BACK IN THE SADDLE

I are full-time employed again. Starting Monday, I will be the managing editor of Global Rhythm, a world music magazine.

Do I know a whole hell of a lot about world music, you ask? No, not really. I have seen Fela and King Sunny Ade in concert; I have at various times owned albums by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Bob Marley, Burning Spear, Ofra Haza, the aforementioned Fela and King Sunny Ade, a bunch of Latin alternative-rock artists (Aterciopelados [who I've also seen live], Maldita Vecindad, Cafe Tacuba [who I've also seen live], Natalia Lafourcade, Julieta Venegas, Caifanes, Jaguares and Bebe), and Paul Simon's Graceland. Oh, and a bunch of Japanese avant-rock types (Keiji Haino/Fushitsusha, Acid Mothers Temple, High Rise, Kousokuya, Kyoaku No Intention, Kaoru Abe/Masayuki Takayanagi, probably some others I'm forgetting). But my job is to manage and edit the magazine, not write it front-to-back. So it's as much managerial - getting CDs to reviewers, cleaning up their copy, making sure photos arrive from the label to illustrate features - as authorial. And it'll be fun/interesting to learn about world music, an area I've never investigated due to a lack of time and professional need. Now I've got professional need, in spades, so here we go, headfirst into the flames.

At night and on weekends, of course, I'll be writing my next book, pitching an idea to the folks at Continuum for their 33 1/3 series (bought Michaelangelo Matos' work-up on Prince's Sign O' The Times today to figure out how the books "work"), writing features for other rags, blah blah blah...