Hello, again

Kevin Bronson on
9

I’m pretty sure the world needs another music blog as much as Cracker thought it needed another folk singer, but here I am, digging Buzz Bands out of the trash bin at 2nd and Broadway, where my former employer, the Los Angeles Times, deposited it a few months ago. Either out of obstinacy, or passion, or vanity, or a weird cocktail of the three, I will undertake sharing my thoughts and findings on emerging music and the stories behind it.

About two years ago, with the trepidation you’d expect from a relative Luddite a generation older than the whiz kids who rule these spaces, I started to blog. It was an extension of the weekly Buzz Bands print column (2002-08), and even working around the demands of my day job as an editor I became infatuated with immediate gratification the online journal afforded: introduce a band, offer a sampling of the music, make a fan (or not). Having grown up with radio, print publications and record-store clerks (bless them) curating my music collection, I do not take this for granted — in fact, I think the only way the Internet could one-up itself is if somebody found a way to deliver a sampler platter from new restaurants. Sure, food critics would be S.O.L., but I’d have to get up from in front of my laptop less frequently. You open-source geeks, get to work on that.

So what might you see here? You’ll get mini-profiles of musicians who have caught my ear, as well as news, reviews, interviews, videos, podcasts, downloads and anecdotal ephemera. If the stars align, Buzz Bands will have exclusive debuts of new music and exclusive contributions (such as playlists and tour diaries) from interesting people. Oh, and maybe we’ll occasionally tie it all to baseball.

Thanks to everyone in the L.A. orbit who encouraged me the past couple of months to go forward with this. Happy scrolling.