Yesterday we welcomed to Observer HQ Kiernan Maletsky, our new music editor. Kiernan is the former music editor at the Riverfront Times in St. Louis and has contributed to Denver's Westword and other publications. He plays the drums and is slightly too tall for my tastes.
I asked him a few questions to help you get to know him. Ask him more in the comments.
Welcome. Before we start, you should know that the bathroom is under construction, so that's why there's no toilet where the toilet should be. In case you thought we just did things differently here.
Shoot, I wish you'd told me that earlier. Whoever uses the printer-copier-scanner next is in for a surprise.
You came from St. Louis. How's the music scene there?
The St. Louis music scene is fantastic. It was a great place to spend a couple formative years drinking and dancing in brick buildings. Some of the bands worth checking out are Demonlover, Old Lights, Rockwell Knuckles, Black James, Adult Fur, The Blind Eyes, Bug Chaser and about a hundred more. St. Louis is a music-lover's playground where everything is cheap and weird and the hottest venue in town can be a Mexican restaurant housed in an old German beer hall with a mural of the Alps painted on the wall.
Now you're here. (You are still here, right?) Where will you and your also-tall girlfriend live?
I ducked out early to throw away all the pairs of shorts you told me to bring. I'm waiting in the checkout line with a shopping cart full of parkas and umbrellas. I won't regret that, will I?
We will live in an apartment, hopefully somewhere cool. Right now we're looking at a few places in Junius Heights, Lower Greenville and Deep Ellum, but I'm open to suggestions.
So, do you like music and stuff?
I'm mostly in this for the piles of cash awaiting all those who invest their lives in regional music scenes. We all just dive Scrooge McDuck-like into our riches.
Yes. I like music. I like loud music and quiet music and two-chord punk songs and Mahler's 8th Symphony. I listen to music in my apartment and at my desk and in my car on the way to concerts. I basically have no hobbies other than music and ping-pong.
What's the first album you ever bought? Does it hold up?
Metallica's self-titled album -- it's the black one. It holds up alright compared to, say, everything Metallica has released since then, though not compared to actual metal music.
And lest anyone think I'm just trying to be cool, the second album I bought was either Weird Al Yankovic's Bad Hair Day or Spice Girls' Spice. Though both have held up better than Metallica, so take that however you will.
The most recent?
Big Boi's Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors. It's time to start considering the possibility that he is the actual genius behind OutKast, not Andre.
What do you see as the objective of a local music blog/section/site/whatever/whatever?
To provide a place where fans of music in the Dallas/Fort Worth/Denton/Metrothing area want to gather. That sounds vague, I realize. But the section is capable of a remarkably large conversation, one that can take place everywhere from the physical pages of the paper to our myriad tentacles online to actual face-to-face interactions at shows and bars.
It's our job to make sure we are exploring the topics and ideas music fans care about and presenting them in a way that's engaging, respectful and accurate. Some days that will be a tweet about the Rihanna Plane and some days that will be an in-depth look on the progress of a band that started right in our backyard.
Do you know what dub step is? I'm still really unclear on that.
Man, if you have to ask, you've clearly never experienced THE DROP.
I have a baby, so THE DROP means something different in my house.
