It seemed like rock and roll journalism in Australia used to be a hell of a lot of fun once upon a time. Considering our small population, everyone in the "scene" knew one another at least by word of mouth and probably saw and met them at one point. My supervisor, Dr. Tony Moore could write letters to radio DJs and have it read and mocked openly on air - now I couldn't even get my tweet professing an unhealthy obsession with Belinda Carlisle flashed up during a 80s revival night on Channel V. I sincerely doubt I could call up Richard Kingsmill on Triple J and ask "what the fuck is this shit, dude..." although I'd very much like to. I pay his salary, god damn it!
Luckily, I've found that there's a wealth of scholarly material on rock journalism in Australia and rock music in general. Archives are out there to be trawled through and I fear that I'll be spending more time acting rock historian than intrepid thesis writer and lose the plot entirely. "Have you heard of Ram magazine?" Tony asks sincerely, forgetting that he's about 20 years my senior. "You should read that. It was heaps into heavy metal." I'm sure he doesn't know who the Katatonia refers to on my t-shirt. Even so, he was once refered to as the "suede crusader" who flew the flag for rock music when the industry was embracing any band that owned a Fairlight CMI and had crates of hairspray on backorder - so he knows a metalhead when he sees one. Or a punk rocker, indie kid or whatever you choose.
So the past few days have been about asking questions in an academic way and not to draw any conclusions from them. It's encouraging to have a supervisor that's into the subject as much as me ("I wish I did something like this for my honor's thesis," Tony says almost every time we meet) and so far, things are looking up. Today I didn't even feel to get out of bed - now I want to rock out with my theories out.