One night a mutual friend brought Seattle Weekly staffer Andrew Bonazelli to my table at the Cha Cha and introduced us by first name only. I asked Andrew how he felt about his boss, Weekly music editor Bob Mehr, being fired and replaced with Michaelangelo Matos. Mehr, at this point, hadn't actually been fired yet, but everyone in the music community knew that he was about to be shitcanned. Everyone, that is, except Andrew (even Bob Mehr knew in advance). Andrew then ignored my questions about the Weekly's ridiculous and poorly attended Seattle Music Festival--which was poorly attended even by the lame standards of a Weekly event. (Why was it so poorly attended? Probably because over 40 of the city's best indie bands played the Stranger-sponsored Capitol Hill Block Party four weeks previous, and other indie bands were off-limits due to contracts with Bumbershoot.)
Andrew didn't know who I was and was probably wondering how I knew all this stuff about Mehr and Matos. Finally, I gave Andrew my full name. He got up to order another drink.
The next night at the bar he walked up to me and said, "I had no idea what you were talking about until I got an e-mail this morning saying Mehr had been fired and that Matos would be taking over." Having had the displeasure of meeting Matos a few years prior, I wished Andrew luck. I'd found his new boss to be a socially inept slob.
Okay, now on to Pretty Girls Make Graves: The night I met Andrew at the Cha Cha, I was standing with Pretty Girls Make Graves' Derek Fudesco when he turned down Andrew's request for an interview. (Understandable, since Andrew had slammed PGMG in print.) When PGMG won the Best Indie Rock category in the Weekly's not-so-hotly anticipated Music Awards, PGMG said they were flattered but again refused to be interviewed by the Weekly, telling the paper that the Weekly has little relevance to the band's audience. (The Catheters won Best Punk/ Hardcore--I'm sure even their parents don't read the Weekly.) So it was odd to find a quote from Fudesco in Andrew's gushing story on the band in last week's issue. (Andrew pulled a 180 on the band he slammed.) I made some calls, and discovered that the band, indeed, hadn't talked to Andrew. So I called Andrew asking where the quote had come from. He declined to comment. Overnight I received an e-mail from Fudesco who said he recognized the quote from an interview he had done with Matos a while back for Gallery of Sound. I dialed up Matos at the Weekly and after a patch-through was greeted with a startling, "MATOS!" I began to inquire as to why the Weekly's new music editor felt he could insert his own quote into another writer's story without attributing it as such. Before I could finish my question, Matos barked, "I AM DONE TALKING TO YOU!" and slammed down the phone. (Immediately afterward, he galumphed his way to his paper's webmaster and added "Additional reporting by Michaelangelo Matos" on the web version of Andrew's story.)
I guess I shouldn't have been shocked. Matos' arrogance had already become evident when he canned former Weekly music columnist Richard Meltzer via e-mail:
"Bob [Mehr] is no longer the music editor, and I'm killing the column. Period."
I'm not saying Meltzer--old-guy rock critic and Lester Bangs crony--should be treated with kid gloves, but show a modicum of respect. Soon after that, Weekly music columnist Kurt B. Reighley resigned after Matos told the gay writer he was not to include anecdotes about his boyfriend in his column. Nice boss you've got there, Andrew. But look on the bright side: No one seems to last long at the Weekly these days. It seems that every other Wednesday another Weekly staffer gets shitcanned, dropping employee morale at the ever-shrinking paper back into the toilet.
