Editor’s Note - A new note in Vibes

Welcoming Music Editor Rodney Carmichael

Creative Loafing has a venerable history as metro Atlanta’s leading music publication. It kicked into high gear in the ’80s and ’90s, when Tony Paris served as music editor (and then managing editor). He led a stable of writers and editors who helped build Atlanta’s rock scene.</
Then, in the late ’90s, Roni Sarig, the first music editor I hired, won a passel of national awards for his insightful criticism and feature writing. More importantly, Roni shifted our focus to fully reflect hip-hop and R&B’s enormous influence on the local scene. Not only did CL clue readers early into the talents of indie rockers and singer/songwriters such as Cat Power and John Mayer, but Roni figured out from the start that OutKast, India.Arie and Lil Jon would amount to something.</
Atlanta’s music scene is amazingly organic. Big trends start here and go national; they also birth dozens of mini-scenes, which then re-form into whole new movements. R&B and singer/songwriter merged into neo-soul. Rap went to crunk to snap and back again.</
Together with music writer Mosi Reeves, our most recent music editor Heather Kuldell stretched the Vibes section to cover that cacophony. Mosi’s cover story last year on the weird mash-up of Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo that became Gnarls Barkley was a case in point.</
I was bummed when Heather decided to leave Atlanta to be closer to her family in D.C. But we lucked out when Rodney Carmichael turned up. Most recently, Rodney, a DeKalb native, served as a senior writer at Rolling Out, another Atlanta-based tabloid. But what really impressed us was his promise to be the kind of leader capable of orchestrating coverage of such a diverse, dynamic scene.</
“We plan to make a little noise ourselves by uncovering the stories that make this city’s music scene so fertile,” Rodney told me. “You don’t have to like it all to love it. [The diversity] is what we are and what makes us one of the most vibrant scenes in the country.”</
Rodney promises to focus heavily on what’s happening locally: “Where it’s coming from, how and why it started or continues to sustain itself, and what it all means.”</
It goes without saying that we need your help to figure all that out. So please be sure to send your thoughts and feedback on our music coverage to me at the address below or to Rodney at rodney.carmichael@creativeloafing.com.</
ken.edelstein@creativeloafing.com