Just finished reading this great little story on Spin, written by Kevin Bronson, about a couple of young musicians from L.A. who drove 22 hours to pay homage to Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne, only to end up spending four days at Coyne’s Oklahoma home — |  Click on this icon to visit Kevin Bronson's Web site. |
and recording a track with him while they were there. (Coincidentally, the Times Magazine featured Coyne’s Oklahoma compound in our Domains column not too long ago.)
Bronson is the publisher and editor of Buzz Bands, a Web site dedicated to the music scene in L.A. It is incredibly smart and plugged in, and he is tireless in his coverage. Between him and his collaborator, Seraphina Lotkhamnga, the site appears to be everywhere at once. According to one of his year-end wrap-ups for 2011, Bronson saw “more than 500 bands perform live over 265-plus days of show-going, and still I feel as if I missed a lot.”
So, this is basically a full-time job, I asked him. “It's just a little obsession,” he said.
When I was a young pup in Peoria, all the guys at paper would say, “You gotta meet Bronson!” “We gotta get Vecsey and Bronson together!” He was a native son — Woodruff High School, Bradley University — who left Peoria for the blue skies of California, where he was an editor at The L.A. Times. Like the swallows in Capistrano, though, Bronson would return to Peoria every March for his fantasy draft, and when we finally met, we quickly bonded over a shared love of baseball and Mister Donut. A few months later, he scored me a couple stringing bylines in The L.A. Times.
In 2008, Bronson became yet another victim of the print-media meltdown, being “summarily laid off” by the paper after 18 years of service, more than 30 in the industry all told. But cool dude that he is, he forged ahead on his own terms. Having written the Buzz Bands column and blog for the paper for six years, he took the brand with him and created his own Web site.
“The blog doesn't make much money,” he told me, “but it enables some other enterprises, like freelance writing, booking/promoting shows, DJing in clubs and hosting radio shows.”
Bronson is the publisher and editor of Buzz Bands, a Web site dedicated to the music scene in L.A. It is incredibly smart and plugged in, and he is tireless in his coverage. Between him and his collaborator, Seraphina Lotkhamnga, the site appears to be everywhere at once. According to one of his year-end wrap-ups for 2011, Bronson saw “more than 500 bands perform live over 265-plus days of show-going, and still I feel as if I missed a lot.”
So, this is basically a full-time job, I asked him. “It's just a little obsession,” he said.
When I was a young pup in Peoria, all the guys at paper would say, “You gotta meet Bronson!” “We gotta get Vecsey and Bronson together!” He was a native son — Woodruff High School, Bradley University — who left Peoria for the blue skies of California, where he was an editor at The L.A. Times. Like the swallows in Capistrano, though, Bronson would return to Peoria every March for his fantasy draft, and when we finally met, we quickly bonded over a shared love of baseball and Mister Donut. A few months later, he scored me a couple stringing bylines in The L.A. Times.
In 2008, Bronson became yet another victim of the print-media meltdown, being “summarily laid off” by the paper after 18 years of service, more than 30 in the industry all told. But cool dude that he is, he forged ahead on his own terms. Having written the Buzz Bands column and blog for the paper for six years, he took the brand with him and created his own Web site.
“The blog doesn't make much money,” he told me, “but it enables some other enterprises, like freelance writing, booking/promoting shows, DJing in clubs and hosting radio shows.”
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