But I hedged my bet right from the beginning too, and kept my day job at the welfare department all the way through, as I was a family man and it provided regular income and medical coverage, etc. That job also gave me another kind of coverage, as a rock critic, as since my writing didn’t furnish my primary income, I could be very choosy who I wrote about. When Creem offered me (among many others) Journey’s management’s junket-to-San-Fran to featureize Steve Perry & co., I could stop believin’ right away and say “NO!” It was fine with me if Journey got written up in Creem, but I didn’t want my byline on the piece. I reserved that for say, a $5. Rock-a-Rama (capsule review) of Nina Hagen, one of my heroine-addictions of the time.

– Richard Riegel, Where Did (My) Zeitgeist Go?

I’d never seen this piece before (it’s from the blogger’s section of Rock’s Backpages) — rockcritics‘ fave rave, Richard Riegel, just having devoured Chuck Eddy’s latest critical tome, reflects on his own career/half-career in music criticism.