Wherein I talk with some people you might know

Over at the Pitch‘s Wayward Blog, I get to use the nature of a major metropolitan free weekly to speak with all kinds of people who are slightly more well-known than the people with whom I speak over here. That’s not to say that anyone’s better than the next person – just that the people whom I interview for the Pitch are probably gonna garner a few more hits than the indie bands and label heads here at Rock Star Journalist. In the interest of making my writing work for me twice, here’s a brief compendium of folks from the past few months.

* Valient Thorr’s Valient Himself on politics, bad flicks, and Thorriors.
* Director Gorman Bechard on his Replacements documentary, Color Me Obsessed.
* Bryan Cox talks up Soft Lighting’s debut, Slow Motion Silhouettes.
* The State‘s Kevin Allison takes a Risk with his podcast.
* The Pharmacy want you to Dig Your Grave.
* Omaha’s Conchance on the trials and travails of indie hip-hop.
* KU’s Paul Laird addresses the racial and gender politics of South Pacific.
* Alive Records founder Patrick Boissel on his label’s new compilation, Where is Parker Griggs?

Valient Himself on SOPA/PIPA & Megaupload

valient-himselfAfter all the hoopla regarding the SOPA/PIPA stuff last week, and the takedown of Megaupload, we’d heard a lot from the likes of media pundits and analysts, but nothing really from the folks supposedly affected by the whole piracy thing against which SOPA was supposed to defend.

That was until Friday, when Valient Himself, frontman for Venusian boogie-metal rockers Valient Thorr, took to his Twitter feed (@valientthorr) to lay out what might be the most rational deconstruction of the whole thing I’ve seen thus far. The Pirate Bay’s screed is funnier, but this is far cooler and personal. I’ve taken the liberty of assembling all the tweets into an easy-to-read couple of paragraphs below.
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