Our Contributors

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Gillian McCain is the author of two books of poetry, Tilt and Religion and co-author of Descent of the Dolls. With Legs McNeil she co-wrote Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk and co-edited Dear Nobody: The True Story of Mary Rose. She is the former Program Coordinator and Board President of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. She lives in New York City.

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Editor

Alan Bisbort is the Editor of PleaseKillMe.com, as well as a freelance writer and a collage artist. He’s the author of numerous books, including Beatniks: A Guide to an American Subculture and Rhino’s Psychedelic Trip.

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Margo Tiffen is the VP of Marketing & Development for pleasekillme.com. A native New Yorker, Margo started out as a music journalist, founding 'zines RUDE International and Pin-Up NYC. Margo is the former Head of Product for IDG and has worked in publishing for 20 years - specializing in development, marketing and product management.

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Austin Brookner was born in New York City. Those he has made records with as a singer-songwriter include Marc Ribot, Lenny Kaye, Tony Garnier, and Nick Tosches. He was a finalist in the 2019 Great American Song Contest for the Pop Genre with his song “Big Girls Dance Better,” recorded with the NYC based band The Contortions.

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Chris Epting has written regularly for many outlets including the Los Angeles Times and the Huffington Post and is also the author of more than 30 pop culture/travel books including James Dean Died Here, and Led Zeppelin Crashed Here. He has also co-written memoirs with John Oates, Phil Collen and Leif Garrett among others. Originally from New York, he's lived in California since the mid-1980s and is still madly in love with the music of his youth.

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David Stewart is a teacher of Film and Media Studies at Plymouth State University. When he's not teaching, he's a freelance writer and investigative researcher. His film credits include Amy Scott's documentary Hal and Marielle Heller's The Diary of a Teenage Girl. He lives outside of Boston with his family and beloved Fender acoustic, Nadine.

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Elliott Sharp is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, artist, and author. His work since the 1970s has encompassed electronics, opera, improvisation, No Wave, EDM, noise, jazz, blues, and graphic notation. Winner of the Berlin Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Sharp’s "Storm of the Eye” was composed for violinist Hilary Hahn’s Grammy-winning album “In 32 Pieces”.

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Ingrid Marie Jensen is a member of New South Story Lab.

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John Kruth is the author of six music books, including Hold On World – the Lasting Impact of John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band (2021) a regular contributor to Waxpoetics, and numerous periodicals. As a singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with ten solo albums Kruth has recorded and performed regularly in the U.S. and Europe working with Hal Willner, John Prine, Violent Femmes, James “Blood” Ulmer, and Ornette Coleman.

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John Pietaro, writer, poet, musician from Brooklyn NY, is a columnist for the NYC Jazz Record and the author of poetry collection The Mercer Stands Burning. He is a contributing writer to Z, the Wire, Sensitive Skin, the Nation, the Village Sun, Peoples World and many more.

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Jordan N. Mamone is an avid traveler and epicure who has written for publications as varied as Vice, the Observer, New York Press, Time Out New York, and Elle. In the ’90s, he performed on two albums by the NYC noise-rock trio Alger Hiss, and in the ’00s, he played with the heavy and hypnotic Lee Miller, in Pori, Finland. A decades-long resident of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, he lives with a brilliant redhead, a couple of cats, too many records, and a closetful of natural wine.

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Kurt Voss has a music project called Hindi Guns (Spotify) that has been covered in Rolling Stone and Record Collector. He has made over a dozen feature films, many on the subject of music, including Sugar Town, Down and Out WIth The Dolls, and Ghost on The Highway: A Portrait of Jeffrey Lee Pierce (Youtube). Blog: The Hollywood Lowlife

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Larry Baumhor does more than sell rare photographs; he also takes them---with an eye for the eccentric and unusual. He has also written several books of prose and on occasion posts his performance art and poetry readings on You Tube.

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Rick Casados was born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is a painter and photographer who also has many years' experience as a professional screen printer. Rick has lived in Brooklyn and London and traveled extensively. He lives with his wife and kids in Connecticut.

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Tom Hearn is a photographer and is a contributor to PKM.

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Danny Fields was born and raised in New York City, where he lives. After attending the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard Law School, he returned to New York, where he became: Managing Editor of Datebook Magazine; Editor of Hullaballoo Magazine; Editor of “16” Magazine; Publicity Director of Elektra Records; columnist for the Soho Weekly News and other publications; artists’ manager (Lou Reed [for two weeks], Iggy Pop, the Ramones), freelance writer and photographer. My Ramones, his book of photographs of the band, was published in 2016; Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk is dedicated to him; and he is the subject of documentary titled Danny Says.

Anthony Petkovich

Anthony Petkovich is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles who currently writes for Shock Cinema and Filmfax magazines. The author of The X Factory: Inside the Hardcore American Film Industry (Critical Vision, 1997), Petkovich has previously written for Psychotronic Video Magazine and Headpress U.K. (The Journal of Sex, Religion, Death), as well as worked on Spectator, Hustler (as managing editor for both publications) and Adam Film World Guide (as editor-in-chief).

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Bebe Buell is a musician, mother, muse, model, celebrated lover, manager, best selling author, and pop culture icon, music has always held her deepest passion.

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Bob Gruen is one of the most well known and respected photographers in Rock and Roll. By the mid '70s he was already regarded as one of the foremost documenters of the scene working with major attractions such as John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Tina Turner, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Kiss etc., and also covering the emerging New Wave and Punk bands including The New York Dolls, Patti Smith, Clash, Sex Pistols, Ramones & Blondie.

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BURT KEARNS produces nonfiction television and documentary films. He wrote the books TABLOID BABY and, with Jeff Abraham, THE SHOW WON’T GO ON: THE MOST SHOCKING, BIZARRE, AND HISTORIC DEATHS OF PERFORMERS ONSTAGE.

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Christine Ohlman (a/k/a "The Beehive Queen" for her mile-high platinum-blonde hairdo) is the current, long-time vocalist with NBC's Saturday Night Live Band whose sixth critically-acclaimed CD with Christine Ohlman & Rebel Montez, The Deep End, was honored on numerous national end-of-year Top Ten lists. Ohlman is a noted musicologist and record collector who was one of the original contributing editors to the All Music Guide.

Crispin Kott

Crispin Kott was born in Chicago, raised in New York, and has called everywhere from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Atlanta his home. A music lover and failed drummer, he’s written for numerous publications and is co-author of The Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to New York City (Globe Pequot, 2018), The Little Book of Rock and Roll Wisdom (Lyons Press, 2018), and The Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area (Globe Pequot, 2021).

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Deke Dickerson is America's Roots Music Renaissance Man. He is as prolific a recording artist as he is a writer and collector of old guitars. Check out Deke’s website, for all the wonderful details.

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Eric Davidson is a freelance writer on most days, singer for New Bomb Turks on others, dilettante in between. He’s the author of the ‘90s garage punk history tome, We Never Learn. He lives in Queens.

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Erika Blair is a writer and conceptual artist currently living in Brooklyn. She collects rare books, vintage smut, punk albums and 60s pop cultural and political ephemera. The similarity between her name and George Orwell’s (Eric Blair) is not a coincidence. erikablair.us

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Fiona McQuarrie has been writing about music for more than 30 years. She was formerly the music critic at the Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers, along with freelancing for a number of publications. She is a contributing writer for Shindig! magazine, and her first book "Song Book: 21 Songs From 10 Years (1964-74)" is available from New Haven Publishing.

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Gregory Daurer is a Denver-based author, photographer, writer, and musician. He releases music under the nom de rock 'n' roll Gregory Ego, and also participates on the recording project Reverend Lead Pipe & His Pipe-Wielding Swingers. Find out more about his interviews, articles, music, and novel A Western Capitol Hill at the web site gregoryego.com.

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James “The Hound” Marshall (born Giacimao Antonicello, 1959-2059) has worked as a DJ, vault worker, roofer, bouncer, bartender, bike messenger, pot dealer, parking meter emptier, dishwasher, shucker, bar owner, rock manager, record producer, and journalist. He has written for the New York Times, LA Weekly, Village Voice, East Village Eye, Kicks, Newark Star Ledger, and worse. He is currently working on forming an American wing of the the Red Army Faction.

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Larry "Ratso" Sloman is a legendary New York-based author.

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Laurie Lindeen is an essayist, the author of the memoir Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story, professor, mom, and founding member of Zuzu’s Petals. She lives in Minnesota.

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Michael Friedman’s most recent book is Martian Dawn & Other Novels (Little A, 2015), an omnibus collection of three novels that includes a reissue of his 2006 cult novel, Martian Dawn (Turtle Point). From 1986 to 2008 he edited the influential literary journal Shiny. Several poems from his book Species (The Figures, 2000) were included in the anthologies Great American Prose Poems (Scribner, 2003) and Like Musical Instruments: 83 Contemporary American Poets (Broadstone, 2014). In the aughts Friedman was an adjunct member of the faculty of the MFA writing program at Naropa University in Boulder. He is a former chair of the board of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. Michael passed away on May 5, 2020. RIP.

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Michael Shelley has been cracking wise, spinning genre defying records and interviewing music makers on WFMU since 1992. Check wfmu.org/michael for his radio show’s archives containing hundreds of interviews. Like everyone in America, he also plays in a band and writes songs.

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Nora Novak is an artist, actress, writer and designer. Novak is the author of Art Damaged and Los Feliz Confidential A Memoir. She is currently working on a sequel about the eighties and a new art series, “The Femme Fatale Collection Vol.1.” noranovak.com

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Legendary groupie, author, and journalist Pamela Des Barres has written five books, I’m With the Band, Take Another Little Piece of My Heart, (autobiographies) Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon, Let’s Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies, and most recently, Let it Bleed / How to Write a Rockin’ Memoir.

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Paul Maher Jr. is the author of A Vast Glowing Empty Page: The Life and Writings of Jack Kerouac, All Things Shining: An Oral History of the Films of Terrence Malick, Isolated Wanderer: A Maxwell Bodenheim Reader, Miles On Miles: Interviews & Encounters with Miles Davis, Tom Waits On Tom Waits, and Empty Phantoms: Interviews & Encounters with Jack Kerouac.

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Lisa Janssen is a writer and documentary researcher living in Los Angeles. Her recent film work includes Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present and the acclaimed web series We’ve Been Around. She edited and oversaw the publication of filmmaker Curtis Harrington’s memoir Nice Guys Don’t Work in Hollywood as well as the reissue of Rudy Wurlitzer’s Slow Fade.

Richie Unterberger has been writing about little-known and well-known rock and popular music of all kinds for more than 25 years. His dozen-plus books include "Won't Get Fooled Again: The Who from Lifehouse to Quadrophenia,"" published by Jawbone Press in March 2011.

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Robert Gourley is a freelance web developer and journalist based in Jersey City, NJ. An early adopter of online media, Bob has been publishing the online music magazine Chaos Control since 1993. His writing has also appeared in publications including Wired and The Boston Globe.

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Robyn Hale is a freelance writer and producer, originally from Boston, MA. Robyn founded Fat City Magazine with her brother Jay and has written for RUDE International, The Weekly Dig, and numerous other publications. She appeared on the Travel Channel's "10 Things You Don't Know About Hawaii" and resided in the Aloha State for seven years. Now back on the East Coast, Robyn works for the PKM team, and co-produced the two-hour radio documentary Please Kill Me, Voices from the Archives

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Sharon M. Hannon is a Washington, DC-based freelance writer and researcher whose clients include the Library of Congress and the Public Broadcasting System. Early in her career, she wrote concert and record reviews for local newspapers. She is the author of, among other books, PUNKS: A GUIDE TO AN AMERICAN SUBCULTURE (ABC-CLIO).

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Sylvie Simmons writes about music, and plays music. She's been writing about rock since 1977. Over the decades she's won some awards and written some books, including biographies of Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Serge Gainsbourg, and a co-written book with Debbie Harry. In later years she came out as a singer-songwriter, releasing two acclaimed albums. Her latest is Blue on Blue on Compass Records. http://sylviesimmons.com/

Author Anthony Mostrom

Tony Mostrom is a Los Angeles native and a former columnist for the L.A. Times, where he wrote about historic criminals, musicians and artists. His musical tastes run toward atonalism. Currently he writes book reviews and essays for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

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Todd McGovern is a writer, radio producer and strategic communications specialist. In addition to his writing for PKM, Todd was a contributing producer for The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC. Additionally, Todd has extensive experience as a communications professional for organizations including the National Basketball Association and Teach For America. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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Valerie Simadis is a writer and artist who resides in New York. She studied English Literature at Queens College, and over the course of two years worked as an archivist for rock and roll photographer Bob Gruen. A lover of bygone eras, she is particularly interested in the culture and personalities of the 1960s.