14 Years Ago: The Origins of Eclectic Avenue

Dizzyfish - at the Oakdale Theatre in June 2024

I started Eclectic Avenue back in April of 2011. This blog began as an outlet to indulge my passion for writing about music, movies and books. I've always enjoyed writing, starting back in high school, on through my college years and moving forward to my years working in the publishing world. During that time, I wrote a couple of articles for local newspapers, and also did a stint as a writer/editor for the excellent KISS fanzine FIRE, which was published by my dear friend Gilda. Thanks to the support and encouragement of Gilda and a couple of other close friends, I decided to launch Eclectic Avenue. 

Eclectic Avenue received positive responses from readers, and as time went on, I got to know several other bloggers, and participated in several blogathons, special events in which a group of bloggers all write about a shared topic. Then in 2017, I decided to submit a story about Elton John to CultureSonar, a well-respected arts and entertainment website founded by music industry veteran Al Cattabiani. Since then, I've become a regular contributor to the site, and have written over 150 articles for them, including interviews with Dave Mason and William Shatner. It's been a great privilege to write for CultureSonar, and I'm thrilled to be part of the site's uber-talented group of writers.

I've had some incredible experiences over the years, interacting with talented artists like Marc Platt, Grey DeLisle, Rin Lennon of Monogroove, Kurt Reil of The Grip Weeds and Eric Herbst of Dizzyfish, among others. Thanks to Al Cattabiani, Cindy Grogan and Drew Pissara from CultureSonar for their support and encouragement, and also to Marty Scott and Maureen Pietoso at JEM Records for digging my work, and asking me to write about their fabulous artists on a regular basis. It has been an amazing experience working with all of you. I also want to express my sincere gratitude to all my readers for their appreciation of, and enthusiasm for, my writing. There's more to come, both here at Eclectic Avenue, and at Culture Sonar!