Consumable Online--taking me back: early internet and music reviews

Once-upon-a-time, in the dim-dark-days of the early internet, when most things were still in batch mode with ListServ and stuff like that, I was a writer for the first online music publication--or "zine" as we called them--Consumable Online. Consumable was run by a hard-working editor, out of Hoboken, New Jersey, and had correspondents in the US and overseas--including yours truly, in France at that time.

Consumable stopped publication in August, 2001. Take a look: remember this was mostly an emailed publication, plain text, sometimes photos, but no flashy websites and certainly not loads of advertisements. 

Here's an example of what a subscriber received:

http://www.westnet.com/consumable/1995/March06.1995/c030695.txt 

(My bit's at the end, about Sisters of Mercy.)

Amazingly, a lot of the publication is still available online: http://www.westnet.com/consumable/ 

Here are a few of mine:

• Malcolm McClaren, "Paris"
• Peter Finger, "Between the Lines"   (amazing guitarist)
• Jimmy Somerville, "Dare to Love"  (read this in the context of the European age-of-consent, which is 16, not 18 like here in the USA)
• Buzzcocks, "All Set"
• and more if you search for them...

So yeah, I've been doing this for longer than you knew. Under various names. Who'da thunkit?