Memories of Goldmine

Goldmine magazine was one of my most fruitful and longest-lasting freelance writing gigs. I wrote for the music magazine from approximately 1996 to 2012, and it allowed me the opportunity to interview some of my favorite artists and musical influences.

Today, I understand that the current holding company that produces Goldmine has laid off its staff, and most likely will shutter the publication in due time.

This makes me very sad.

It was Goldmine that allowed me, a wet-behind-the-ears freelance writer who was looking for a big break, to pitch them as many articles as I could conceive – and, in turn, develop long-lasting relationships with many of those artists and legends.

And just thinking about the people I’ve spoken to is akin to wishes that came true.

I mean, how would a high school kid in 1981 ever know that at one point in his life, he would eventually interview the legendary Grandmaster Flash – the same Grandmaster Flash who was part of the musical culture in my inner-city Albany high school?

How would a college kid who played various artists on the college radio station eventually interview so many of those influences, so many of those musical touchstones, and tell their stories of Dragon and Goanna and The Din to people who wouldn’t know those groups from A, B or C?

How would someone who had trouble reconciling his personal feeling about war and sacrifice find joy and comfort in interviewing the last surviving WWII veteran who worked for the legendary V-Disc music program, a service that provided music to soldiers and sailors throughout the theater of war?

How would someone who sang along to Top 40 hits as a kid keep his fandom and emotions in check when having an hour and a half-long conversation with Brad Delp, the lead voice of Boston? Or talking music theory with the legend of electronic music, Wendy Carlos? Or discussing every single parody with “Weird Al” Yankovic, who probably heard half the questions from a thousand different previous interviewers and still answered every one of my questions with the same enthusiasm and wisdom?

How would someone like me – with a nose for discovery in the tiniest places – eventually find and re-discover one of the sauciest doubel-entendre cocktail singers from the 1950’s, the legendary Ruth Wallis – to the point where she took my Goldmine article and convinced a producer to turn her life story into an off-Broadway performance?

How would someone like me ever dream of interviewing and talking with Alan Parsons and James Brown and Gamble & Huff and Manhattan Transfer and Ray Stevens and Crystal Gayle and Little River Band and the Association and the Drifters and a dozen other connections?

How would someone like me eventually use those Goldmine articles to take over and pen a long-running column, “Collectormania!” on the esoterics of music collecting and fandom?

How would someone like me chat with the founding members of Styx and still enjoy every single minute of it, to the point where Goldmine’s assistant publisher (a huge Styx fan) almost floated on air when she read my work?

How would someone like me eventually find that his Goldmine article on Earth Wind & Fire would be repurposed as part of the “further review and research” platform for EW&F’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website?

How would someone like me get to talk to the legendary Casey Kasem, the person who influenced my Sunday mornings as I listened to American Top 40 on WTRY?

Goldmine existed as a personal cornerstone. A goal. An achievement. And to see it fade away, caught in a swirl of management switches and venture capitalism and everything that went with it …

I’m sorry. I still can’t wrap my head around any of that. I still won’t believe that Goldmine is disappearing.

But I know that even if Goldmine goes away …

I’ll still have those great memories. And I’ll still have those connections. And those articles will still exist.

And that will mean more to me than anything else out there. These were the talismans of my writing career.

And I’ll take every single moment of those writings with as much pride as can exist.