15 years ago, I started my own, personal podcast: The Sidebar. This was my attempt to explore podcasting as a medium, having been very much inspired by the example of Jesse Thorn after seeing him literally run Bullseye out of his then-living room in Koreatown.
From 2011-2012, I ended up recording and producing roughly 30 episodes, almost all of them interviews with people in the music world. I’ll just acknowledge this up top: I did an awful job of balancing things out, gender-wise. It may not have been intentional but it sure as hell was some “implicit bias” happening when, out of 34 initial interviews, only ONE of them was a woman. (By the time Morgan and I started Heat Rocks, I was far more intentional in balancing things out).
This issue aside, The Sidebar was still a way for me to learn the ins and outs of podcasting and especially since pods were still relatively early back then, I was able to get some great guests on.
I started with Matthew Africa (RIP), long-time KALX DJ and an informal mentor for me. Other guests included: Mike James Kirkland, Daphne Brooks, Karriem Riggins, Quantic, and a few dozen more. I’m obviously biased but for a self-produced pod, I still think these were pretty competently done!
The problem: the podcast went “dark” a few years ago because the RSS feed needed updating but I was too lazy to fix it. However, I finally fixed it in time to upload a brand new episode: #38, with Kevin Dettmar, author of the new Punk in 50 Pieces:Punk Rock, Post-Punk, New Wave, and the Five Years That Changed Pop Music Forever.
I likely won’t be doing a slew of new episodes but you can subscribe to the feed in any podcast app and when new eps go up, you’ll see them appear.
Awesome good to see updates here too!