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Sweet Potato

Sweet Potato

Sweet Potato was a music magazine started in Portland, Maine in 1975 by David and Ryan Wright, with a Boston edition that opened in 1978 and a Minneapolis edition that debuted the following year. (The Minneapolis magazine morphed into City Pages.) Sweet Potato got its wings during the punk and post-punk era, but its coverage, for a regional magazine, was extensive and wide-ranging, with stories on pop, jazz, classical and country music as well as on The Clash, Ramones, The Police, The Tom Robinson Band and the Cars. It, like the Boston Phoenix, launched a number of key rock writers throughout the area and across the country. The magazine folded in the late-'80s. (It has no on-line presence, but a couple of its writer-editors, Jim Sullivan and Dean Johnson, have resurrected some of the hardcopy stories and scanned them for on-line placement on Rocks BackPages.)

7 articles

List of articles in the library

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The Clash

Report and Interview by Jim Sullivan, Sweet Potato, March 1979

"I don't understand every lyric on the album, I doubt that Mick or Topper or Paul understands what every single word is. But if you ...

Fabulous Poodles: The Band That Gets Stuff Thrown At Them

Interview by Jim Sullivan, Sweet Potato, April 1979

SOME PEOPLE just don't know how to take the Fabulous Poodles. The night before their February 10th gig in Boston, the Poodles were in Philadelphia, ...

Robert Fripp: A Most Delightful Discourse With One Small, Mobile Intelligent Unit

Interview by Jim Sullivan, Sweet Potato, August 1979

THE USUAL ways to write about most rock artists are, I'm afraid, inadequate when one's subject is Robert Fripp. Generally, the writer's task is to ...

Lowell George, Little Feat: Lowell George: Time Loves A Hero

Interview by Jim Sullivan, Sweet Potato, July 1979

IT'S EERIE and disturbing news to learn about the death of someone with whom you had enjoyed a long and enjoyable conversation just a few ...

Jean Michel Jarre: Jarre's Eclectic Electic Music

Interview by Jim Sullivan, Sweet Potato, March 1979

YOU HAVE TO credit Jean Michel Jarre for making the sometimes forboding world of electronic music accessible to the public. Me. I've lone been a ...

David Johansen, New York Dolls: David Johansen: This Time It's For Real

Profile and Interview by Jim Sullivan, Sweet Potato, December 1978

"When you look back at every cultural music scene, there were always a couple of bands that came first-like the Beatles and Rolling Stones – ...

The Police

Interview by Jim Sullivan, Sweet Potato, 10 May 1979

BACKSTAGE AFTER the first of four sold-out performances at the Paradise, Stewart Copeland is relaxing, intermittently sipping a beer, and mostly trying to explain the ...

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