It all began in May of 1980, when a scrawny kid full of music dreams — including that of being a music journalist — walked into the humble digs of the hippy weekly on De la Vina Street. That would be me, and that paper would be Santa Barbara’s legendary alternative newspaper called the News & Review.
Monetary gain was meager and nearly moot at times, but I was thrilled to be attached to Santa Barbara’s humble version of America’s alternative weekly culture, lorded over by the mighty Village Voice outta N.Y.C. At the N&R, I was allowed to pursue my obsessive passion for music and film and expanded my interest in fine art. Most of my time at the N&R was under the editorial care and feeding of arts editor David Rubien, who jokingly later claimed he taught me everything I know. (He may be at least partly right.)
The N&R launched what became my primary and ongoing “day gig,” writing in Santa Barbara, where I grew up, and expanding to the Los Angeles Times, Musician, Rolling Stone, DownBeat (still at it there), and other music magazines, books, and freelance writing side streets. Freelance writing is a cobbling game, with highs and lows attached, but often rewarding for those of us fixed on steady culture consumption.
Back in the formative batch of years in the ’80s, I remember hearing that there would be a new sheriff/editor swooping in from the East. Along came Marianne Partridge, heading west after having been editor at both the Village Voice and Rolling Stone — two of my primary sources of inspiration and values-forming as a journalist and human! Could it be?
A few years into Partridge’s direction, she wisely maneuvered a merger between the News & Review and The Weekly, a competing paper also with alternative cred, but leaning closer to the cozier middle.
Leading into the thorny merger process, we had a strategy meeting at veteran newspaper war hero and grizzly colleague Nick Welsh’s place in Summerland. Upon her arrival, I remember the ever tough-yet-tender Marianne suggesting I turn off the Weather Report record (Mysterious Traveler) Nick and I had on. Later, she mentioned that, through the merger battle, she didn’t want to have the sensation of tasting “ashes in the victor’s mouth,” the first time I’d heard that phrase.
Fast forward 40 glorious, delirious, perilous, and determined years later, Marianne and her brave enterprise had prevailed in an era of increasing newspaper world vulnerability.
This is 40, to quote the Judd Apatow movie, and the paper that has earned respect on a national level. On a more immediate level, the Independent became a critical component of what makes Santa Barbara Santa Barbara. I’m proud to have been a humble veteran foot soldier in an ongoing righteous cause, of truth telling, community building, and, in my case, opinion flinging.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Signing off with an old-school journalism sign of my veteran status: “-30-.”
As the Santa Barbara Independent celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2026, our staff is sharing their “Indy Origin” stories and other memories. See more of them at independent.com/40.
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