PRELIMINARY INVENTORY S1195 (SA3811, SA3812, SA4367) KENN THOMAS PAPERS This collection is available at The State Historical Society of Missouri. If you would like more information, please contact us at
[email protected]. Introduction Approximately 44 cubic feet The papers of Kenn Thomas contain correspondence, business files, travel records, a collection of independently produced, small press fanzines, audio/visual recordings, and subject files documenting the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Iran-Contra scandal, and Unidentified Flying Objects. Other materials of interest include video and audio recordings of Bob Dylan and the Band, performing in St. Louis area venues. The papers date from 1970 to 2007. Kenn Thomas was born on June 12, 1958, in St. Louis City, Missouri. Thomas began his career as a freelance writer in the 1980s as a rock music critic for the St. Louis Post- Dispatch, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the Riverfront Times. He also produced and hosted a radio program focusing on the Beat era writers, Off The Beaten Path (later retitled Offbeat) for KDHX community-based radio. In 1988 he launched a magazine, Steamshovel Press, to publicize his unpublished music reviews and interviews with notable pop-culture icons, including Amiri Baraka and Ram Dass (Richard Alpert). Thomas’s lifelong fascination with conspiracy theories prompted him to shift the magazine’s focus in 1992 to examine conspiracy theories and their sociological dimension in popular culture. Steamshovel Press soon gained notice and wider distribution in conspiracy circles. Three back issue anthologies eventually were published: Popular Alienation (Illuminet, 1995), Popular Paranoia (Adventures Unlimited Press, 2002); and Parapolitics: Conspiracy in Contemporary America (AUP, 2006).