aphistory
#174 01/2003
#175 02/2003
#176 03/2003
#177 04/2003
#178 05/2003
#179 06/2003
#180 07/2003
#181 08/2003
#182 09/2003
#183 10/2003
#184 11/2003
#185 12/2003
#186 12/2003
LISTENING TO THE STREET
Publisher/Executive Editor: Mike Shea
Associate Publisher: Norman Wonderly
Accounts Manager: Katherine Poecze
Editor In Chief: Jason Pettigrew
Managing Editor: Aaron Burgess
Music Editor: Jonah Bayer
Associate Editor: Leslie Simon
Art Director: Christopher Benton
Art/Web Design: Rob Ortenzi
Ad Sales: Dawn Marie Burns, Howard Ross
Marketing Director: Aaron Wilson
Subscriptions Manager: Angela Hetrick
MIKE SHEA:
There was this kid in Pittsburgh.
It was at the Pittsburgh stop of the Warped Tour that summer. Thursday had just finished an autograph signing at the AP tent, and singer Geoff Rickly had stuck around to talk with a few fans who were still hanging out. This kid comes up to Geoff, shaking. He starts telling Geoff about how he used to be really overweight, and how he got picked on in school all the time because of it. He described how much he was inspired by Geoff’s battle years ago to overcome his own weight issues, and how Thursday’s lyrics and music helped him overcome his own obesity, telling Geoff that he’d been able to lose over 150 pounds because of Thursday’s inspiration. Then he just burst into tears, thanking Geoff over and over again, and finally collapsing into his arms.
I think it’s that memory more than anything else that keeps me focused on what AP is supposed to mean each month. Even though we all busted our asses in 2003 over further redesigns, a new photography look and the ongoing overhaul of our editorial sections every few months, I was still feeling restless. I wanted that same sort of intimate connection between fan and musician to be felt within the pages of AP, and it seemed I was constantly going into someone’s office, blurting out, “So what if we did...” until I felt we had it.
The first thing we had to do was let go of the reins, and for music critics, that’s a really, really difficult thing to do.
The next time the major music magazines release their annual “Readers Poll” issues, take a good look at what the editors pick as their favorites as opposed to the readers. Usually, there’s a fairly significant difference. The editors and critics at these magazines pride themselves on a sort of cultural snobbery that makes their relationship to real people-you know, the fans who actually buy music-akin to that old Red State/Blue State divide everyone is talking about. Usually, the music editors single out what they perceive to be “quality music” (oddly enough, most of their picks echo what the music-publicity hype machine happens to be selling at the time), while the majority of readers are on a different page altogether. In a relationship like this, the critics are the “experts,” while the readers are just the poor, huddled masses that don’t know any better.
So, instead of telling our readers we knew better, we turned over the magazine to our readers and let them give the orders. It was hard at first for some of us, because as music critics, you’re naturally built to disagree with the popular majority’s choice in music. Yet, over a few issues’ time, we got into the groove of actually listening to the people who make AP possible, and to tell you the truth, we love it. You see us say within these pages all the time that this is your magazine, and it really is.
Which isn’t to say we just sat back and let this thing run on cruise control. All of us, from the editors to the art department to subscriptions manager Angela Hetrick, started doing tons of research; weeding through message boards and reader polls; talking to fans at concerts; and even studying (and laughing at) other magazines that had started trying to copy us page-for-page.
After a while, it wasn’t just me walking around with ideas overflowing. The two Aarons-Burgess and Wilson-started having meetings full of “You know what I noticed...” lines that inevitably led to some fantastic covers being chosen this year, like the Distillers, the double Thursday/Thrice and MxPx/Starting Line issues, Alkaline Trio and Brand New. I think the only idea people got sick of was me walking into the art department, bitching about how the colors used in the magazine’s design needed to “pop” more! We magazine publishers can be rather particular at times.
On that color note: This was also the year we settled into our new digs in the old American Greetings building on Cleveland’s west side. We had seriously outgrown our previous space; we were way too cramped, and I think the old space just had way too many memories attached to it. As we had re-energized the magazine and started something fresh, we needed to live in something that was compatible with our new attitude.
Illustrator Derek Hess had recently built a gallery space in this old-school warehouse building that was being overhauled by a new owner, and he was encouraging companies with creative flourishes to move in with him. Derek’s manager told me I should check it out, and after Norman Wonderly, Katherine Poecze and I checked out a few spots, the landlord made an offer we couldn’t refuse: lots of natural light, lots of color on the walls, and cheaper rent! Now, two years later, there’s a recording studio in the building, a record label, a street marketing company, the merchandising geniuses JakPrints and, of course, Derek’s space.
The one thing I really wanted to get into the new space more than anything (besides a real kitchen area) was our wall of AP covers. You know how you see these editors from other magazines talk on these VH1 documentaries, and they have these walls behind them full of framed magazine covers? Well, we had a partial one at the old office, but we’d stopped working on it when money got really tight in the mid-’90s. Now that things had turned around, I wanted to put the full 20 years’ worth of AP back issues on the wall so we could all see where we had come from and were going, every day we came into work. It took an additional year to get them all framed and hung up, but it paid off. Now, whenever bands come into the office, they always spend a chunk of time looking over the covers and talking about how they had bought a particular issue of AP because a particular band was on the cover, and how much that band ended up influencing them.
That’s the funny, and yet great, thing: Here we are, every day, working to be an influential magazine, and sometimes we end up influencing the very same musicians we end up covering in later years.
I’m sorry, but that rocks.
NEXT ISSUE: CHANGE IS GOOD, RIGHT?
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