Long ago and far away, print magazines were one of the primary ways to find out about new music. And in the pre-Internet days of the early 1980s, the twice-a-month arrival of the latest Rolling Stone was a major event. I would sit and devour every word of every issue, while scanning the writers' bylines and wondering who those people were. Like Parke Puterbaugh, a name that seemed impossibly exotic.

Years later, I moved here and discovered that Puterbaugh lived right down the road in Greensboro -- and that, in addition to being a record geek supreme, he was also a right nice guy. It's to his credit, I think, that he looks like he's trying to keep a straight face in the photo below. And now he's written the book he was born to do, "Phish: The Biography" (Da Capo, 318 pages, $25).

Phish has never gotten much critical respect, and I have to admit that their jam-band whimsy ain't really my ball o' wax. But Puterbaugh has always been a fan, going back to when he began covering Phish for Rolling Stone in the mid-'90s. He got plenty of behind-the-scenes access to report "Phish," and it shows in his even-handed treatment of the music as well as the band's virtues and foibles.

You can come talk to him about it directly tonight, when Puterbaugh does a reading at Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books. It will be my honor to commence the evening with an introduction at 7:30. Promise I'll keep it brief, so come on out.

We depart briefly from the music beat to consider Byron Pitts, a TV reporter who routinely ventures into some of the most dangerous places and situations on earth. And one of the most dangerous was right here in America, when he covered the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"I thought Katrina exposed for some and reaffirmed for others issues of class and race in this country," Pitts said in a recent phone chat. "A lot of people are still struggling. Life can be just as dangerous and difficult for a poor black boy in Durham as for a poor white boy in Appalachia, and Katrina exposed that reality. It also exposed the limitations of how the federal government can respond to a disaster, especially in the first 72 hours -- which people in Eastern North Carolina already understand from all the hurricanes they've lived through. You really need to have a 72-hour plan. What are you going to do for food, power, electricity and security the first 72 hours? Do you have a plan for yourself and your family? You'd better."

Pitts speaks on Friday night at Quail Ridge in Raleigh. For more about his new book and quite inspiring back-story, see the interview in Thursday's paper.

Merge Records co-owners Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance are doing a series of bookstore readings for their new tome, which traces the history of the duo's two-decade-old record label -- including Thursday night at Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books. I'll be there to play a very small role, introducing them to start the program. I promise I'll be brief, so come on out. That's 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Quail Ridge, 3522 Wade Ave. in Raleigh.

ADDENDUM (9/18/09): How it went. 

At 3 p.m. Sunday, Aaron Newton will be reading from his book, "A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crises on American Soil," at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh.