We received applications from all over the country for our staff writer/ music critic position, but in the end we found the right candidate about 40 miles away. Wade Tatangelo may be a familiar name to some — for the last two years, he was a music critic and features writer for the Bradenton Herald. Before that, he freelanced for the St. Petersburg Times and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and, while still a student at USF, wrote music reviews for the Sarasota edition of Weekly Planet (now, like us, Creative Loafing).
Wade's familiarity with the music scenes in both Tampa Bay and Sarasota/ Bradenton is unquestionably a plus for CL readers; he's ready and able to maintain the paper's deep commitment to local music. And with both daily and weekly reporting experience, he's equally adept at turning around an overnight concert review (see his take on the BAAMO show) and at crafting in-depth stories that tell us not just about the people making music but about the wider context in which they operate. As a writer and a person, he's a hard guy not to like — and if you haven't already met him at a local club, you will. Besides writing lead stories in our music section, putting together Music Week and taking on whatever else we throw at him, he's also going to be blogging and writing a regular column — so he'll have to go out all the time to keep himself stocked with material. Help him stay informed: Send music news to wade.tatangelo@creativeloafing.com, or call him at 813-739-4856.
This article appears in Feb 7-13, 2007.