THE WRITING: Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3.

...For three or four months I drove back and forth to Athens to tape-record interviews with people. I talked to the R.E.M. guys, talked to Pylon folks, talked to people who had lived in Athens for a long time but who didn't know how to remember stuff, and also talked to people who had lived in Athens a long time and had incredible memories AND brilliant analysis, the best among them, of course, being the great poet and historian, John Ryan Seawright.

I spent many weeks gathering material, transcribing tapes, piling old copies of The New York Rocker and Matter magazine into boxes, and learning how to hook up my Tandy, the first computer I ever used in my life (1989 was late, I know, but I was addicted to the analogue, the romance of the platen, the scrape of the pencil, the amped machine-gunning keystroke clatter. I got over it.)

After a while I realized I couldn't talk to everyone. I had a deadline. I was out of money. I had to figure out what the story was...

But before I could really get anywhere, I had to decide what kind of book it was going to be. It wasn't going to be a sensational expose (although some wanted it to be). I was no Albert Goldman. It wasn't going to be a cultural history or a music book. I'm no Robert Palmer. It wasn't going to be a behind-the-scenes narrative like "Hammer of the Gods" or one of Stanley Booth's books.

It was going to be...(next page, please...)