Belle and Sebastian's Grand Slam

"Dear Catastrophe Waitress," 2003

Early in 2004 a thick magazine called [Measure] arrived at my home. I had never heard of it, or written for it, but it was an interesting compilation of articles, interviews and reviews representing the Year in Music 2003. I was stoked to see that my lengthy essay/review of Belle and Sebastian's Dear Catastrophe Waitress was included.

It had been submitted by Michael Goldberg: Rolling Stone veteran, editor, and author, from his online zine Neumu. Michael was one of the first people to see the potential of this new thing called the World Wide Web, aka the Internet, for publishing music writing without a printing press. I'd been writing for him since he started Addicted to Noise in 1994. ATN eventually ended up being bought by something called SonicNet, where Goldberg had a top executive title. It got gobbled up by Viacom's MTV internet endeavor. The entrepreneurial Goldberg then started Neumu (not a Krautrock band; it was "new music," get it?), which according to a few links on the inte…