Unrescuable Schizo: It's the End of the World As We Know It...

Greetings, yinz. The time has come to announce that Unrescuable Schizo is going on hiatus.

I'm suspending the blog for two reasons. First, some of you may know that I moved away from Pittsburgh a while back. While I love the city and its music scene, at this point it no longer makes sense to write about shows and venues I cannot attend.

Second, I've turned my attention to writing as a career and there just isn't time to keep this site going. Check out the end of this post to see where you can read my stuff now.

Looking back...
I enjoyed all the perks that came with being a music blogger. By far my favorite aspect of the blog was getting a chance to interview national acts. When I sent my first interview request ever (to Nicole Atkins - a major-label artist, no less) I wasn't expecting to hear back from the publicists at Sony. But to my shock they replied, "She's available tomorrow. Can you do a phoner at 3 pm?"

I knew very little about Nicole's music at the time. So as soon as I got out of work, I raced to the nearest Record Exchange, found a copy of her album, and stayed up til 3 am listening to it and coming up with a list of questions.

Doing the interview was an interesting challenge. I had to take a tape recorder to work and sneak into a meeting room on my break. I put the phone on speaker and recorded the conversation. Nicole couldn't have been nicer, and the chat reminded me how much fun it is to be an actual journalist. I was thrilled to be interviewing someone who'd been on David Letterman just two weeks earlier.

Other interviews
My most exciting moment was interviewing Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls. Amanda was my favorite singer for some time. "Unrescuable Schizo" is a lyric from her song "Delilah." Never in a million years did I think I could score an interview with her. I chatted with her on the phone in 2009 before she played Mr. Small's. It wasn't my best interview (thank goodness for editing). My tape recorder crapped out just before I was scheduled to call, so I was running around like a madman looking for batteries and got really nervous while we chatted. But interviewing my favorite artist was a thrill.

Talking to Taylor Hanson was also strangely fun, because I flashed back to that moment years earlier when I self-consciously walked into Circuit City and purchased the Hanson CD Middle of Nowhere, trying to bury it under a pile of other, more respectable CDs. At that moment I wouldn't have imagined that ten years later I'd be speaking with a Hanson on the phone.

Pittsburgh music...
I wish I'd gotten to meet more of the people in the Pittsburgh music scene, though I am grateful for my interactions with people like Scott Tady of the Beaver County Times and some of the folks at WYEP. I should also mention Steve Juffe at The Concert Manager - he was my entry point into the Pittsburgh concert world, as I worked for him as an assistant for about a year.

Finally, a note to the other Pittsburgh music bloggers. When I started, there were only two others that I know of, and now there might be more than a dozen. I've communicated most often with Brian and Hugh since they were around when I started. It's cool to see all the other people who have joined the club. And thanks to Deena for coming onboard with the blog - our joint coverage of Lolla '08 (experienced together in a cramped air conditioning-less Chicago hostel) was a lot of fun.

So now I'm off to other things. I may pop back in here from time to time if something in the music world compels me to express my opinion. Or perhaps I'll just leave long-winded comments on some of yinz' blogs.

Here's where you can keep up with me online:
AOL Radio Blog
I regularly contribute Top 10 lists and New Song posts for the AOL Radio Blog. Good times! Occasionally, I conduct interviews for their sister site Spinner - this one with Ozomatli was fun.

Grammy Awards Examiner
I know way more about the stuffy Grammy Awards than any human being should, so I became the Grammy guy for examiner.com. The 2011 nominees were announced in early December. Subscribe to me there for more Grammy news than you could ever possibly want.

9000 Miles
I've been operating a travel blog for two years, starting when I took a four-month cross-country van trip through 46 states in April 2009. If you haven't checked it out yet, give it a look. I'm in the process of starting another travel blog; stay tuned to 9000 Miles for the announcement about that in the next couple months.