About
E-mail: rawkblog [at] gmail.com
Photography Portfolio: David Greenwald Photography
Elsewhere: Twitter | Rawktumblr
Rawkblog @ Facebook | The Hype Machine
ABOUT
As Austin Powers, a hero of mine, once said, “This is my happening and it freaks me out!” He wasn’t the first; he won’t be the last. Welcome to Rawkblog (formerly The Rawking Refuses To Stop!), a daily music and pop culture blog that began in March 2005. We’ve grown out of a number of musical shoes during our pubescent stages here over the years, but these days we’re into Swedish shoegazers, alt-country phenoms engaged married (!) to Mandy Moore, twee-pop janglers and early ’90s East Coast hip-hop, with the occasional toe dipped fearfully into music made by computers. Morrissey is my go-to guy for karaoke night, but I digress.
Posted MP3s will be up for a week or so (except for tracks posted in the Bootlegs column, which will be up forever… or until the bandwith runs out). If you missed a tune, you can still sample them on our page on the Hype Machine. If you like anything you hear, please support the artists by seeing their live show and buying their albums: they are poor and probably have day jobs when they’re not playing 200 shows a year. Try Insound or your local record store, or you can always be an indie rock hero and go direct to the record label via the links included in each post.
Rawkblog has been noted and recognized by such publications as Rolling Stone, LA Weekly, New York Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, Paste, Slate, CNET, VH1′s Best Week Ever, Pitchfork and Stereogum. In 2007, it was a nominee for Hey! Nielsen and Billboard.com’s Top Music Blog Contest.
Staff
I’m David Greenwald (”Dave Rawkblog”), a Los Angeles-based journalist and photographer whose words and images have appeared in the pages of Access Hollywood, The Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Billboard, LA Weekly, Nylon and Nylon Guys, The Barnes & Noble Review, Filter, Flaunt, The UCLA Daily Bruin (where I held the positions of Arts & Entertainment editor and music editor) and Cokemachineglow (where I was a staff writer and remain a contributor), among others. I post deep thoughts on Twitter and Tumblr and photos on Flickr. Bands/labels/publications/fellow citizens of humanity in need of a freelance writer or photographer should feel free to get in touch.
CURRENT/PAST CONTRIBUTORS: (Note: Our 2009 move to WordPress has largely erased their bylines. Sorry, pals.)
Phil Merkow knows more than anyone I know about music made by computers. Especially music made by computers while under the influence. Follow him on Twitter.
Greg Katz (”Greg aka gkla”) is the DJ behind these mixes and the former general manager of UCLAradio.com. Follow him on Twitter. Greg loves Kid A, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Trader Joe’s.
Alfred Lee (”alfred”) is a film buff and hip-hop head who used to write about both subjects with me at the Daily Bruin. He might actually like Animal Collective more than I like Ryan Adams, if that’s even possible.
Carman Tse is a former DJ on UCLAradio.com, a post-punk and free jazz enthusiast and my former roommate. He once owned a baby tarantula named “The Beast” and knows more about sports than the rest of us combined.
SUBMIT
If you are in a band or work for a label, we’d love to hear your stuff. Don’t ask us if we’d like to hear an MP3 — please just send us an MP3. Or a few of them. You can upload them on Yousendit or Mediafire or a variety of free services. We prefer digital servicing (192kpbs or better, please) but if you’d like to send over a CD, that’d be fine, too. Just e-mail us and we’ll give you the appropriate address. Be warned, though: we have plenty of great albums to blog about already and unfortunately get more e-mails than we can respond to, so don’t be offended if we don’t end up posting your tracks.
Alternatively, if you work for The Man and want to shut down our file-sharing, let us know and we can discuss the removal of the offending tracks.
ADVERTISE
For ad rates and information, e-mail rawkblog [at] gmail.com.
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