Featured Conversation: Dan Ozzi

Published on Feb 4, 2025

Today on Featured Conversations we welcome author and music historian Dan Ozzi

I got to know your work through your newsletter. Tell me a little bit about that. 

I left my job in 2019 to finish a book and newsletters were still new. I don’t even really know if there was a reputable music one at the time. I remember, really, the only person that I knew who had one that was successful was Luke O’Neill, and I remember my editor, my very sage editor, Kate, said to me, Well, if you’re thinking of getting a newsletter, you should do it now, instead of waiting until the day the book comes out, try to build it up now. And so I kind of kept it as a side project while I was writing the book. And I’ve kept it ever since. And I kind of lean on it when I have the time. I really wish it was my top priority. But books and things kind of take prominence. And so I feel like I’ve been a little bit uneven with it. I try to be fairly consistent, but it is sort of like I look at it as the thing that kind of supports the rest of my career, such as it is, you know.

So you started something new with your newsletter. Now, you’re doing this A to Z with your records.

Well, you know, Mark (Hoppus) and I turned in the book at the end of the year. So last year, the book kind of overtook my focus. And this year, I looked ahead and I realized that I didn’t have a lot of deadlines on my plate, and I wanted to give myself some for a few reasons. Number one, I was really inspired by my girlfriend, who is a musician, and she decided last year that she was just gonna release a song every single month, like she was going to write, record, mix, and release a song by herself every single month, including the artwork for it. And it’s funny because, we would be traveling or doing other things or holidays, and I’d be like, give yourself a break this month. And she was like, No, I won’t. I won’t give myself a break. And we spent the entire month of June pretty much in Greece. And I was like, surely, this is a good time to take a break. And she was like, No, I’m gonna write a song here. And she literally recorded a song from the beach, which was really inspiring. So, you know, it was a good lesson for me about not letting yourself slip. And the other thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is that I’ve been noticing my friends going absolutely insane already this month, and I understand that. I do think we have a long four years ahead of us and freaking out now - I’m not saying it’s premature -  but you’re not going to last at this level of anxiety for four years. So I think that giving yourself a project is extremely helpful for your mental health, because if the first thing that you think about in the morning is your project and not in the news, I think you’re off to a good start. I look at the news as a distraction. And because I have my main thing, which is writing, if I don’t have my main thing as writing, then the news becomes your main thing, the distraction becomes your main thing. And so I really wanted to give myself a project, almost for my mental health, with something that I could say, You know what? The world is crumbling around me. I have no control over it, but if nothing else, I can sit down on my computer and write words. So that’s part of the reason the project came about. 

This is basically the reason I started this website, to give me a project, to have deadlines, to have something major on my plate, instead of sitting here freaking out about the future.

Sure, I learned this lesson when I was writing the book Sell Out because that that was largely written in the year 2020, which was obviously such a chaotic and scary year. It kind of like saved my life in a weird way, because every day, I would wake up thinking about these little worlds that I was loving in for research. I’d wake up and my mind would be in Berkeley in the 90s, or it would be in New Brunswick in the early 2000s and it was not in my bedroom in 2020 where we were wearing masks and like putting our mail in the microwave and all this stuff. I don’t want to be so naive as to think I can just escape reality, because we all live in it, obviously. But I do think it is good to give yourself a little bit of a break, or a little bit of a fantasy where your mind can be somewhere more pleasant than where you are.

So you’re going through your albums in alphabetical order, more or less?

I’ve kind of mapped out which ones I want to do, although there are some gaps. But really I’m looking at it as a starting point to write about something else. I just wrote this one about Beastie Boys Ill Communication, because it was the first CD that I ever bought. I kind of treated it half as about that album, but half is about how it started a CD collection that I eventually had to get rid of about a decade ago, and just the process of getting rid of these 1000s of CDs that I had amassed. So it’s kind of about the album, but it’s also autobiographical about myself.

That’s basically what I do when I write on the site. I have my own little section, and I’m going through my albums that have a connection to something else, whether it be a time in my life, a person, or whatever. I just find it more fulfilling to write about the connections I have with the record than, say, review an album.

Sure and and I’m not of the mind that you should necessarily give people what they want, but I do. I have found in all of my years of doing this that people connect with your writing more if you open up and talk about your experiences, versus trying to critique the art in some objective value based way. I’ve written about things in a really personal way. I wrote this little mini memoir a while ago, and some of it was about experiencing grief. One of the essays was about 9/11. One of them was about getting dumped. But it was all about music and the feedback that I got from that was so personal, and it’s very surreal to write about yourself and how you connected to a certain album, and have people like write to you and say, Yeah, me too. That’s so bizarre. It’s one thing if you write to me and say, Oh, I also like that album, but it’s quite another thing when people write to you and say, I also was going through heartbreak, or I also was in a scary post 9/11 haze at that time. So it’s really helped me connect with people in a really surprising way. And I do think that we are living in the age of personal essay based writing. And I don’t want to necessarily entirely do that, but it is cool when people connect with it and. Also it’s funny becauseI hate nostalgia. I’m so against nostalgia, I think it really impedes our forward progress in art. So I don’t want to be a writer who’s just constantly writing about the past, but lately, I’ve been kind of separating nostalgia from, how do I put this? I think it’s one thing to chronicle something historically. I think that’s different than actual nostalgia, which is just people trying to live in a former time. You know, when you see these DJ nights trying to just recreate your high school years and live in that forever. I think that’s very pathetic, and that’s nostalgic to me. But I think looking back on your life in a reflexive way and taking stock of it is a little bit different. 

Yeah, I get that.

You mentioned to me that you had albums in New York that you did not take with you to when you moved. So how do you feel about that separation of these albums that you enjoy that you can’t have with you?

I have about 1,000 records, but yeah, they’re all in New York, because in 2019 I moved from New York where I’d grown up to where I live now (Los Angeles), and I moved very lightly. I moved with two suitcases and a dream. And my records are boxed up in my parents’ basement, and I have wanted to bring them over, ship them over, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. And it’s really funny how much these few years without my records have shaped my relationship with them.

I really, really miss being able to enjoy my music in a non-digital way. I miss just looking at my records and seeing a record that I forgot I had and putting that on. I think streaming services do a really bad job of curating the depths of your record collection, and I feel like I just constantly listen to the same things all the time. But also too, being without my records… sometimes it just feels like dead weight. A lot of the records, I felt a lot lighter not not having them. And this month, I had to very abruptly evacuate my apartment because there was one of these L.A. wildfires right down the block. And, that was very, very jarring. And it really made think about my physical possessions in a new way, you know, like we, saw the fire literally outside, and we were like, pack up, pack up the car, and let’s go. And I looked at my stuff. I had, like, five minutes, and I looked at my stuff, and in a weird way, I was just kind of like, well, who cares? It’s just stuff. I just want to be okay. I just want to be safe. I always thought that I’d bring my records out to LA, but now I want fewer things tying me down, because the world is very scary.

Just this morning, before I got on with you, I interviewed a guy who lost 8,000 records in the Palisades fire.

Oh my gosh. When you’re so attached to your records, it feels like losing your identity or something like that. And that’s kind of why I don’t want my records to be an anchor for my life anymore. I don’t know. Every time I go back to my parents’ house, I look at them in boxes, and I just feel two ways about them. One, I’m like, man, I really miss these. And then two, I’m like, this is just junk. 

So you don’t have any records in LA?

I have some. They’re mostly records friends have given me or that I just couldn’t resist. You know, that’s another thing too. When I lived in New York, so much of my pastime was going into record stores because I lived in the epicenter of a bunch of really good stores. I was in the middle of Academy and Record Grouch and Captured and a bunch of other stores. When I was bored on Saturday, I would just go and flip through and now that as much. I don’t just go looking at records. So if I do buy a record, it has to be something that I really want now,  Like, oh my gosh. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to grab this. I’m not just casually out. 

Do you have any records back in New York that are really valuable to you? What’s your most valuable record to you personally? 

That’s a good question. And I don’t know, because I’ve had this time without them, and I almost forget what’s in there. I think that’s kind of like a fun thing. Now, when I go home, I just look in the basement, unlocking all these memories that I just totally forgot. I have such a bad sense of what’s even in the collection at this point? Like, nothing really stands out to me as like, oh, okay, if I get rid of the records, at least keep this one. I can’t really even think of one that means that much to me. You know,

So has your appreciation of vinyl changed since you don’t have them with you? 

I mean, my relationship with them has certainly changed. I don’t covet them as much as I used to. It used to be like a real fun, leisurely activity to just go flip through records, and I just don’t do that anymore, but it has definitely, like, made me question or reevaluate my relationship with how I spend my money to support the artists I like, because if you’re not buying their records, how are you really financially supporting the stuff that you like? And so that becomes a guilt that you feel. It used to be, I bought the band’s new record, and it made me feel good, like I did my part, right? And now, I don’t want to feel like a leech. I don’t want to feel like I’m just taking people’s music. And I feel lucky in that I write music and I have a little bit of an audience, and so I feel like when I do cover something, maybe that helps get the word out there to other people who also are going to financially support it. And I feel like, okay, I don’t feel like a total leech now, because I’ve given a little bit.

Dan Ozzi is a Los Angeles-based writer. He is the author of the bestselling book SELLOUT: The Major Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994-2007), published in 2021 by Dey Street Books at HarperCollins.

He has co-authored two books: FAHRENHEIT-182: A Memoir (Dey Street Books, 2025) with blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, and TRANNY: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout (Hachette, 2016) with Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace.  Instagram | Bluesky

For over five years, he served as a staff writer and editor at VICE’s music site, Noisey, and has contributed to Billboard, SPIN, The Fader, The Guardian, The AV Club, and others. He has also been a host on SiriusXM. 

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