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Writings

Fiction publications in print

Chao, Tom. "The Piano Did Something Bad." MaLLife (Bomb Shelter Propaganda, Seattle, WA) 13/14, (Winter 1987): 36-39.

 

---. "The Punishment for Imperfection is Death." Paragraph (Oat City Press, Holyoke, MA), (Winter 1987): 25.

(Appeared without title.)

 

---. "Miniature Stories." Asylum (Mission Hills, CA) 7:4 (Spring 1988): 25.

 

---. "The Pie-Man." Pangloss Papers (Pangloss Foundation, Los Angeles), 7:1 (Jan 1988): 15-16.

 

---. "The Gum Bar." Open Magazine (Open Dialogues, Westfield, NJ) (1988): 41. [This magazine would later become the Open Magazine Pamphlet Series.]

 

---. "Can't Dance." The Southern California Anthology (USC, Los Angeles), 7 (19--): 138-40. [Read online here.] 

 

---. "A Guy, A Girl, Some Big Dreams, and a Vigilante Mob." Alaska Quarterly Review (University of Alaska, Anchorage, AK),

2:1 & 2 (Fall & Winter 1992): 169-77.

 

---. "Miniature Stories." The Noospaper 4 (19--): inside front cover.

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Alaska Quarterly Review 1990
Southern Californa Anthology 1990

Music and book reviews

From 1990-1994, Tom was a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Reader, a weekly newspaper distributed throughout Southern California. Tom's book and music reviews appeared in print, but since they were written during the pre-internet era, most have never been converted to digital formats.

 

One interview is archived online: Andy Partridge of XTC. July 7, 1994. "Language in His Lungs." Archived at the Chalkhills XTC fan website. From Los Angeles, Tom called Andy at his Swindon shed home studio. Perhaps someday the cassette tape containing the full interview will be digitized. Five years later, Tom gave Andy a photocopy of the printed interview. See this photo

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Tom's Los Angeles Reader review of a Lou Reed live performance at the Artists' Rights benefit at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on February 19, 1994, is cited in Transformer: The Lou Reed Story by Victor Bockris.

Bockris, Victor (1994). Transformer: The Lou Reed Story (1st ed., p 414). Simon & Schuster.

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Beyond Belief: Three reviews of Elvis Costello and related performances were published in Beyond Belief, a fan publication edited by Mike Bodayle.

Beyond Belief, Vol. 2, No. 1, Issue #5, February 1996. Steve Nieve Live, December 19-20, pp 5, 7. [PDF]

Beyond Belief, Vol. 2, No. 3, Issue #7. August 1996. "We're only going to do songs we don't know tonight." pp 7-8. [PDF] (For an unknown reason, Tom was credited as "Thomas X. Chao.")

Beyond Belief, Vol. 2, No. 4, Issue #8/9. December 1996. August 13, 1996 Beacon Theater-New York City, pp 15-16. [PDF]

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Transformer by Victor Bockris.jpg

Online publications

The Chalkhills Entrance Exam (compulsory) [Satirical quiz about XTC on fan website.] 

Also on Chalkhills, see a photo of Tom meeting Colin Moulding and Andy Partridge at Tower Records in 1999.

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"Shaq-Fu!" Modern Humorist, January 23, 2003.

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"How to Invoke Pan" (co-written with Craig Heimbichner), The New Yinzer, September 2003.

"How to Invoke Pan" also appears in HunterGatheress Journal, Vol. 1, March 14, 2008. Available on Amazon.

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"Clinging to Youthful Dreams of Happiness: New Wave Obscurities." Beams and Struts. May 19, 2012. 

New Yinzer Issue 26
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