The Chat is Open

Imagine the slacker table in the high school cafeteria, but for grownups who get really excited about new music

Today I’m (formally) announcing a new addition to the Substack: a New Bands for Old Heads subscriber chat. Think of it like an open discussion forum that lives independently of individual posts. Or like an incredibly slow and asynchronous AOL chatroom of yore.

Substack really really wants me to make this a paid-only space. And I will probably make some juicy, premium chat threads at some point, because a girl has gotta pay her bills. But the thing is that I want this whole newsletter, the entirety of New Bands for Old Heads, to be an open discussion forum. The idea that music discovery and the community around it should be commodified feels weird to me. Plus TikTok is increasingly hostile for this sort of thing, so let’s just hang out here where there aren’t character limits, maybe?

So far I’ve posted a few threads — for introductions, for nost…