From the Underground!
Hahahaha.
So... my life has been taken over. My apologies to From KY to NY, but a new blog has entered my life and is way more demanding. Knocks from the Underground, an online music magazine focusing on local, "underground" music, is actually happening.
For those of you who don't know the story, about two years ago, Will Bryant and Dave Buivid put together a compilation of rock songs by Boston musicians and entitled it, "Knocks from the Underground: The Best of Underplayed Boston." They also hosted a huge show in the Middle East downstairs and it was a ton of fun. I actually wrote one of my first published articles for that concert, a show preview published in The Phoenix online. But the point is, the CD was a big hit and everyone was happy.
Then about a year later, Will contacted me regarding helping him with an online music mag (going by the same name) that would cover local, emerging artists. He lived in San Francisco at the time, so I was going to head up the New York site, he was going to head up the San Fran site and others friends would focus on L.A. and Boston. We actually wrote reviews and sent them to each other to revise, and then Will found a company willing to create the site! We designed a logo (see below) and a layout of the web page, and then got involved in other endeavors and awaited the news from the company.
My other endeavors involved The Deli, as many of you know. I was writing regularly for the blog and the printed edition, but in two of my blog entries I noticed changes the editor added in that were actually grammatically incorrect (by little ways, i.e. missing punctuation marks, etc). I didn't comment on them because they were small and online, but then a printed edition came out with a feature article I wrote about a band named "Semi-Precious Weapons." I spent two hours interviewing them and almost ten hours slaving away on this article, only to have the editor leave out a byline (meaning nowhere on the article did it say, "By: Becky Firesheets") and make multiple changes that were either incorrect or just flat out cheesy. He made two changes that had wrong punctuation or an incorrect tense, and made three changes using punctuation that is technically correct but is typically reserved for informal speaking. He also added in three incredibly cheesy lines, taking out my original ending and adding in a quote I already used later on in the article.
Needless to say, I was quite upset. The editor is a VERY cool guy -- really chill and creative and in general good people. His heart is for sure in the right place, and he's a musician who just wants to support local music. But as an editor, he doesn't pay close attention to details and therefore misses quite a few mistakes in his own edits and in his writers' work that make the publication look second rate (and English is his second language). He's very overworked and generally follows a different ethic than I would take as a journalist and editor. So after multiple email exchanges, we kind of settled on a realization that he does things differently than I would but that he wanted me to keep writing for him and would try to be "more sensitive to my needs."
This is when I realized I am very capable of running my own online magazine and really, really want to.
I contacted Will and it turns out that as a result of the current economic crisis, the company that was creating our site had to delay the project in order to focus on a more important client because they lost some big job and needed money. Will and I decided to take this into our own hands and make it happen at the pace we wanted.
And this is when Knocks took over my life. Since this conversation about a month ago, we have both been working hardcore on making this happen. Meanwhile, Will was also moving from San Francisco to New York, so he kinda had to focus on that. But now he's here and we're hitting the New York site with gusto. I posted an ad on craigslist for writers and received twenty responses, we have a photography team, we have a fundraising show scheduled for January 3rd, and we've already created the blog version which will be ready to launch in about two weeks. The actual site will launch in 5-6 months, and we are working hard to organize everything and get it all ready. Obviously I'll keep you updated.
Just to be clear, here is the main mission of our mag:
We want to cover the "underground," focusing solely on up-and-coming and independent artists, or basically anyone who hasn't yet hit the mainstream. We don't want to cover music news regarding bands like Modest Mouse, but rather review acts like Akudama or Teedo or The Woes. It is a bit of a sliding scale and highly subjective, but a good rule of thumb would be to ask, would any other site be reviewing this show or album?
We are also trying to fill a gap on a local level. This is not to say our writers will be limited to reviewing local acts only, but they will limit themselves to reviewing acts who are playing in local, small venues and being supported by local artists. The goal of the site is to act as a resource for New Yorkers to learn of new, up-and-coming bands. We want to help the local bands who we think are amazing but are only playing to 50-150 people a show.
The site will consist of all types of articles, including band briefs, full album reviews, full live reviews, features (with interviews!) and venue blurbs. I think it will be totally cool and will actually appeal to people because nothing like it exists. I mean, The Deli also covers local music but I don't see it as competition but rather as they are covering the local scenes in their way and us in our way, and hopefully we can collaborate somehow. Then there are publications like Pitchfork, but that's on a much wider, broader scale. I think this has serious potential!
I am completely excited.
If you want to write or contribute in any other way, please email me. In the meantime, stay tuned.
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