For a brief, shining few months I was an honest to goodness record reviewer. It was a dream I’d had ever since I realized I loved both writing and music (probably around 8th grade). While I might have envisioned myself writing for Rolling Stone or Spin (is that mag even around anymore?), it was a now-defunct mag called Performing Songwriter and my buddy Jesse who made the dream come true. I hadn’t heard about PS before he started working there after he left Wizard, but after I started reading it, I realized it was pretty great. Eventually I bugged Jesse enough and he gave me a shot at writing for PS, my first issue was the September/October 2008 issue where I reviewed Raine Maida and Amy Macdonald’s records. I’d go on to do nine total reviews (there would have been more, but PR people wouldn’t get back to me or records wouldn’t be done on time) up until the magazine called it quits with the June 2009 issue. And let me tell you one of my all time favorite writing memories was the time I went into a grocery store near my house and found both Performing Songwriter and ToyFare (my day job at the time) on the same rack. I put them next to each other and left them like that for the next person, maybe they’d make the connection.

All told, my output included Amy Macdonald’s This Is The Life (Sep./Oct. 2009), Arizona’s Glowing Bird (Nov. 2008), Courtney Fairchild’s 11 Chances (Jun. 2009), Erin McCarley’s Love, Save The Empty (Jan./Feb. 2009), Hinder’s Take It To The Limit (Dec. 2008), Juliette Commagere’s Queens Die Proudly (Dec. 2008), Laura Izibor’s Let The Truth Be Told (Jun. 2009), Raine Maida’s The Hunter’s Lullaby (Sep./Oct. 2008) and Tina Dico’s A Beginning, A Detour, An Open Ending (Mar./Apr. 2009). To be honest, I hadn’t heard of most of these artists when first given the assignments, but I really liked Arizona and Laura Izibor. I ended up reviewing a lot of records by women that I didn’t really like, but I swear it’s not because I dislike lady singers, it was just bad luck of the draw (I’ve been mentally putting together a list of rad female singers in my head for a while now that I’ll get to soon). Anyway, here are the record review scans. You can’t really see it, but the images below are in the same alphabetical order as the list above, so enjoy. I hope you have as much fun reading them as I had writing them.