintage soul from the '60s and '70s, mid-to-late-'70s schlock rock and well-written country music from any era.
Contact: randy@neumu.net
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Jude Robinson
Growing up in the early '80s, Jude Robinson kept herself entertained with "Monkey Magic" repeats and finger-painting the walls. It was a short matter of time before Jude, always encouraged to go outside and climb mango trees, joined the local circus and became a balancing acrobat. Her love of puzzles and appreciation of fine art and design grew into an obsession, driving her from the circus to venture into the realm of animation and interactivity, primarily on the Web. For the past few years she's lived in Sydney, freelancing for various design houses and humanitarian-based organizations such as the United Nations. Currently she lives in London and collaborates with other online artists.
Contact: jude@neumu.net
Website: rubixblox
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Philip Sherburne
If he had his druthers, Philip Sherburne would relive Paul Bowles' travels through North Africa with a tape recorder, documenting the shifts in music with every revised horizon. Since that's been done, however, he opts for its latter-day virtual counterpart, scouring the desert of the contemporary culture industry for oases of neglected brilliance. Is that it? No, really he's just a fancritic who got hooked on pop too young not to suffer irreversible effects. Based in San Francisco, in between the nine-to-five life as a dot-commer and nights as a sometime DJ, he writes about music, art, fashion and theory for The Wire, XLR8R, *Surface, CMJ New Music Monthly, Alternative Press, Sonicnet.com and others. Despite a reputation as a stern experimentalist, he would like to state for the record that he really likes house music. He plans to spend 2001 catching up on the history of soul music, which he inadvertently missed in the first three decades of his life.
Contact: philip@neumu.net
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Michael Snyder
Michael Snyder is a broadcaster and journalist based in San Francisco. His movie reviews have been a staple of West Coast radio for over a decade and can be heard on the World Wide Web by accessing his weekly netcast, "Michael Snyder On Film" with host Alex Bennett, at http://Website:.radiofreejack.com. His credits include live and/or syndicated stints as on-air film critic for CNET Radio, KITS-FM ("Live 105") and KQAK-FM ("The Quake") in San Francisco, KBCO-FM in Boulder, Colo., and 91-X in San Diego. He was managing editor and chief film critic at Cinemachine (Website:.cinemachine.com), the Internet search engine for movie reviews, for Sonicnet.com and MTV Interactive from 1998 until early 2001. Entertainment Weekly described his reviews for Cinemachine as "insightful, literate critiques." He is a contributing writer for Sonicnet.com and San Francisco magazine, as well as a former columnist and entertainment critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. A rabid fan of the San Francisco Giants and the 49ers, Michael has written a sports column for SF Weekly. He also has written for such publications as GEO, High Times, Creem and the British pop-music weekly New Musical Express. He co-authored the scenario to the ballet "Lear," which was choreographed by Victoria Morgan for the San Francisco Ballet and featured a score composed by former Police drummer Stewart Copeland. Michael also co-wrote songs for the legendary theatrical rock band the Tubes, including the top-40 hit "Tip of My Tongue" and the Halloween perennial "Attack of the 50-Foot Woman."
Contact: snyder@neumu.net
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Emme Stone
Emme Stone is Neumu's co-founder and creative director. Her artistic endeavors began in kindergarten when she attended life-drawing classes with Crayolas and assisted her mother in their makeshift photography lab, gently rocking trays under the glow of a single red bulb. The youngest of six creative children, Emme was destined to dwell in the visual realm, dismissing ballet classes as "too Degas." Emme has spent the remainder of her 25 years involved in various art, design and animation projects, many published online.
Contact: emme@neumu.net
Website: elephantcloud
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Yancey Strickler
Yancey Strickler grew up in rural Virginia and attended the College of William and Mary. He currently lives in New York, where he writes daily rock music news. His writing résumé includes stints with Pitchfork, Film Monthly, Flak, Held Like Sound, Chunklet and the All Music Guide. He loves noisy acts like Big Black, Gang of Four and the MC5, as well as the country sounds of the Flying Burrito Brothers, The Byrds, Doc Watson, Uncle Tupelo and Wilco.
Contact: yancey@neumu.net
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Jennifer Tatone
Born Nov. 29, 1976 in Portland, Ore., Jennifer Tatone has always been passionate about music, writing, and their ability to enhance life, so it was only natural that she'd pursue a career as a music critic. Her infatuation with edgy, punk rock 'n' roll began in junior high, as Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine turned her on to the darker sides of rock. Staunchly opposed to technology and world-dominating corporations during her college days, she went to work immediately after graduation for an Internet company owned by Viacom (go figure), where she discovered the reality, as contrasted to the fantasy, of reviewing music. Currently pursuing her dream as a freelancer, Jenny (who can be reached at 867-5309 — OK, seriously, jennifertatone@yahoo.com) has recently written reviews for SonicNet and Portland's Willamette Week, as well as InsiderOne.net, and still listens to Pretty Hate Machine frequently.
Contact: jennifer@neumu.net
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Johnny Walker (Black)
Johnny Walker (Black), a.k.a. Dr. John Walker of Toronto, has been foisting his musical opinions on the world at large via the Internet since 1994, when he penned his first review for Consumable Online. He really made his mark during the next few years with his windy, often inspired (by Lester Bangs) album reviews and various other forms of commentary (often scathing) for Addicted To Noise / SonicNet. He still contends he was right about Beck. While available space for his rants has decreased as the Web becomes the more tightly-wound commercial entity it is today, Walker still does his best to inject actual content into the online rock-crit medium. For this, you should thank him. While not writing about rock, Walker also picked up a Ph.D. in English (1999); when not busy cheering on Vince Carter at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, he can be found corrupting innocent English majors at various academic institutions with the works of Henry Miller and Iceberg Slim.
Contact: walker@neumu.net
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R. Airiq Williams
R. Airiq Williams is usually the last name on a list. Since that name is long, people call him "Q." Ex-street performer and
ex-organizer of street theatre, he put aside an alternative-theatre career in New York to retreat to Berkeley, Calif. He digs the music scenes of other cultures. The only Celtic "nation" he's not written about is Galicia (which he hopes to rectify); he has a passion for the Rock en Español movement, among many, many other things, some of which aren't silly. He loves to chat about "world" music, so drop him a line if you hear something cool, trippy or wonderful.
Contact: r.airiq@neumu.net
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