Sweet on the Outside, Sour on the Inside

It's not that I don't have anything new written today, it's just that it's on another site. One of the joys  of writing and maintaining a blog is the people you 'meet' on other blogs.  I was visiting stereogum a few years ago and they linked to a site where the writer of another blog (jefitoblog.com) had done an exhaustive career overview of Toto which he called "The Idiot's Guide to Toto".  (Let's be honest, back in 1982 Toto were cool--really cool-- Toto IV was huge that summer.  I remember in the summer of 1982 being invited over to the house of one of the 'cool' kids from junior high and when I rode up on my Schwinn, he had "Rosanna" cranked on his parents' stereo.)  The stereogummers were a bit snarky about it but they gave props to anyone who cared enough to give Toto a fair shake.  I checked out the guide and also found it to be very fair and well-written.  I then spent the next few hours poring over all the other Idiot's Guides covering everyone from The Replacements to Queen.  If a band has more than four or five albums, there's either an IG for it already or someone is working on one.  A cool aspect of the IG's is that for a week after they're posted, each album covered features two songs available for download. 

I e-mailed Jeff G. the writer of Jefitoblog.com and told him how much I enjoyed his blog and asked him to check out my blog.  I told him that since it hadn't been done yet, I'd be happy to do an Idiot's Guide to The Smiths. He agreed and I e-mailed my friend Jeff R. and with him in Singapore and me in Chicago, we e-mailed drafts to each other and over a few weeks we completed a pretty fair and (I think) humorous Idiot's Guide to The Smiths.

After getting positive feedback from Jeffito's readership (and Jeff himself), I committed to do an IG on Lloyd Cole (almost done) and Buffalo Tom (halfway there) who were all but broken up when I committed to do it but have since reformed and have a new album out.  Then in the comments to yet another IG that someone else wrote, I mentioned my love of the Lemonheads.  Another commenter contacted me about collaborating on a Lemonheads IG, which we did and it goes up today.  Even though we both live in the the Chicago area, I've never met Robert C., we've never even talked on the phone, just e-mailed back and forth.  He's a copy editor and proofreader for The Reader, so it was nice to have a professional edit my work.  And we've agreed to meet for a drink or two sometime to pat ourselves on the back.

Since I was an early adopter of The Lemonheads, I agreed to take on the early years and focused on the first three Taang! indie releases and their Atlantic debut.  Robert took over for the second half, starting with "It's A Shame About Ray".  So, go check it out (maybe even download a few tracks) and feel free to comment if you wish (here or there).  As much as I enjoy you reading my stuff here, I stand a decent chance of being read by thousands of people over there. 

Comments

[Robert]

I'm only a proofreader at the Reader, but if you want to give me a better title, feel free, Ken! Man oh man, the fact checking for that Idiot's Guide took much longer than I thought (it's funny how your memory can play tricks on you), but we wanted to get it right, and I think we did. However, Charles Manson might not technically be a serial killer. I may have botched that one. But I did catch "Strange" and "Mad" not being on the initial version of "Lick" at the last second yesterday before turning the guide in to Jeff. Win some, lose some.