friendster inadvertently led to something really cool today. don't know what it is? i didn't either. it's a site a little similar to livejournal, minus the journal.. you have a profile and people are all linked together through their friends. simon added me and soon i found out that half my friends were on the damn thing. always last on the bandwagon, i am.

some time ago arielmeadow had put me in contact with the seattle weekly about possibly writing some electronic-music related content for them. i got too busy with work and school and missed my chance.. but i did think about the idea of getting back into writing, and decided it was appealing. when my letter to urb got published recently, i experienced the familiar squeal of "OOOH! something I wrote is in PRINT!"

so when i saw that the weekly had snagged tablet's electronic music writer and they were seeking a new person, i was all over it. but i emailed and got no response. i was sad. i think tablet is awesome. i would actually in many ways rather write for tablet than the weekly, even though they have a much smaller audience and don't pay writers.

i logged on to friendster for the first time after simon invited me. shortly thereafter, a guy sent me a message. i looked to see who he was.. and found out that he was that same tablet fellow! a few messages back and forth, and he's down for me to write an article. sweet.

so the subject of the first will be the SARS of the music scene.. the silent-but-deadly record store death. people often talk about "lesbian bed death".. that strange phenomena whereby the spark with your partner dies and you become comfortable companions only. it seems to happen here with record stores. at one point, there were TEN electronic-music-specific record stores. there cannot be that many dj's.

what are these people thinking? do they have a death wish? large trust funds?
idealism that surpasses good judgement? i fall into the latter category myself fairly often, so i'm going to go interview them. so i'm going to talk to the owners of tone, downlow, supernatural music... any other recent ones i missed on this list?

i was also thinking about talking to people who have suffered a loss.. former owners of delicious music, beats international, etc.. although they might not want to talk about it. the death of a dream is what causes the most suffering..