I believe you are a star

Here's the front cover of my book - the photo of Pitch Black is shot by Tony Nyberg, cover design by me.

Before starting my blog Dubdotdash in 2003, I'd been a freelance journalist for a handful of magazines, including Real Groove, North and South, NZ Musician,  Rip It Up, and going back to Planet, Pavement, Lava and Stamp. Over the past year I've been working on pulling together a collection of articles I wrote during that time, scanning and converting the text, and will be publishing them via Amazon's Createspace as a book/e-book.

There's some interesting threads in there, like Stellar discussing their sizeable album budget, comparing it to Straitjacket Fits or JPSE, then Fiona McDonald having a similar conversation round her album budget, citing JPSE and Stellar. There's an early interview with P-Money (before he'd even released any of his own recordings), which he later told me his Dad liked cos it was the first interview that actually sounded like him!

Or Bailterspace talking about going to the beach, but the UV index being so high they had to stay in the car with the windows up to block out the UV. Or Shayne Carter making me sit in the Sony boardroom and listen to the first album by his band Dimmer in its entirety, as he didn't want to send out any advance promo copies.

Other interviews featured include Darcy Clay, Salmonella Dub, Sola Rosa, Dean Hapeta (Upper Hutt Posse), Kog Transmissions, HDU, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Tigi Ness, Black Seeds, Jakob, Pitch Black, JPSE, and more. Interviews done between 1992 and 2003.

Official publication date is 20 May, 2013.

Book launch at Conch Records, Saturday May 25, 3pm, with Dylan C DJing all-NZ vinyl, books for sale on the day, with the author signing em. More information soon! Published by Dunbar Noon Publishing.