Name: A.J.Stein
Location: Somewhere in the swamps of Jersey
URL: http://rawflame.blogspot.com

1.What got you started blogging?

I was sending links to mp3s on the net to all my friends and realized it made *way* more sense to blog. Also, as a media tech research guy for my day job, I thought the whole idea of blogging had huge commercial implications and wanted a test site for work. Seriously.

2.Three things you’re looking forward to doing in Austin that don’t necessarily involve music:

• Getting a little sun
• Hanging with friends from far away that I only see at sxsw or at Springsteen shows.
• Forcing myself to run the town lake loop hung over.

3.What kind of people do you think read your blog?

My blog is small — my crew is mostly the “too old to rock & roll, too young to die” crowd. But I did hook up statcounter magic and see hits from all over the world, which is way cool. I stay away from the typical music blog “hip band du jour” (vampire weekend, etc) so I get a lot of people subscribing because they like what I had to say about a band they searched for.

4.Worst press kit cliché:

Well I’m not a “real jounalist” so it’s not like I get the raw press kit, but I hate it when a band nobody’s ever heard of writes about their long pedigree of being in 20 other bands nobody’s ever heard of.
Seriously, who gives a rat’s ass?

5.Day job?:

Director of Technology Strategy at a research lab of a major media technology company (the evil bastards who have all the mp3 and a lot of mpeg2 video patents.) I used to be a video compression software dude with my own company but fell victim to outsourcing.

6.Alt vs. Main, discuss:

It’s all Alt now.

7.Anon commenters are_____

moderated!

8.Band that people totally overlook, but you think is deserving of love:

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes! ha!

9.Band that everyone totally loves at the moment that is totally worthy of total love:

Wilco. How the f*ck did they get so big? People need a strong touch of humanity in their lives, and Tweedy has written some of the flat-out sweetest, prettiest songs we’ve heard in ages (Jesus etc, Impossible
Germany.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Festivals, SxSW, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.