Oh, well, who needed radio? I had writing, right?

I had been enormously excited when Creative Loafing said they thought my stuff was good and seemed to print most anything I sent their way. Then I heard Ozzy Osbourne was coming to town.

Black Sabbath had never done much for me, let along Ozzy's solo stuff, but I loved the first season of his The Osbournes TV show and wanted to meet him. Ozzfest, his concert tour, was coming to town, so I pitched a story on Ozzy. Creative Loafing accepted.

However...there was no mention of a press pass to interview Ozzy. Something just told me there wouldn't be one forthcoming, either. So instead I did a kind of spin on the Regular Guys' "Homeless Karaoke" bit. I taped some sound bites of Ozzy's show, then played them for two of my friends so they could guess at what Ozzy had been saying. This became the article. It was exciting to get a story about Ozzy out there, and especially to combine a radio bit with print, but...I hadn't gotten to meet Ozzy!

Later Rush and Van Halen came to town. Creative Loafing had articles on both of these shows, but I noticed neither article contained any direct quotes from the artist. They were more like "think pieces." Didn't Creative Loafing, as the Number One print media catering to youth in the local area, have the clout to get a real interview with Geddy Lee? Apparently not. Plus publications like Creative Loafing tend to cater to the more artsy, bowl-haircut-and-Rickenbacker set at The EARL than the classic rock audience at Lakewood Amphitheatre.

The guy who had welcomed me into the freelance Creative Loafing fold moved on to a job in New York, and it was musical chairs almost by the issue for a few months. Then some guy with an Indian name took the helm. I looked him up and it appeared he had only just graduated from Cornell University a few months prior! Just a few months out of school and you're the music editor at Creative Loafing? Gee...

Anyhow, he seemed nice enough. I wrote him to say I had contributed under the previous editor, and would like to continue to do so. He said I should look in Pollstar and see who was coming to town and pitch a story.

It was then I realized...I didn't give a crap about anyone who was coming to town! Even if I did, would I just write another story that had no real quotes? "Angus Young would likely say he misses Bon Scott and loves playing for the people of Atlanta, if only he would actually talk to us." Shortly after that the Indian kid got replaced, too, and I started realizing that the small ego boost I got from getting a few paragraphs in Creative Loafing wasn't motivating me to keep re-introducing myself to whoever was in charge that month. Plus, as I said, there aren't too many contemporary music acts, whether national and well-known or local and obscure, that cause me to tingle.

So it's not that they told me to fuck off or anything, I just kinda ran out of inspiration. It could return any time, though.

The Atlanta Journal was a different story, though.

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