In the mid-nineties I managed a project to boost internet take-up among creative small businesses in Sheffield (ugh 1996 web design). The technical team had all sold their souls to Microsoft (excepting the solitary unix geek), but many of the businesses in the Cultural Industries Quarter, where I was based, used Macs. So guess who got to do the troubleshooting when the Mac users had a problem connecting? On my arse under the desk checking the modem connection, or tweaking the configuration of MacTCP and ConfigPPP. It wasn't glamorous, but, on the plus side, it turned out to be a good way of learning what my neighbour business were up to, and they were often very grateful if you could actually fix their problem. I would speculate that it was after doing a good deed of this kind that Lodestone Productions (Steve Athey and Adam Morris) gave me a copy of their EP. I always got on well with them after that.
I only knew of Adam as an artist manager and record label boss, but the credits on the label seem to indicate that he was also an artist and writer in his own right. The record is OK, but it's very much of its time, like dub techno (as Discogs terms it) by numbers.
It was Steve, particularly, and Adam who talked me into buying Dylan's Time Out of Mind, which I wasn't immediately sure about. Their other advice was to remain ignorant of the music industry — very wise, and when I neglected it for a moment events rapidly brought it back to mind.
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