Warning: Tangent City approaches.
Previously I mentioned a project that had kept me busy. I’m very happy about this project because to work on it, I reunited with some long time friends. Friends with a past in doing something kind of similar. This is going to take a minute to explain. I’m feeling a little emo because working with friends is great, and it’s rare to do something you love with friends.
Nine years ago I worked on an indie music magazine in Salt Lake City. It was funded by an alternative radio station. My friend Sean was the Music Director for the station and my friend Sam was an intern there when I mentioned to Sam that my dream would be to do a music magazine. He looked at me like I was Brigham Young and/or Joseph Smith wrapped up in prophetic visage with great back-lighting. Sam mentioned that the radio station wanted to do a magazine and bingo bango we were on. Sean contributed all kinds of great things to the zine (turning us on to great music… I owe him big for DJ Shadow back in the day) and Sam edited like he was born to do. It was, in a lot of ways, my dream job. We put the Ben Folds Five on our March 96 cover. I got to hobknob with bands. John McCrea from Cake once told me that I couldn’t be facetious as I ordered dinner. He did it with a condescension that blew me away considering it was coming from a guy who sang a Gloria Gaynor cover.
I had no budget and that fueled a lot of creative direction. I met and worked with some very talented writers, photographers and designers. I got to steer the visual end of the magazine with more control than any magazine creative director I’ve met since. The only problem was the salary, and I knew that it couldn’t last. Sam and I wanted to go bigger, but the station had no interest in a money losing venture.
Three years after we started, the station was sold and the magazine went online. Burned out and trying to start a freelance career, I focused on developing a portfolio that would get me hired in San Francisco. It did. Over the years, I’ve stayed in contact with Sean and Sam. Sam was there when we came up with original idea for blurbomat and was ready to ditch his job at a media company in Salt Lake to go for it. The funding fell through and we kept our day jobs, Sam relocating to Los Angeles.
Sean is awash in the music industry. Sam is a copywriter/consultant for a prominent interactive agency. I’m not going to talk about my day job.
This project has brought back very good memories. It’s not as raggedy ass or as cutting edge as the magazine, but the spirit of it is identical. We gave attention to the usual alternative suspects, but a lot of lesser covered acts as well. Often, I felt that what we were doing was a gift. That’s right, a gift of love. For the kids.
This new side project is music related and I hope you find something there that you dig. Be nice. We still don’t have a budget, and we’re moving slowly to provide the functionality that we’d like. It’s called 3hive.
Happy listening.