PILLARS OF THE
A look back at the rogues’ gallery of columnists that have informed ’s personality over the years BY ANDREW BONAZELLI
olumns are essential components of any foundation worth a damn. where I took drugs and reviewed records,” our
Be they deceptively plain or jaw-droppingly intricate, the most memorable appeal to—even challenge—our aesthetic sensibilities while still bearing weight. It’s no different in the magazine biz (insofar as such a “biz” exists in 2021). Between all those bitchin’ Hall of Fames, Flexi Discs and cover stories, Decibel has given you a smorgasbord of opinionated, inventive, perhaps even clinically insane columnists to adore or deplore. ¶ Not necessarily from the first issue, mind you, which paradoxically offered only the blink-and-you-missed-it Bring Me the Head of Iann Robinson (featuring musings from the turn-of-the-century MTV personality) and loooooong-running experimental back page staple South Pole Dispatch, courtesy of Mountain Goats mainman John Darnielle. The latter was a particularly bold move, establishing the magazine’s irreverence from the jump by giving a decidedly not extremely extreme musician carte blanche in prime real estate. It gels with editor-in-chief Albert Mudrian’s claim that he wasn’t looking to replicate anything from dB’s predecessors (despite great affection for Borivoj Krgin’s Firing Squad demo column in Metal Maniacs). “If anything,” Mudrian hints, “some of the earlier ideas were pilfered and reshaped from reading non-metal magazines.” (We can all breathe a retrospective sigh of relief that he wasn’t a Penthouse Forum subscriber.) ¶ Despite a few delightful installments of Ask Jeff Walker (we had to give him something to do while he was wandering Carcass Cuntry), it wasn’t until issue 7 (May 2005) that Decibel added another enduring fixture in the form of J. Bennett’s Cry Now, Cry Later. The eventual Ides of Gemini axeman channeled—and decapitated—the gonzo spirit of Hunter S. Thompson with a “steady stream of fantasy headaches, ill-informed hot takes and drug-induced non-sequiturs.” And yes, he means the latter literally. “The weirdest part is that while I was doing Cry Now, another magazine had me write a column 36 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL
man remembers. “Little did they know I usually did that anyway. The short answer, though? I was fucked up the entire time.” Given the small page count commensurate with many fledgling periodicals, dB’s early columns were rarely more than a half-page, including Psyopus madman Chris Arp’s axe tutorial Dr. Opus, PhD and day-one contributor Kevin Stewart-Panko’s Frankensteinian mixtape compendium Will Consider Trades (KSP would eventually find a permanent home in the reviews section with his creatively-themed demo column Throw Me a Frickin’ Bone, alongside Shane Mehling’s wryly caustic vinyl breakdown Needle Exchange.) Bearing these baby steps in mind, it should be no surprise it took us over two years to even launch a tour diary. Luckily, we found a hilarious and fearless (occasionally to his own detriment) field reporter in the form of then-Genghis Tron frontman Mookie Singerman, who documented his band’s misadventures in Smile, You’re Traveling. “One of my final columns was about my mom finding a video on YouTube where I drunkenly said onstage that she gave great head,” Singerman remembers. “I went to great lengths to apologize and repair our relationship, which I documented in the column—but telling the story again in a national publication kind of defeated the purpose and pissed her off all over
