Between the Fall of 1998 and the Spring of 2001, I wrote 85 articles for the JustArts section of the Brandeis University Justice, our student newspaper, almost all either album reviews or reviews of live performances. The Justice’s online archives do not go back that far, but I still have copies on my hard drive of each article, pre-editing, and I thought it would be fun to get them online.
All of these are presented unedited and unrevised in the same format in which they were submitted to my editors. I’ve appended, whenever possible, either a song from the album being reviewed or a track from one of the live performers reviewed that was played at that show. Some of the writing is truly atrocious, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right? Even at its worst, it’s a fun little time capsule of what 1998-2001 looked and sounded like to me, at least a little bit.
I don’t have publication dates for these articles unfortunately, but I do have the date on which each file was submitted, which should be accurate to within a week or so. (I do have physical copies of each newspaper in which I was published, stashed away in my parents’ basement; at some point I may dig them up and update with the actual publication dates).
Finally, I should note that the vast majority of these reviews were assigned by my editors; my personal listening habits during those years tended, at various times, toward nerd rock and alt.country, among other things. I also hosted a number of radio shows on our college station, WBRS, over the course of four years, including a reggae show, a country/bluegrass show, a “world” music show (I focused mostly on Africa, though there was some Eastern European traditional music in the mix as well), and a new rock show, and subbed for time to time for everything from a blues show to a traditional Jewish music show. I was immersed in a LOT of music during that time.
Clicking the title will bring you to the Justice Review Archive Index. There are also links to the index from both the main Makeup For The Silence page (on the sidebar) and the reviews page (at the bottom).
I’ve spent the last two months immersed in this project (and one other that will be revealed in a few days), and it’s been a fun trip through time for me. Hopefully you’ll enjoy flipping through these decade-plus-old reviews as much as I have!
Reblogging this again for the evening crowd. Just launched a massive project that I’ve been working on over at my music blog. If you’re at all interested in a weird little time capsule back to 1998-2001, click on through :)
My brother is the prolific one in the family.
