I was born in Hereford, England in 1974... blah school, blah BMX bikes, blah Frankie Goes to Hollywood, blah... In 1987 I discovered the phenomenon of "indie" music and started wasting my youth sitting around in my bedroom listening to The Fall, Pixies and My Bloody Valentine (while all the other kids from my school were out stealing hub caps).

At the tender age of 18 I left Hereford to attend Brighton's University of Sussex. Despite the rugby teams claims that "it's not so much for the SUS, it's more for the SEX", I spent most of my time sulking and listening to obscure American bands. Pretty soon, I got my own show on the University's radio station, University Radio Falmer. I used the Losercore show to impose my objectionable personality and my taste for Mercury Rev, Pavement and Sebadoh on both of the station's listeners. Over the course of two years, the scope of the show broadened to take in the hip hop of Cypress Hill, The Pharcyde and The Wu Tang Clan plus the proto-post-rock of Moonshake, Bark Psychosis and -best of all- Disco Inferno.

The third year of my alarmingly pointless American Studies degree was spent at The University of Massachusetts in Amherst, US of A. Here I met a group of friends who introduced me to post-modern polymaths like John Zorn, Bill Laswell and Kevin Martin. I was able to voice these enthusiasms through a new, improved version of Losercore on the University's FM station, WMUA.

On returning to Brighton, I also returned to URF and presented a new show called Too Hectic which featured a 15-minute dark ambient montage every week. Boo-yah! I also started writing pretentious record reviews for a campus publication called The Badger.

After graduating, I moved along the south coast to Portsmouth, where I took a year-long Magazine Journalism course. Naturally, I spent most of the year sitting in a bedsit listening to my mate Dave's Young Gods and Third Eye Foundation LPs. I also learned how to use an Apple Mac and did a bit of writing for a local listings mag called Splash. At the end of the year I ended up on the dole and took the time to produce the first incarnation of The Bubblegum Cage, which I quickly disowned (it featured an essay called "The Psychogeography of Sound", for God's sake!)

After a while, I got a job at the Press Association in London. There I met a whole pack of similarly obsessed music fans who helped me expand my knowledge of Miles Davis, Sonic Youth, Lee Perry, Arnold Schoenberg and -oh so best of all- Scott Walker. I worked there for two years and got pretty bitter. I practically gave up on music writing. I did one review for Beware of Cat but they didn't give me a byline so fuck that. Luckily, I also met so of the most talented people I've ever had the good fortune to know. There was Mike Barnes who by now has probably had his doubtless excellent biography of Captain Beafheart published. There was Chris T-T whose stupendous Beatverse was the great lost LP of 1999. And then there was the inestimable Lara Jenny (aka Li'l' Kris) who is quite simply my favourite human being on earth.

At the end of 1999, Kris and I moved to Vancouver, which just about brings us up to date... blah CITR, blah Discorder, blah Pop Boffin, etc, blah...

Big shout out to all the bands and people mentioned above, especially Kris (for obvious reasons and because this site is basically all her own work). I'd also like to namecheck my family (hi mum), Kris's family, The Wire, Simon Reynolds, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Simpsons, Scott Walker (again), Janeane Garofalo, Will Self, Steve Reich and anyone/anything else that made this wonderful story possible.

Sam, April of the year 2G.