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.
chatter