RELATED
SITES:
Ganymede
Ink Syndicate
CannonFilms.com
The Dunsel Report
SYNDICATION:
Atom Feed
BLOG LINKS:
John Gorenfeld
Paul Frankenstein
Jim Steinman
Soul of Trek
True Father
ST XI
ASSORTED
WRITINGS:
"Cannon
Films: The Rise and Fall of Menahem Golan" (2001)
"Fast Company" (2007)
"Sci-Fi Law" (2007)
"Last
Man Dancing" (2001)
"Our Alien, HE" (1987)
"Drummer
on Top: The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Chad Smith" (2002)
"Doubting Peter" (2000)
"The
Home Mixing Handbook" (unfinished, 2004)
"Ballot
Box Deja Vu: California's Anti-Gay Propositions" (2000)
"Singin'
the Hi-Res Blues" (2003)
BIO:
I
grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and now live in Brooklyn, New York.
I have a bachelor's degree in linguistics from Swarthmore College and
a master's degree in journalism from UC Berkeley. Feel free to email
me at patrick@runkle.info.
From
2000 until 2004, I was the editorial director for ArtistPro,
a music-industry trade publisher in the Bay Area. I also was
editorial director for ArtistPro's short-lived national magazine,
which was distributed to all the members of the GRAMMY organization.
(That includes Phil Spector.)
Current
activities include my band, Ganymede, my trips to Canada, and various other things I do. (See above for links.) I also have a large collection of oversize video boxes from the early 80s.
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It's a sad state of affairs as all Tower Records stores are closing. The situation on the ground at New York's two main Tower locations -- the East Village and Lincoln Center -- has been positively apocalyptic, as the liquidation sale has brought all sorts of, for instance, Nickelback fans out of the woodwork to pick up their favorite band's back catalog. The truly tragic part of all this is that Tower has, probably to its great detriment, maintained the absolute best inventory of any large music chain. I can't even begin to count the wacky Canadian early 80s dance music, the bizarre European singles, and the long out-of-print-but-lacking-demand soundtracks that have popped up in Tower Records stores I have visited. Furthermore, Tower has the best inventory of SACD and DVD-Audio titles of any brick-and-mortar, including ones that are now very hard to find. (At last visit, the Lincoln Center Tower still had a copy of Foreigner's 4 on DVD-Audio, which is a disc that everyone should have.) So here's to Tower Records, whose demise is another nail in the coffin of music retail.
In other news, my friend John and I have created The Dunsel Report, which we think is really funny but most people will probably not get. Oh, and I had planned a long post about the "blaster beam," a somewhat bizarre electronic music instrument that former child actor Craig Huxley created in the 70s. However, I will let this amazing post about the blaster beam speak for itself.
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