Pardon my interruption in your regularly scheduled Addicted to Vinyl, but I’d like to let you know about a couple more site changes/additions that are pending here at ATV. And by “pending,” I actually mean stuff that is happening, as of today. Hopefully you have all had the chance to get at least a little bit acquainted with Mel and Kevin, the recent additions to the ATV staff. Both Mel and Kevin have turned out some great stuff already, and they’ve got further fun in the works and on the way.

I am pleased to announce a couple more great people that will join Mel, Kevin, and myself in the quest for the complete musical nerd overload here on Addicted to Vinyl.

First up, say hello to my good friend Peter Chakerian!

Thanks to the magic of Twitter and Facebook, I’ve had the opportunity and pleasure to get to know Peter over the past 8 months, after reading his byline in various local publications in the past 15+ years. We met for the first time after the Matthew Sweet concert at the Beachland this past fall, and traded initial getting-to-know-you type chit-chat during the post-show meltdown with Cobra Verde offering plenty of decibels from the Beachland stage to help us hear the overall conversation that much better. A few months later, we reconvened to properly geek out further with conversation enhanced this time by wings and Cavs basketball. Peter threw down the observation that we had probably been in the same room for Cleveland concerts at least 300 times, and we commenced discussing those concerts, to identify and catalog our mutual musical likes and loves.

Among his many activities, Peter is managing editor for CoolCleveland.Com, and recently published his first book The Browns Fan’s Tailgating Guide. Peter will publish his second book this fall, and also contributes TV and film stuff to Popdose, and I think you are all aware by now that Popdose is my favorite website on the planet. Since 1991, Peter has written for gads of media outlets including The Plain Dealer, Akron Beacon Journal, New Times and Village Voice Media, Pittsburgh City Paper, BlogCritics, America Online and The Boston Globe.

Peter reached out shortly after I made the last announcement and let me know of his interest to contribute some music-related items to ATV, with a primary focus on some Cleveland-related concert/musical memories. We’ve had some fun brainstorming potential topic ideas, and I think that you will all enjoy Peter’s contributions to Addicted to Vinyl.

Here’s the picture that Peter uses to make me jealous, from the time that he met Henry Rollins.

Hello New Jersey!

With my love of Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi, you had to know that it wouldn’t be long before I added a New Jersey voice to Addicted to Vinyl.

Kurt Torster is one of my oldest online friends, and our friendship stretches back nearly 15 years. That’s 15 years of trading New Jersey sucks/Cleveland sucks barbs back and forth in email, via IM, and the occasional alcoholic carrier pigeon. We formed our initial musical bond via a mutual love for power pop, groups like The Verve Pipe, the great group of musical brethren known as Venice, and a mutual appreciation for the genius of Owsley. Kurt and I first met when he realized that he could unload John Waite’s entire 90’s catalog output to me for some much-needed cash. “Sucker” was his thought as he packed up those John Waite albums and prepared to mail them to Cleveland.

Music fans have been privy to Kurt’s musical musings online since the early 90’s when he launched the weekly music newsletter SFK which Torster published weekly on Mondays through most of the 90’s. With SFK in a dormant stage since late 2006, Torster turned his focus to Kurt’s Krap to continue sharing his musical likes, loves, and hates with the world in blog format.

When I first started thinking about adding a couple of voices to ATV, Kurt was the first person that I got in touch with. He needed some time to ponder the damage that might be done by adding ATV to his writing resume, and after some careful deliberation, he got in touch with me to let me know that he was ready to contribute. Kurt is promising to share musical time capsules here on Addicted to Vinyl that will focus primarily on 1975-1985, the formative years that are responsible for all of the Krap that he loves.

Check out Kurt’s first entry here, and look for further entries from Kurt about once a week, or so.

I’m very happy to welcome both Peter and Kurt to the Addicted to Vinyl clan, and I’m appreciative for the opportunity to know both of these gents, and to have the forum to share their writing gifts with all of you here on ATV. From this moment on, I’ll be focusing in on that previously discussed site redesign in an attempt to add something that resembles “organization” to make contributions from the five of us easy to locate, read, and enjoy.

Stay tuned, and thank you all so much for your continuing support of what we’re doing here on Addicted to Vinyl!