- Culture
- 22 Jun 17
It doesn't seem like that long ago that I arrived in Dublin from the US, eager to work at Hot Press. Okay, that’s a lie. It was a very, very long time ago and it feels like another lifetime. It was 1992. I was 21 and Hot Press was, eh, you do the math.
I was brought on as an intern before eventually getting hired and given a wee little column called Demo Parade, which ran alongside a little head shot of me wearing some oversized ’90s baby doll dress.
This was back when bands would send tapes – actual tapes – of their demos in for review. I listened to them on a walkman. The magazine only converted from old school type-setting to computers during my stint there. I remember once giving the late great Bill Graham a tutorial on how to use a Mac, a lesson that went as well as anyone who knew Bill would expect.
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I was barely on staff a year before moving back to the US. And yet that time at Hot Press looms large in my memory, still, because of the incredible people involved not just in the magazine but in the music scene as a whole. When I arrived at the doorstep of 13 Trinity Street for the first time, I’d only just finished college and had no idea what life – real life – was going to offer up. Being surrounded by writers and dreamers and music – so many demos – that year ended up making all the difference in the path I pursued after I moved home.
All these years later, I’m still writing, still dreaming. My two most recent novels, The Leaving and The Possible, are young adult psychological thrillers (both available in the UK!). And in the novel that I just started writing, I decided to weave in a story about a girl who moves to Dublin after college, in the ’90s, and has the adventure of a lifetime. I predict I’ll be listening to a lot of music of ye olden days as I try to capture a time and place and job that meant so very much. Now I’m off to cue up some Blink... and Lir... and Engine Alley... and...