Stephen Rowland

I am here to begin writing music criticism again. I was the founder of a homemade zine in my teens called Floor Sweepings, lasting 4 whole issues in Lexington, KY. When I moved to California, I got in with an old friend Gene Gregorits, who was boinking talentless underground icon Lydia Lunch and I contributed heavily to their website and the issue of their magazine, Sex & Guts 3. After I got tired of dealing with them and their contributors, I descended into alcoholism and helped start a website with my friends, Rant Zine (originally titled Insult to Injury). Due to the fact that I spent most days in bed drinking enough to poison the fattest man in the world with a full stomach, and the other writers were busy with things in their personal lives, the project never really got off the ground. And I gave up writing. (Well, I did publish, as a co-author, two pictorial and historical non-fiction books on Alameda, CA, where I was living at the time.) Recent experiences, such as my struggle with mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse, my uncontrollable urge (yes, that's a reference) to cut myself up and bathe in my own blood, and two extended stays at a state mental hospital and a mental crisis center, I had the glorious idea to write a novel. Years ago, however, I made a pledge that I would never start "actual" writing until I turned 30 years of age. I'm on the fence about that decision now, but I felt like getting back into music, and possibly film, criticism, would help me along so I could be what they call a "real" writer (it seems, sadly, not many people take this whole internet/blog thing seriously, nor do they respond to small press non-fiction). I will be reviewing current CDs and writing for the Sound Affects blog here on PopMatters, covering as much territory as I wish. Genres, I love genres. My favorites are power pop, classic punk, classic country, classic soul, pre-war country blues, post-punk, new wave; things like that.