A last hurrah in Binghamton, April 19, 2007
Binghamton, 2006. I’m 23, living in a fire-trap basement apartment in the ghetto. I’m that kind of art-poverty broke where I live on black coffee and scrambled eggs and dinner is paid on for on a rotating basis between whichever one of us got paid that week. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my life except that I know I want to write and listen to records. Out of college just over a year, I’m kicking myself for not having spent more time in music classes because I’ve got a subscription to Spin and being a music journalist would have been a kick-ass career.
I started a blog, Kill Your Ipod and reviewed shitty CDs from indie bands that I solicited over email. No one read it except a couple of stalkers. I wasn’t even sure how to write about music. I lacked the technical language; all I had was this intense passion, this gut feeling whenever I listened to Tom Waits or Warren Zevon or the patchwork of mix CDs that stood in for conversation with boys I liked. I hung around the record store and worked at FYE like a model waiting tables, hoping the right person might notice me and ask me to move back to NYC to write for some new music magazine.
