What this is, and who we are

Dave Marsh writes:

This blog isn’t “just” about anything but it’s also not about everything. Our membership grew out of an online discussion group consisting of people who sort of knew each other a couple years ago through a weave of intersecting and overlapping friendships. On the discussion list, almost all of us have some connection, one way or another, with showbiz and communications, several of us are academics, about as many are journalists, a couple are performers. At least one of us is a Republican; at least one other would rather lick the third rail of the IRT subway than touch either political party. Pretty much everybody is serious about the written word. (Most of the list isn’t signed up to blog yet but that may well change.)

Our shared interests include all of the above, education, and social change aimed at creating more democratic forms of expression, learning, and economics. We are capable of humor, although much of it is scatological; we spend a lot of time making fun of one another; we are also all adept at mocking ourselves. (Given who we are, it’s a way of staying relatively
sane.) We have no patience with obfuscation, and we aren’t embarrassed by a wide variety of emotions, not excluding sentimentality. Almost all of us are extremely prolific; we’d be embarrassed to count the number of messages that leap back and forth on an average, let alone, a busy day.

Mostly, what we bat back forth in the group isn’t going to show up here. But from time to time, we uncork something that we deem worth sharing—usually created by one of us, but sometimes, something that surfaces as a byproduct of somebody’s research or nosiness. This blog is a way of trying to do that. Feel free to recirculate what’s here, to respond with criticism, enthusiasm or amplification, and to link us to your sites.

We aren't trying to keep up with the latest fashions and news, although we reserve the right to comment on them. Anyway, it's obvious to us that the gap that truly needs to be filled is commentary about music (and other stuff) that's been around a few months or a few years, but has been subject only to immediate reviewing, which is unavoidably pretty superficial.

The blog’s name sort of popped up in the sordid argument that passed for “planning” this project. It speaks to what we’re trying to do, and to how we hope you’ll react.

Since this is a group effort, but not all of us want to be burdened with the logistics of getting things up online, the "posted by" name won't always be the author of that post. Just as we did here, though, we'll always let you know who wrote what.