Welcome, Everybody
A couple quick reasons as a preamble
The Return of “Hey, Fred” and more
I’ve talked to a few people in person about the dearth of previews, and more than one person - specifically thinking of my friend Aly Terrell - has said, “Why do we only learn about what you’re doing by seeing your Instagram later or reading a review?” That finally dug deep enough in my brain that I decided to take action - be the change, etc.
Who the hell am I?
I’ve been blogging around Columbus for a while, on https://sanfordspeaks.blogspot.com/ and https://screenofdistance.wordpress.com/ and doing more formal writing, reviewing mostly theater for Columbus Underground, mostly music for Agit Reader, more free-form previews and concert reviews for Pencil Storm, and for a few years Andrew Patton brought me on as a second voice covering the local jazz scene for JazzColumbus (fully support the new ownership but I don’t think our archived articles are visible currently, hoping that’ll change).
I’m a townie, raised on the hilltop and high school in Grove City. Despite a pretty demanding day job, I still have a burning curiosity and want to see and do as much as time, energy, and funds allow. And I want to talk about it.
As I’ve thought about this over the last couple of months, the newsletter format made more sense than blog posts. I’m 100% opposed to monetizing Nazis, but so many of the writers I read avidly are on here, and the fact that I can start this without a cash outlay plus that (still) robust community led me here. I reserve the right to reassess at any time, and I completely understand if someone doesn’t read me because of that platform. This is probably the best summary of the situation that aligns with my feelings:
Why This?
I think the various calendars - CU, Cbus Arts, Pencilstorm - are great, but I miss previews that had a viewpoint. The Dispatch used to have blurb listings in The Weekender that were massively influential on my taste as a kid; The Other Paper’s Trifecta also. I want to highlight a few things coming up in the week that are specific to my idiosyncratic tastes a reader - especially someone visiting Columbus - can use as a baseline or a backboard to bounce off of. In a perfect world, this’ll light a fire for some people with wildly different tastes from me to do similar projects.
To start, I’ll be writing “Hey, Fred,” my column on Tuesdays to publish on Wednesday mornings, and it’ll cover Wednesday-Tuesday. So look for the first one on January 3. It’ll have 3-5 events I’m excited about. Don’t expect it to be everything I do; I’m never going to write about any single band’s every gig.
I’m also going to start working in some songs/records I want to highlight, trying to break up the playlists I’d been doing on my blog, but had gotten a little repetitive and unwieldy. Look for that in the first few weeks.
What Do I Like?
Big inspirations for me doing this are Piotr Orlov’s Dada Strain, my best source for things I’m interested in on my few-times-a-year trips to NYC, and Steve Smith’s Night After Night, which I’ve been reading and has been a guiding light for years.
For a bead on my tastes, here are my Best Ofs from this year:
Live Music: https://screenofdistance.wordpress.com/2023/12/19/best-of-2023-live-music/
Visual Art: https://screenofdistance.wordpress.com/2023/12/12/best-of-2023-visual-art/
Performance Art: https://screenofdistance.wordpress.com/2023/12/05/best-of-2023-theater-opera-dance/
Playlists:
Songs (mostly with lyrics): https://screenofdistance.wordpress.com/2023/12/27/best-of-2023-songs/
Spaces (mostly jazz/classical: https://screenofdistance.wordpress.com/2023/12/29/best-of-2023-spaces/
Parting Gifts (People who were important to me culturally who passed in the last year): https://screenofdistance.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/best-of-2023-parting-gifts/
