Howie Klein

American writer, concert promoter, disc jockey, music producer, record label founder, record label executive, progressive political activist, and adjunct professor of music. He was a radio DJ on the first punk rock radio show in America and then co-founded an indie record label, 415 Records. Eventually he went to work at Warner Bros Records where he was general manager of Sire Records and then president of Reprise Records. He retired from the increasingly corporatized, artist-unfriendly record business and is currently an Adjunct Professor at McGill University in Montreal, serves on the Board of People For the American Way and blogs under the nom de guerre "Down With Tyranny." He appears occasionally as himself in music-related film documentaries and has received accolades for his stance against censorship and for his advocacy of free speech protection.