To answer the question in the header, I certainly did; not all the time -- at times writing reviews for this web page became more of a chore than a joy -- and so from time to time I'd take a short break, not write any new reviews or listen to much new music for several weeks. Things like that are healthy for the system, right?- or else I'd turn into an automaton randomly processing new albums for review without letting the music enter my soul at all. I'm not paid to do this and I don't have a vested interest in claiming that the latest Limp "Riot/Rape-Promoting" Bizkit release is kool to maintain that 'cutting edge' (is there anything sillier than reading some 40-something whitebread critic praise some worthless hip-hop album that no one's going to remember in five months, pretending to enjoy rap-metal and corporate bubblegum just to prove he's still hip to the sounds of the streets, dig?). When I started out posting reviews on the net way back in the first few months of 1998 -- 2 whole years ago (can you believe it? I've wasted that much time on these half-finished, sloppy little reviews of mediocre pop muzak? I could've polished off the first or second draft of the Great American Novel instead!) -- I admit I had vague hopes of some keen-eyed editor spotting my work and offering me a job as assistant junior editor at some fancy rock mag. Interviewing rock stars on Lear jets! Partying with models! All-expense paid trips to London and Berlin to check out the club scene! Free tickets to outrageously overpriced stadium concerts! Stacks of free CDs in the mail, every week! And getting paid to do all of it!

Well, no. First of all, life as a lowly rock critic is hardly the most glamorous position in the world (read Lester Bangs' classic, sidesplitting article on the easy steps to becoming a rock critic), and second of all, no one's been knocking down my door to sign me up. So, I've spent the past couple of years writing about people who can't talk for people who can't read, at first out of pure joy, and lately out of pure habit. Which happens to everything you do for fun, anyway -- vices turn into habits, which isn't to say the joy doesn't poke its way through loud and clear every now and then. Otherwise, it wouldn't be worth still doing, now would it?

But all things must come to an end, and so has this site. I will no longer be posting new reviews anymore; I'm out of the game for now. This decision was partially due to the fact that for the last few months running this site has been a matter of going through the motions for me, so it was time to lay off and take a vacation regardless of outside circumstances. But outside circumstances are a factor in my decision to put this site on hold: within the next few weeks, I'll be embarking overseas for a new career in a new town -- specifically the Republic of China, aka Taiwan. I won't be lugging a computer over with me, though I'm sure I'll be able to find a decent one over there within my first few months (this is, after all, Taiwan) -- so maybe my site might return to active duty status after a brief period of rest. Or perhaps not -- I have no idea how I'll feel in the future, or what my long-term plans for this site will be. For now, this site is on hold indefinitely. Let's just say there's a 50/50 chance of my updating it regularly ever again. 10 years from now -- heck, 2 or 3 years from now -- I might be terribly embarrassed by the whole project hastily embarked upon in my youth. Some of my early reviews are downright cringe-inducing, now that I look at them. For example, my Prince reviews are a disgrace -- I was shooting for a writing style to reflect the subject's music (sex-crazed, hyperactive, conspiciously flaky), which didn't come off particularly well. Some of my reviews I'm proud of -- there's some mighty fine prose and analysis on my Who, Kinks, Bowie, Dylan, Camper Van Beethoven, Byrds, New York Dolls pages -- I can stand by those, and a few others (most of the writing on my '60s/70s/80/90s Odds & Ends pages are quite good, too, since they're some of the most recently written, which are better than my early reviews since I've gotten the hang of this gig by now). I'm not proud of overstretching myself by trying to set up separate movies and books pages; those predictably sputtered, since the strain of writing reviews for an additional two sites was way too much (I think I gave up my optimistically titled "The Weekly Book Review" after two weeks and two book reviews). Those two sites will, as you might have guessed, will never, ever be updated.

Anyway, that's the scoop. Never say never, as James Bond once said -- maybe "I shall return" as Douglas MacArthur once said. But don't count on it. To all my hordes of disconsolant fans -- thanks for the support, your e-mails of encouragement and disagreement. It's been an interesting ride. Where do we go from here? For me, at least, somewhere on the other side of the globe and offline -- for now.