A Conversation With Barry Hogan, All Tomorrow’s Parties founder

In late 2009, my girlfriend and I went to England for three weeks. All Tomorrow’s Parties was the main reason. It’s an independently-operated festival that celebrated its 10th anniversary with a weekend-long concert series held at Butlins holiday camp, in the town of Minehead near England’s west coast. We stayed on-site for 10 days all up – including the Nightmare Before Christmas weekend curated by My Bloody Valentine, the ‘in between days‘ series of weeknight shows, and the 10 Years Of ATP weekend – and saw a ridiculous amount of good music. Which was the intended outcome.

While on-site, I interviewed ATP founder Barry Hogan [pictured right] for a Rolling Stone story. [I also reviewed Dirty Three playing 'Horse Stories' to around 100 people, for Mess+Noise.] Late on the Sunday night of the 10 Years event – after sacrificing my barrier spot for The Mars Volta – we sat down in the production office to discuss the festival’s history and his motivations for creating what has become an internationally successful event.

Andrew: Barry, broadly speaking, what do you think has contributed to ATP’s success as a festival?

Barry: When ATP started 10 years ago, there weren’t any alternative festivals. It was only big corporate festivals and I think a lot of people who are into bands like Low, Will Oldham, and so on, the only place you could see them was at Reading Festival and that sort of thing, and they’d be kind of sandwiched in with piles of shit like Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine and fuckin’ Chumbawumba. It just felt like you paid whatever it was at the time, £80-90 to go for the day, but you’d have to wait all day to see something [worthwhile].

I just thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could design something where you could have constant bands, all day long, you’re wanting to go and see things, like killing yourself that you’re missing something because something else is on that the same time,” and just do it in a more intimate environment. Glastonbury, for example, was one of the reasons why we wanted to hold it here in the [Butlins] holiday camp, because of the conditions there. I think the toilets in Guantanamo Bay are probably healthier than there. Glastonbury is an abomination. It’s like the way it’s designed is for too many people in too small a space, and I thought, “this isn’t fun”. But here, people have got their own apartments, their own space. Going back to your question; what’s contributed to it, is we’ve designed it so we want to treat people like we want to be treated, and we want people to be into really good music, have a good time, enjoy themselves, and feel like they got value for money.

I feel that because we’ve been true to the concept of keeping it sponsorship-free, and also keeping the idea of the curator and being sort of focused on that, I think that’s definitely one of the reasons why it’s remained as strong as it has over the years. We’ve just got a loyal fan base that continually comes back. It’s good.

Is it difficult to stay true to the concept, to keep focused?

It is if the curator doesn’t go mental with trying to suggest stupid bands. The thing is; it’s hard; it gets harder as you go on, to kind of get curators to make you kind of fresh each time. I think because it’s a different curator each time, in a way, it’s a different person’s interpretation of a mixtape. If you get similar artists doing it, then you’re going to get the same sort of bands. We’re always striving to look for new and different ways to present it, to get different curators. It does get harder as you go on, but we’ve been pretty fortunate to be able to present some great things over the last 10 years.

Did you expect to reach your 10th birthday?

No. I’ve been waiting for the call to get a real job for quite a while now. When we did Bowlie Weekender with Belle & Sebastian [in 1999], they called it the first annual Bowlie Weekender and the idea was to do it year in, and year out. I don’t know why but they felt they wanted to keep the event unique and I said with their blessing, could I continue it and rename it, All Tomorrow’s Parties. I never thought it would go this long.

I think we’ve been fortunate that it is still strong and people still want to go to it, but I think we spend so much time laboring over things like artwork design, the programs to present, and the lineup and where bands play. We’re conscious of what the fans want, as well. We’re trying to make people happy so that they keep coming back. So far, I think we’re doing a good job.

I saw in an interview you said, “The way forward for festivals is to keep it boutique.”

Yeah, totally. You get some festivals like Bestival and they have the audacity to call themselves boutique when they started at 10,000 [capacity]. That’s not boutique for starters, and also I don’t understand why Rob Da Bank puts “Curated by” on each event. If it’s the same person doing it, surely, isn’t he the festival booker and that’s his job? You don’t need to wear a badge and put it on the top of the poster.

You’re talking about British festivals here, which I’m not too familiar with…

Oh, sorry – okay. Talking about boutique festivals, there’s one here called Bestival. It’s run by a [BBC] Radio 1 DJ called Rob Da Bank. The thing is, a lot of these festivals start at 3,000-4,000 capacity and then they start expanding. Because it’s only one event, they get bigger and bigger. Most of them have gone from 5,000 up to 45,000 or 50,000. It loses its intimacy and it loses track of where it started and why it started.

I think with us, it’s that we are keeping it sort of personal to people. It’s not overcrowded and you can walk around between stages and see lots of really great bands. I’d rather do more ATPs and keep it small, than do one big one and do it once a year because I just feel like it will lose its charm.

So the events here at Butlins are capped?

Yeah, the place only holds just over 6,000 so we sell 5,500 and the rest is made up of guests and production. It’s capped because that’s the legal capacity.

I see. As I mentioned earlier, I also went to the Mount Buller event [the first Australian ATP event, curated by Nick Cave (pictured left) & The Bad Seeds].

That was really great. There was some view up there, wasn’t it?

Yeah. And I went to the Riverstage one in Brisbane, which is where I live, as well as one of the Brisbane Powerhouse shows.

Okay. Those were good events, Buller especially. In hindsight I think I would love to have just done Buller. Those other events that we did… They were All Tomorrow’s Parties in the mindset but they weren’t like the All Tomorrow’s Parties because it wasn’t like a residential thing where people stayed, hanging out like they did at Buller. They were good, but I think it was a bit misrepresented in a way.

Now that you mention it, it’s quite odd that you did those Sydney and Brisbane events because like you mentioned, there was no accommodation. Do you put on many of those here in Britain?

No, to be honest; we’ve talked about doing a sister event called ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’, which is the b-side to The Velvet Undergrounds single ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’. The idea is that it’s like a sister event to ATP. It has the concept of the curator and stuff, but it doesn’t have the holiday camp. The idea of it is that it’s not trying to compete with ATP, it’s kind of designed for people to see great music but at a lower price because they don’t have to pay for their accommodation. There are a lot of people that would love to come to this but can’t necessarily afford it. It’s not that we’re too expensive; we’re providing value for money, but it’s a rising cost because Butlins is not a cheap place to hire.

I can imagine. As well as the festival aspect of ATP, it’s also a label. Again, what factors do you think have contributed to the success of ATP as a brand?

Someone said to me the other day, “oh, Fuck Buttons must be doing really well because the festival is doing well”. It’s not like that. There are a lot of records that we put out, and they’re releases that don’t necessarily sell a great deal. They’re great records, but the festival helps in the way that we can showcase the bands as another outlet for people to discover them. But bands like Fuck Buttons have done really well because they’ve made great records. Whether it’s on ATP or another label, I don’t think it makes any difference.

We’ve got a brand, not in the sense of Coca Cola or McDonalds, but I think a kind of brand of quality. I wanted it to be where you used to buy Sub Pop singles and you didn’t know some of the bands but you bought them because – I’m not saying you, here – but when Sub Pop was in its Nirvana and Mudhoney heyday – not that it doesn’t put great records out now – but there was a period when Sub Pop was releasing something you’d buy it because it’s like “Fuck, it’s on Sub Pop.”

Or Def Jam [Recordings] There were all those great early hip hop records like LL Cool J and Public Enemy, and Beastie Boys, and Run DMC. You knew that Def Jam and Sub Pop put out great things so you kind of bought into that. I feel like ATP is getting a bit like that in a way that people are sort of willing to take a chance because they know we’re not going to put out Coldplay or Miley Cyrus records.

You like ripping on Coldplay.

There are worse bands than Coldplay. [laughs] They’ve got a couple of good songs. I don’t think they’re for me.

Neither me. An aspect of the festival that I really liked, and I’m sure you do too, is the discovery aspect. As you say, it’s associated with quality. You walk into a room and at least respect a band, if not find it really damn good and want to go and buy all their shit.

Yeah. The reason we say it’s like a mix tape is you know, if you’ve got a friend and – I don’t know if you’ve ever had friends who give you mixtapes – but you put it on and you’re like, “Jesus, what’s this? This is great.” You have to look up the track list and you go, “This is amazing” but because you’re here at the festival and you’ve bought your ticket for the weekend, you can go in and out of rooms; there’s going to be something on you’ve never heard of, or you’ve been curious to know what it’s about.

It forces you to go and check stuff out, and it opens you up to loads of stuff. I think bands like Deerhoof, their success in Europe has benefited from playing at ATP. They said this themselves; they’ve been playing at an event and people have never heard of them before just a few years ago, and then they’ll see them and go, “My God, they’re great.” They’ll want to keep going back and seeing them. They’ve discovered it in that mixtape fashion, where it’s like a pleasant surprise.

I saw in an interview that you mentioned Kevin Shields [of My Bloody Valentine, pictured right] is fond of ATP because you kind of sidestep the whole music industry game.

Kevin’s been very supportive of us, and I think it would be fair to say we’ve done things in a different way. It’s good having a curator because it means we have to pick the bands the curator wants instead of agents, magazines, and labels all going, “You must put this band on because they’re the hot new thing”. It bypasses all that and we’ve just done things on our own terms.

To have a festival with no sponsorship, there is another promoter who asked me about doing an event in a holiday camp, and he said, “How the fuck do you do it without sponsorship?” We know how to do it because we’ve fine-tuned it over the years. We know how much it costs, how much we spend on bands, and it does make money but probably not the sort of money that some of the people out there think it does. Anything we have done goes back into the business.

I just feel like I want to keep doing this sort of thing until we lose interest in it. When we do lose interest, I think that’s the time to stop and end it on a high rather than fizzle out. The music industry is changing constantly, and I think it would be fair to say we never really played the games that a lot of people do. I’m not into that, so we just do our own thing, really. I guess we have sidestepped a lot of it, which is good.

You began as a promoter at Dingwalls [in Camden], and you got tired of having to play the game. Did you find it difficult to step outside of that and say, “Fuck it, I’ll do my own thing”?

Yeah, it was really hard because in those days, if a band like Tortoise came along, it was once every 6 months or something and it was a real big deal. Nowadays, if you open up Time Out in London or anything else, it’s like there are 100 bands on par with Tortoise that are playing constantly. There wasn’t really an outlet for that type of music I wanted to work with.

I found it was really hard because you would take punts on shows and the attendance would be down. You’d lose money and then it would be ages before another band that was worth doing comes through. It was difficult and also, it was tempting to try and go outside of that and start playing the game, but we rode out the rough times and kept it true to the original thing.

I’m supposing a big part of that is having the connections you made through ATP, such as Sonic Youth and the credibility that having guys like that playing in your festival lends you as a promoter.

That’s definitely helped, but the thing with us is that the roster of bands that we do outside of the festival are all bands that we actually like. I’ve been offered some bands that are huge and I’m like “I can’t do that.” I got begged to do Snow Patrol in 2003, and I remember their agent at the time was like, “I really want you to do it. They’re going to be great. They’re going to be massive.” I was like, “There is no way they’re going to be massive,” but the thing is; I didn’t know they changed their sound from sounding like Sebadoh to Coldplay. I think it’s good that we haven’t sold out in that way.

How do you go about goal setting for ATP? When you began, did you imagine 5 years down the track, 10 years down the track?

No, I have to be honest with you; every time I do the next one, I’m thinking about how it has to be better than the last one. We have to finally think of a curator that no one else is going for, and I want each one to be better than the last one. Some of them are fantastic and some aren’t as good as the others and it can be a bit disappointing, but I think we’re always striving.

Someone said to me today, “Do you think you’ll get to 20 years?” I’m like, “I don’t know, maybe.” I don’t know if I can think that far ahead, but as I said to you; I want to keep doing this as long as it’s still fresh and exciting, and the minute it stops being that, that’s the time to pull the plug.

When’s the next Australian ATP event planned?

That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to that. To be honest with you; I really loved the Mt. Buller event [pictured left]. It was really special, really great. The lineup that was up there and that setting, especially that second stage where you could see all the mountains behind it, through the stage. That was amazing, but it was just the spirit of people that were up there because I think a lot of people have gone to things like Big Day Out and Homebake and that. Those things are good for what they’re designed for. They seem like a breath of fresh air for a lot of people. That’s how ATP was when it started in England 10 years ago. People were like, “Fuck, great, we can go see 20 bands all at one weekend instead of having to wait all day for someone to come on at Reading, or something like that.”

ATP Australia – would it happen again? Yeah, we’d like to think so. We’re taking a step back because we’ve just got some venue issues and stuff. Once we resolve them we’d definitely like to pursue Buller again if we could.

Everyone I spoke to at Buller was just having a great time. Everything I read about it afterwards was extremely positive. Do you ever receive bad reports about ATP?

Yeah, for example I know some people came last weekend. We had My Bloody Valentine curating. Some people thought it was great but some felt the people there, the atmosphere wasn’t like it was at this one. I think each one changes by the crowd. There seemed to be quite a lot of middle-aged men last weekend, but there are lots of young girls at this one, which is always definitely more encouraging.

We do get some people who don’t think it’s – they’re not into it, but I think ATP – it’s what you make of it as well. You can be into the media but you’ve got to go there with a right mindset. You have to go there and want to enjoy yourself and let go and jump away from your job for 3 days and just embrace all the music and film, and the art, and hanging out with friends. It can be a really great thing to go to. Someone said to me, “Would you go to it yourself if you weren’t putting it on?” I’m like, “Yeah, I probably would.”

Probably?

Yeah, well I would, of course I would. I would. Sorry!

You mentioned events like Glastonbury and Reading and so forth, when comparing ATP. When was the last time you went to Reading and Glastonbury? Do you ever go to those events just to remind yourself?

I don’t compare ourselves. I use that as a reason why I started this. I went to Glastonbury in 2002. I will never go back to that thing. I just don’t understand how people could enjoy being there with too many people, too short of a space of time, and I’ve seen people – we were talking to Keith Cameron just now from Mojo. He was saying he saw someone get their head kicked in, in broad daylight there. There is a horrible vibe there, really.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to those; too busy running this. That was the only thing you could go to if you wanted to go see some of the bands. If the Pixies were over [playing shows], if you couldn’t see them in shows you went and saw them in Reading or Glastonbury and it was kind of like that was where you could see some of the rare bands you wanted to check out. It was more a case of using that as an example of where you would see that music and why we started this.

You mentioned that self control is important when booking bands, or when the curator asks to book bands. I’m taking it since the capacity is capped here, so is the budget for booking bands?

Yeah.

Is it difficult to manage?

If you gave me a wish list and you put AC/DC, Leonard Cohen, and Motorhead on there, then if you took one of those bands, it would just wipe out the budget. You need to kind of tailor the lineup to the size of the event. It’s always good to have a couple of big names and stuff, but I think the real beauty of ATP is having all those kind of midrange bands, the sort of ones that would fill up Center Stage and have – it’s better to have more of those midrange than all big hitters.

There have been a couple of events where we’ve had some really big names, and then it’s all been small bands, and it hasn’t felt balanced. You get lots of people at one show and then it’s kind of half empty at other ones. With the curators, I have to kind of say as much as we’d love to have Neil Young, as much as we’d love to have Bob Dylan, it’s probably unrealistic that we could afford it. We just kind of need to guide them, really. I try to give everyone as much freedom as possible. I’m just hoping no one puts Blur on their list. [laughs]

Is your favourite ATP still the Dirty Three-curated one?

Yes, definitely.

Do you thank [Dirty Three frontman, pictured right] Warren Ellis often for that?

All the time. He’s just been so amazing to work with over the years, so supportive. There are other curators as well. There are so many of them I think of that was as well, but their whole take on it and the way they approached it and the actual weekend itself was just magical; it really was. I just was walking around and everyone was having the time of their life. I also thought that ATP that Nick Cave did in Mt. Buller was one of my favorite ones as well. Definitely, that was a highlight.

This one might be difficult to answer, but when you think of the average ATP fan or concertgoer, what image do you have in mind?

Someone who is into music, who probably is the sort of person that when they buy records, they want to know where the band recorded it, what studio, and stuff like that. Someone said to me, “record nerd” but I think it’s people who actually give a shit about music. They don’t buy their CDs or vinyl in supermarkets, which seems to be one of the few places you can buy music these days like that. Most of the record shops are closing.

So you’d say it’s for the more discerning music enthusiast?

Definitely. It’s for people who went to see bands that blew their mind and wanted to even start a band or get into music, where music is really special to them and they listen to it all the time, checking out new stuff and they’ve got memories of old things. I think ATP appeals to them because it crosses a lot of those things, really.

Do you try to avoid associating ATP with indie rock, in particular?

I guess I’m an indie kid at heart. I guess we’ve been described as an indie festival, but indie is a bit of a weird term these days. You get some people who are on indie labels but they have the mindset of a corporate sort of thing. We have had a lot of indie guitar stuff over the course of time, but the curators we pick, it’s the music they’re into. Each one is different.

For example, that Mike Patton one we did with The Melvins, that was pretty eclectic because it had Taraf de Haidouks and then you had White Noise and Stockhausen and those sort of things, but you also had Mastodon and The Melvins. It was very different. I guess most of the best music around is coming from indie labels. That’s why we focus on it really, but we get criticized for having too many American bands. Someone said that but I just think a lot of the bands that come right out of England aren’t very good. There are some good ones, but on the whole, I think a lot of the best stuff around has been coming out of the States for a while.

What’s your favorite ATP festival moment, ever, stepping outside of the office and just walking around, watching the bands?

There are way too many to remember…

I know you’re a big fan of Lightning Bolt [pictured left].

I remember the first time that Lightning Bolt came and played ATP. There were a lot of people that didn’t know who they were and then when they played on the floor and the actual great thing was seeing the reaction on peoples’ faces. They were like, “What the fuck is this?” That was really good. There are so many.

I think some of the best things I’ve seen, music wise, is Sleep performed ‘Holy Mountain’ earlier this year. The Boredoms did ‘Boardrum’ in New York. That’s some of the best things I’ve ever seen at the festival but I think highlights for me are things like Slint, because ‘Spiderland’ is probably one of my favorite records of all time. Getting to see them perform that live was… I had to move a few mountains to get those guys back together.

I was saying to David Pajo today that when I met them, Slint had never been in a room together, the 4 of them, for 13 years. I’m a huge Slint fan and I said to them – we went to Britt [Walford]’s house for this meeting. I was so excited I was there and I said to them, “Can I go to the toilet?” They were like, “Yeah” and I was in there – I didn’t actually need to go to the toilet. I was in behind the toilet door going like this, “Yes!!!” just freaking out. I told David today and he’s like, “Really?” and I’m like “Yeah!” [laughs]

It meant the world to me. As I’ve said to some people, it’s like – the way [music magazine] Mojo think about The Beatles, I think about Slint. It was really special to see that and to see them perform because they were someone I always wanted to see and never thought I would because they weren’t together. That always sticks in my mind as a real special thing. I feel proud that we’ve done them, really.

The same kind of thing with My Bloody Valentine, too. You were kind of one of the forces behind them getting back together.

Yeah, they hadn’t been together for 16 years and the thing is; a lot of people have made them offers over the years, but it’s like trying to lift an old truck from a swamp, trying to get it back into motion. It was possible but it needed help. I think we were able to present them the setup they needed to do it. Kevin was really kind to trust us to do that. We did it. The shows were fantastic and it worked really well.

I just think we look at things in a different way. Some people promote like, “You’ll make this much money,” but you need to sort of show the artist what they’re going to get from it, not just the money. It’s got to be the actual performance and what benefit they get from it too. I think that’s important and that gets overlooked by some people. That’s probably why we’ve got to work with so many great artists over the years because of our attention to detail. We put care into it.

I saw them all three nights, last weekend. I’m so glad I did. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve seen.

Had you seen them before?

No. It was cool to see ‘You Made Me Realise‘ three times. [Notably, because the band end the song with a 15ish minute noise jam known as the 'holocaust section'. It's fucking intense.]

Did you have ear plugs in?

Of course.

I don’t know how they felt about the first show they did for us as warm-up show, at the ICA. I don’t think they were too into it, but the first time seeing those tracks being played live for a long time was like, “Whoa, this is going to be a joke.” When they went into a bigger room like the Round House and had the full PA, it was like a jet plane taking off.

What’s next for ATP? How do you go about planning for the next couple of years?

I’m in the process, I’m still booking Pavement, which is next year, and [The Simpsons creator] Matt Groening in May. Then I’m pursuing two curators for Christmas next year. I can’t say who they are just yet, but once I get them in place I’ve kind of got an idea of – we’ve had at least talks and I’ve got an idea of who they would want. I think it will surprise people because if both of them come off it will be things that people won’t be expecting. Again, we want to make is special because it’s the 10th year and we want to do the year-long celebrations and stuff.

You had the ATP film for the 10th anniversary, which I saw in my chalet the other day. Any plans for a book?

There has been talk of it. We were talking about maybe doing a kind of book, incorporating the artwork and stuff. Yeah, we’ve been approached by people to do it, so you never know… “You bought the t-shirt, you watched the film, now read the book!”

I’m sure there’s a market for it. ATP fans are pretty hardcore.

They are, but the thing is they’re not stupid. I couldn’t just put on a crap lineup because then people won’t come. It needs to be quality and people actually sit on the fence saying, “I’m thinking of going to this one but if they announce a couple of more bands” and then they do, but my favorite thing is watching kids on message boards, and I’ll be looking at various things because it’s always good to see what people are up to or saying. They’re always like, “Why the fuck did they get them to curate? They’re going to pick a load of shit!” and I remember when they did that with Mars Volta and Explosions In The Sky and then the same people 6 months later were going, “This is the best lineup ever. I’m totally going.” During all this time it was like, have patience. You need to see it unravel itself and I think it’s kind of good doing that because we know what’s coming and seeing the reaction from people is good.

Do you keep an eye on the feedback and reviews from attendees afterwards?

We do, we take things on board. If someone says I had a really shit time in this venue because of something like the lights might be wrong or the PA was in the wrong place, we don’t ignore that sort of thing. We take it on board and try and make each one better than the last one, like a new and improved formula each time we do it.

There are a few people here that haven’t been here since 2007 and the Pavilion Stage, which is the big room, we didn’t have those drapes down the side, and we didn’t have the star cloth. They make a massive difference to that room. We also changed the PA in the Center Stage where you were for My Bloody Valentine. Just lighting configurations and things like that but it’s all – we use feedback and we exploit it and make put it to use in a beneficial sense so that each time someone comes back they go, “Oh, this is fixed up.”

Better and better.

Yeah, if you rest on your laurels and go, “Oh yeah, we’ve got this great thing now and got the curator in, that’s it. You’ll fucking like it or lump it” then it won’t last another 10 years. Whether I’m still doing it in 10 years is another thing but I only want to keep doing it until I lose the fire inside me that started it. There are times when it goes out, but this weekend has definitely been a great one for us, just so many bands – they’re all old curators and people who have recorded for us, but also friends. Every time you walk around it’s like, “Hey, how are you doing?” The spirit here has been really good.

You went to last weekend. I didn’t feel that same atmosphere last weekend as I did at this one. Again, it’s like a different mix tape and a different interpretation. It was quite abrasive last weekend, the music and stuff. It was all that heavy guitar stuff. It was good, and it worked really well, but I think this one seemed to be a bit more eclectic.

Thanks for your time, Barry.

This interview was conducted for a story on behalf of Rolling Stone Australia, pictured left. Read that story here.

Rolling Stone story: ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties Turns Ten’

Here’s a story for Rolling Stone that I wrote while in England for the 10th anniversary of the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, which was headlined by The Mars Volta, Explosions In The Sky, Modest Mouse, Battles and like a hundred other awesome bands.

I was there for the Nightmare Before Xmas festival curated by My Bloody Valentine the weekend before, too, and throughout the week for the In Between Days nightly shows. The entire experience was brilliant, but seeing Dirty Three play their album Horse Stories to around a hundred people on a Tuesday night was just something else.

This story includes an interview with ATP founder Barry Hogan. Check back for the full transcript of our conversation in a couple of days. Click the image to the right to take a closer look; article text is included below.

All Tomorrow’s Parties Turns Ten

“The ultimate mixtape” as Thurston Moore described it, celebrates a decade.

Indoor stages. Hour-long sets. Secure, comfortable accommodation. Rock trivia. Performers who favour watching bands with the crowd, instead of hanging backstage. An overwhelmingly positive, respectful community vibe.

These factors might not have figured into your last experience at a major Australian festival, but it’s reality for those who attend All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP), which celebrated its tenth birthday in mid-December 2009.

Built upon a core ethos of respecting the concertgoer, All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP) festivals are held in unique locales across a weekend. Bands are asked to choose the acts they’d like to see, which has resulted in artists like My Bloody Valentine, The Flaming Lips and Dirty Three curating for the pleasure of their open-minded fans. Like a balanced mixtape from a worldly friend, you’re likely to find a handful of bands you’ve never heard, but who you’ll soon love.

ATP’s UK home is the 6,000-capacity Butlins holiday camp in Minehead, Somerset. The 10 Years Of ATP line-up included an array of ATP friends, associates and past curators, including The Mars Volta, Explosions In The Sky and Modest Mouse. Between bands, founder Barry Hogan reflected on how ATP has evolved from a weekend festival to a label and a community of passionate music fans in its own right.

According to Hogan, the average ATP concertgoer is “the sort of person who, when they buy records, want to know the name of the producer and the studio where it was recorded. Not exactly record nerds, but people who actually give a shit about music. They don’t buy CDs in supermarkets, which seems to be one of the few places you can buy music these days.”

The artist-chosen festival line-ups allows Hogan and his team to sidestep hype and work on their own terms. “It’s good having a curator,” Hogan says, “because it means we’re working within their tastes and desires, instead of agents, magazines, and labels all going, “You must put this band on because they’re the hot new thing.”

Hogan worked on the Belle and Sebastian-curated Bowlie Weekender in 1999. ATP – named after a 1966 Velvet Underground song – is based on Bowlie’s artist-as-curator concept. The festival ventured to Australia in January 2009, featuring a centrepiece weekend event at the off-season Mount Buller Ski Resort; day shows in Brisbane and Sydney followed. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds were the inaugural Australian curators.

Hogan’s offshoot ATP Recordings label has released music by dozens of indie artists, like British electronic/noise duo Fuck Buttons and Australian rock act The Drones. “We put out a lot of records that don’t necessarily sell a great deal, but ATP fans are generally willing to take a chance with our artists because they know we’re not going to put out Coldplay or Miley Cyrus records.”

Memorable moments for the ATP founder? “I remember the first time that (Rhode Island experimental noise duo) Lightning Bolt played. Most people didn’t know their music or that they played on the floor; the great thing was seeing the reaction on peoples’ faces: “What the fuck is this?!”. And I’ll never forget the day Sonic Youth confirmed to headline our first event, curated by Mogwai. The minute they came on board, sales soared, and we never looked back.”

A Conversation With Craig Mathieson, Australian music journalist

I wrote recently that Craig Mathieson wears the crown of Australian rock journalism. Allow me to elaborate. He’s recently released Playlisted: Everything You Need To Know About Australian Music Right Now, his third music-related book, and his byline has regularly appeared in Rolling Stone, Juice, Mess+Noise, and Fairfax news publications. He’s even got a Wikipedia entry.

Craig, at this point in your career, which writers do you view as your contemporaries?

My contemporaries are simply the good writers, those who have a voice and critical faculties. In terms of age that group is all over the place. Most are younger ; I named Shaun Prescott, Tim Finney and Emmy Hennings as talented examples on my blog. A few are older – I’m 38 years old. And I’m still flummoxed that someone decided to knock up a Wikipedia entry for me.

You stand as an example that it’s possible to earn a decent living as a full-time freelance music journalist in this country. Am I right, or do you have another job on the side to supplement your writing?

I’ve freelanced full-time for twenty years, but it’s been divided between music and film. In the music scene I’m a veteran, in film I’m still something of a kid. My career to date comes in two parts: 1989 to 1999, which was very music-orientated, mainly in Sydney; burn out and a corporate sojourn at Sony Music during 2000 and the first half of 2001; back to Melbourne and dividing my time between film and music ever since.

The way film and music writers/critics are considered is chalk and cheese. Everyone has a film critic, but the idea of a music critic – as opposed to the music writer who might pen the odd review – being on staff is anathema. I was the film critic for The Bulletin, the ACP-owned news weekly, from 2002 until it closed in January of 2008, and that was an absolute pleasure.

Having two disciplines to write about has also made me a stronger critic – it gets you thinking about the work you’re appraising in different ways.

Do you think it’s still possible for freelance writers to earn a decent living in 2009?

I’m sure it would still be possible today for freelance writers to swim upstream as it were, but there’s the question of what they’re striving for? There are very few secure full-time jobs at the end of the rainbow and not everyone is comfortable doing the freelance shuffle, because there’s not a safety net present.

Though you mostly focus on how the musicians profiled in Playlisted sound and appear, I noticed the occasional comment about demographics and marketability. Is the marketing/promotion side of the industry of particular interest to you?

It does interest me, because it impacts on how music is perceived and sometimes, to the artist’s detriment, it can be the defining element of someone’s career, as opposed to the actual music they produce.

Before playlisted.com.au, a blog created when Playlisted was released, you’d not blogged elsewhere. Why?

I didn’t have the time or the inclination. I knock out a fair few words every week and I’m focused on maintaining a decent standard of living for my family – marriage/mortgage/offspring tends to refocus a lot of younger freelancers and move them onwards; I have a stubborn streak. Even now, doing the blog for Playlisted, I’m sporadic at best.

Aside from Mess+Noise, you seem to write exclusively for print. Aside from the fact that its publications pay better, what do you enjoy about writing for print?

As a freelancer, you can’t underestimate how important “pay better” is, but aside from that I’m attracted to the audience size, which is pretty sizable when you file for The Age or the Sydney Morning Herald. I’m also a traditionalist, in that almost every day of my life since the age of 12 I’ve read one of those two Fairfax titles, so to be a part of them now is very satisfying.

Which are you favourite music blogs, both Australian and otherwise?

Mainly the online voices of writers whose work I already enjoy, be it Simon Reynolds or Anwyn Crawford. I don’t have much time for the blogs that are focused on being first – first review, first streaming – with something. “First-ism” grows dull quickly.

You wrote most of Playlisted in the summer of 2008. How much editing and revision was required between then and its November publication?

There was a sturdy editing process, then proofing, for a solid period between April and June. I’m not the cleanest writer and I’ve never been much of a sub myself, so I’m sure it needed work (“needs more,” I’m sure someone will snort). But after that it entered a kind of publishing limbo until November, when finished copies appeared and the whole release/promotion rigmarole kicked off.

When writing, are you much of a procrastinator?

It can take me a while to start, but once I do I tend to find a groove very easily and I work quickly, until finishing, after that. It’s rare that I junk a draft – most pieces come together reasonably smoothly.

As for procrastinating at the start, unless I’m under extreme deadline pressure then I actually try to take the time to enjoy it. Sometimes it’s worth letting your mind wander a little, you might have a far better lede than that intricate one you’ve been obsessively plotting just come to you.

Finally, what’s thrilling your ears lately?

I’ve been compiling end of year lists for various publications, so this week’s scope has been a little wider than an ordinary week, but in terms of recent releases I’m enjoying Fuck Buttons, Whitley, Denim Owl and Rihanna.

I genuinely like pop music and I write about commercial releases quite frequently – to me that’s part of a critic’s job, to try and take everything in and see what may or may connect the mainstream and the alternative scenes. I get frustrated that some younger critics are almost specialists, they can become completely niche-orientated. I’d love to read them taking on something completely outside the aesthetic they’re drawn to.

Thanks Craig. I highly recommend Playlisted; buy a copy here. Keep an eye on Craig’s blog here.

A Conversation With Simon Noynay, illustrator

Melbourne-based Simon Noynay [pictured below right] illustrated my ‘future of the music video‘ story for Rolling Stone, as shown below. His work has also appeared on t-shirts for Threadless [my interview with Art Director Ross Zietz here]. Coincidentally, I wore his ‘drum ‘n bass‘ shirt design last night. Spooky. I asked him some questions about his craft.

Simon, are you a full-time artist and illustrator, or do you work on a freelance basis?

Until recently I was working as a part-time freelance illustrator, but have since joined a commercial illustration agency and heading towards full-time client work.

How did you follow this career path?

I have been drawing since I was five and originally began pursuing a career as a fine artist after high school. Although I’ve been a part of several exhibitions and artist’s residencies, I was searching for other creative avenues where collaboration was more encouraged. I completed a Bachelor of Communication Design last year which helped reinforce my love of illustration and character design. I now enjoy working together with artists of different disciplines, ranging from animation, sculpture, fashion and graphic design.

How did you become an illustrator for Rolling Stone?

I was introduced to the art director of Rolling Stone through my illustration agency. I’ve currently worked on three recent and upcoming issues.

Where else has your work appeared? Who are your regular clients?

My work has appeared in different media and in a variety of styles. From clothing, shoes, magazines, books, installations & tattoos etc. I was also profiled by Art & Australia and NOISE as one of the top 25 artists under 25. While I have had the privilege to create things for clients like Adio, Adobe and Qantas, my regular clients like L.A. clothing label Acrylick and my own character design creation, “The Moops” are my favourite jobs to work on.

Is it difficult to illustrate for briefs? How much do you like to know about a story before you’re comfortable illustrating for it?

On occasion, it can be difficult when there is a lack of clear communication and indecision, nevertheless I enjoy the pressures of deadlines and the overall processes of working with clients and art directors. Sometimes all you have to work with is a short sentence and a few examples; however my illustration thrives under these conditions and the result becomes something surprisingly refreshing compared to my laboured exhibition artwork.

Web or print illustration – do you have a preference?

I love web graphics and animation but my work is usually created for print, so I have to say I prefer that certain thrill of seeing my pieces printed and sometimes wearing them.

What advice would you give to young illustrators looking to work for commercial clients like Rolling Stone?

Show your work to clients you wouldn’t normally approach, talk to art directors and get as much feedback as possible. Also don’t be afraid to experiment with different techniques and points of views.

View more of Simon’s work at huskworks.com. He can be contacted via email.

Rolling Stone story outtake: A conversation with Gavin Parry, General Manager of Digital & Brand Development, Sony BMG

Here’s an outtake from my first Rolling Stone story on streaming music subscriptions. It’s an interview with Sony BMG‘s General Manager of Digital & Brand Development, Gavin Parry [pictured below right]. Sony launched the digital music outlet bandit.fm in late 2008. I spoke to Gavin on 25th August, 2009.

Andrew: As I understand it, Gavin, Bandit is currently a pay-per-download site, but in October, it’s being re-launched as a purely subscription-based site for streaming music. Is that correct?

No, that’s not correct. I think what happened with the article in The Herald and everything sort of spiraled out of control and there was misreport after misreport. Essentially what’s happening is we’re continuing the download service, and a subscription service will run along side of it. You can either choose to download on a pay-per-download model, or you can choose to be involved in a streaming model, which is basically a monthly payment plan.

So it’s up to the consumer to consume music how they want, basically.

It’s all about trying to provide as many options as possible, remembering that we also provide all our videos free to the user, free video streaming. Every featured artist on the site, which is about 1,000 featured artists at the moment and that’s increasing, they have three tracks each that are free to the users for streaming. That’s there right now.

How long has the streaming service launch been in the works? I know Bandit was launched in November as a download service.

We’ve had it in place since November, when we organized all our licenses. It’s always been in our plans.

To my knowledge, all the major labels have music for sale in the store, but Sony is the ones running the site. Is that correct?

Correct – you have to be very clear here. What happened with The Herald article is it said we were running the service on behalf of the industry. That is incorrect. At Sony, we’ve set up Bandit and we own and operate it, but we have licensed any music from any other three majors.

And Sony is the main financial backer of Bandit.

Yes.

What do you think the benefits are of a streaming-based subscription model to the previous, per-download model?

I just think it’s about options. There was a lot of feedback online about how people don’t stream music to the PC and people would never use it. If you look at The Music Network this week, they did an article in there that said 50% of kids stream music to their PC on a weekly basis. We know how popular Spotify is in the UK and Europe. There is no doubt that a streaming service, not just to the PC, but to any Wi-Fi device could be quite popular.

Conversely, what do you imagine some of the costs of a streaming-based site might be, such as high bandwidth and the necessity to allow many concurrent users?

The cost from our perspective or the cost to the consumer?

The cost from your perspective.

From our perspective, basically you have to employ someone like Akamai to cope with the volume. We currently employ Akamai. You are familiar with what Akamai is?

I haven’t heard of Akamai, no.

Rather than streaming from our servers, we basically employ a series of other computers, a network of computers that Akamai operate to take the load off of us so the streaming that occurs from a local PC – if you’re in Perth and you’re streaming from Bandit, you’ll be streaming from a computer in Perth rather than a computer from our hosting arrangement. This means the biggest cost to us is actually paying Akamai to be able to operate that high bandwidth.

There are also hosting costs, obviously to ingest and to hold – we’re up to about 70 Terabytes worth of data. The cost of hosting is pretty significant, as well.

Where do Australia’s internet service providers sit within this discussion? Are you concerned that Australia’s network might be ill prepared for this kind of streaming model, given that other territories have had faster connections and unlimited bandwidth, compared to Australia?

I think it will be fine. It just depends on what sort of plan you’re on. Obviously, cable will work fine; it depends on what plan you’re on with the ISPs. A lot of the bandwidth now should be able to cope with the streaming service.

I can imagine traveling throughout the city and falling into black spots with mobile phone coverage and having the song interrupted by buffering might be a bit annoying.

It’s the same thing you’ve got if you’re on a Wi-Fi network. You’re up to the vagaries of what the network might be. There are concerns but it will all be up to the consumer to ensure the bandwidth they’re paying for with their ISP is adequate to stream the music.

With Bandit, did you consider putting in place an advertising-based free service, as Spotify had done in the UK?

We essentially have got that in place with the video streaming, and with the ‘three free tracks’, which is a limited audio catalog. The problem you’ve got is the advertising model globally, when you actually look at Spotify and other services like iMeem and Last.fm, those services have really struggled to generate enough advertising revenue to continue to operate.

On a similar note, is Bandit’s launch time to beat Spotify to the Australian market?

No, not really. To be honest, when we launched Bandit in November, Spotify was on the radar and probably has significantly upped its profile in the last twelve months. Bandit’s plan was always to have a subscription service operating around October/November of this year.

The other thing I should mention is there is another service that we’ll operate, and again, this is all about providing options to the consumer. We’ll be operating a model very similar to eMusic as well. People can sign up and pay a monthly fee and receive a certain value of downloads.

A certain value, what do you mean?

Are you familiar with the eMusic model?

No.

You pay a monthly fee, but you are given a certain value for that fee. You’re given a value; for say $20 a month you’ll get $30 dollars worth of value that you can download. It’s not about streaming. Again, it’s a regular payment plan, but it’s all about downloads.

Will this value package be launched at the same time in October, or is it currently available?

The plan is we’ll launch it at the same time as we launch the subscription package.

Are you able to provide some figures on Bandit since it launched in November, such as how many users or what is the volume of weekly downloads?

We’ve got a monthly net browsers now of around 80,000. We’re doing about 2 million page impressions per month. We’ve got over 50,000 active users that have actually purchased something. That’s probably enough to give you an idea. We’re quite happy where we’re at after only nine months being operational. We’re pretty much on plan, as far as where we expect the service to be. We’ve done very limited marketing so far.

I was looking around your website earlier, and I noticed that a lot of artists have unique content-rich splash pages, which includes images, artist’s recommendations, and news [example below left]. Who supplies the content that is displayed on those pages? Is it managed in house or is it syndicated?

We’ve got our own editorial team that puts together news stories, and also looks after Bandit on Twitter and our Facebook page. We also have licensed in the All Music Guide.  When you’re looking at all the biographies and all of the similar artists and influenced by, that all comes from the All Music Guide.

What we’re trying to do is build a very deep, rich site that is more than just a download store. You can see how it’s been built by creatives. They’re very graphical and it’s a very appealing site. That shows with our average session duration which is around 15 minutes.

How many staff are working on Bandit full-time?

We’re still in development mode, so we’ve got a team of probably four developers. We’ve also got a person in customer service, editorial, operations, and also we have a programmer who deals with the other labels.

It’s still a pretty small team of around ten, would you say?

Yeah, which we’ll scale down once we’ve finished the development phase.

What inspired the decision to make Bandit operate within the browser as opposed to an external program, such as Nokia’s Music Store?

It’s really a matter of what you can support. If you build something within a browser – it’s really a phased approach. The first thing is once you build it within a browser, you know you’ve got a higher chance of compatibility with most computers. If you build an application, it’s much more work to get compatibility with all the various operating systems. It’s really initially a cost consideration, but having said that; we’re currently working on a download manager which is built using Adobe AIR. That’s basically an application that will sit above the site, which will manage the download process, and also manage your library. We have to roll that out in October, as well.

October is going to be a big month for you, then.

Yeah, the guys are flat-stick at the moment. We’ve got them down in the dungeon, working hard!

Final question – are Sony using the Australian Bandit Store as a kind of testing ground for potential expansion to foreign territories?

I think the focus is just making the Australian site a success, and then we’ll see where it goes from there.

Fair enough. That’s all my questions. Did you want to add anything else?

The other thing that we’ll be adding in October is a level of social networking, which will be quite interesting. In that case, the core part about Bandit is the channels. You can see different channels which split music be genre, by demographic. We put up the faith channel yesterday, which is all about Christian music. Coming in October, when we launch the social network piece, each user will not only have a user profile, but also will have his own channel. The idea is that a user can go on, select their own playlists, stream music, connect to other artist, connect to other channels, connect to other users, and in that way we’re actually giving people a lot more context. Their channel will be a representation of themselves, musically, online.

This idea of ‘channels’ kind of makes me think that you’re trying to build on the concept of the radio station, so everyone has their own channel.

To some degree, that’s it, the ability to essentially create your playlist. We think the subscription service also has quite relevance to families, and it’s not just focused on teenagers and young adults. I think the subscription model going to a family where they have unlimited music online, and they can basically just turn Bandit on to their stereo, set up their playlists, and play music in stereo, I think that is a big thing. In that case, they are actually setting up their own radio station.

Okay, thanks for your time, Gavin. I appreciate it.

No problem.

Fan-sourcing filmmaker creativity: a counterpoint

My latest Rolling Stone story was on Genero.TV, a website that offers filmmakers the chance to come up with a video concept that may become a band’s official music video.

After I interviewed some of the bands involved and the site’s founder, I sent the link to my filmmaker friend, Paul Rankin [pictured right].

He didn’t take so kindly to the idea. Excerpt below:

[...] This means that fifteen other bands get a free music video, hand-picked from the entire selection of entries, which becomes a promotional tool (arguably a band’s most useful promotional tool) that they will then use to make money, none of which goes to the filmmakers, the ones who did all the work. That is to say, while your music video may be good enough to have the honour of Official Video bestowed upon it, it’s not good enough to warrant pay. There’s also every likelihood that the bands will then sell the music videos on iTunes, the revenue from which you’ll never see.

Bend over, assume the position.

His full rebuttal is here.

While I asked the bands involved, and Genero.TV’s founder whether the concept was just a way for bands to save cash on video production – indeed, that was the central point of the story when I pitched it – I certainly had an “oh, shit” moment when I read Paul’s response.

As a result, I feel like a shit reporter for not further investigating that angle. Reading back over the article now, it seems more promotional than investigative in nature.

Lesson learned. I need to spend more time considering and seeking alternative viewpoints, rather than blindly chasing a desired outcome.

Rolling Stone story: Genero.TV and fan-sourced music videos

Here’s my second story for Rolling Stone, from the December 2009 issue. It’s 600 words on an Australian website called Genero.TV, which allows fans to create music videos for bands for a chance to become their official video, and win $4000. The article was illustrated by Simon Noynay.

Story below – click for full-sized version.

The Future of the Music Video

Fans making official film clips for their favourite bands – is it sharing the love or just a way for artists to get something for nothing? By Andrew McMillen

There was a time when a major artist could easily drop a few million on a music video; from Michael Jackson’s amazing $7 million “Scream” to more restrained efforts like the Gunners’ $1.5 million “November Rain”. These days, of course, it’s very different, and a modern classic like OK Go’s aerobic masterpiece “Here It Goes Again” is proof that even if you don’t have a budget, a good idea can go a long way.

But what if you’ve got no cash and no big idea? Well, there is a solution. Melbourne-based website Genero.tv lets bands post new songs online and then have fans create videos for them. Submissions are judged by the bands and fans alike and the winning entrant becomes an officially approved, internationally distributed music video. The winning clip from each round also receives a $4,000 cash prize.

Genero.tv launched its first round of songs in September this year with the support of 17 artists, including British electronic act Unkle and New York reggae group Easy Star All-Stars and an Australian contingent of Genero.tv artists includes The Temper Trap, hip-hoppers Hermitude, and up-and-coming Sydney-based indie rock band Bridezilla.

“As a musician, it’s refreshing to engage with new people on a creative level,” she Bridezilla guitarist Pia May Courtley, who is an enthusiastic supporter of the role-reversal (and collaboration) between bands and fans. “There’s lots of people out there with great ideas making viral videos anyway. If anything, these people aren’t governed by ‘what sells’, so their ideas end up being more genuine.”

For young artists, the Genero approach makes perfect sense, tapping into a movement that is old hat to every kid on the planet. As Elgusto of Blue Mountains hip-hop duo Hermitude reasons, “Our fans have been uploading YouTube videos set to our music for years, so we’re well aware of the untapped talent of filmmakers out there. Entering the Genero.TV contest could be their way of getting their foot in the door.”

But it’s not just a curiosity about what the public can come up with that is driving artist involvement – frustration played a big part in The Temper Trap’s decision to join Genero.tv, reveals guitarist Lorenzo Sillitto.

“We’d done a few costly music videos that we weren’t really happy with,” he admits, but stresses that getting good results, not saving money, was the major motivation. “Our involvement with the site isn’t to say that we wouldn’t pay the creator of the video we choose,” Sillitto clarifies. “We were fed up, and we saw Genero as a good way to get our fans involved in something tangible that the band is doing. It allows them to feel a part of the process.”

Genero.tv director Michael Entwisle underscores Lorenzo’s statement. “From our perspective, deepening the fan-artist engagement is a main benefit for our featured artists. More engaged fans are going to be the ones who will pay more money for concert tickets, merchandise, and music. What we’re doing shouldn’t be seen as a disruptive model for the music video industry. We’re hoping it just becomes a complementary platform that suits some artists, songs and labels.”

In a similar move this July, Sneaky Sound System announced the winner of their own online video contest for the song ‘It’s Not My Problem’. While it didn’t offer the same creative clean slate that Genero.tv does – entrants were supplied with green-screen footage of singer Connie Mitchell – producer/songwriter Angus McDonald states that the band would run a similar fan-sourced video contest “in a heartbeat”. “Music videos are such a lottery, even with experienced directors and producers at the helm,” says McDonald.

As for whether the lottery is made even riskier by entrusting creative control to their fanbase, Bridezilla’s Courtley admits there’s always a chance it could turn out to be a disaster. “But,” she says, “like a first date or foreign food, you never know until you try.”

Here’s my original pitch, sent September 1 2009.

Crowdsourcing Fan Creativity
In August 2009, a service called Genero.TV launched a business model that allows fans to create music videos for artists. This is how it works: artists contribute the songs and upload them for the fans; the fans create the videos and upload them to Genero.tv; then the world watches, votes and spreads the word.

They’ve just released their first round of 16 artists and songs, which each feature different prizes. The overall prize for this round is US$4000, which will be awarded to the director of one of the 16 final videos. As I understand it, videos submissions are judged by the bands and Genero.tv, and all of the winning videos will become the artists’ official video for that song.

Of the 16 artists, such as UNKLE, Easy Star All-Stars and Casiokids, 6 are Australian:

• The Temper Trap
• Bliss N Eso
• Birds Of Tokyo
• True Live
• Hermitude
• Mirror House Antics

Cool idea. Let’s take a closer look.

• Who’s behind Genero.TV? I can’t find any info on their personnel or the country where they’re based.
• Who funds the site?
• What kind of licensing is required for this kind of business model?
• Who’s funding this business model?
• Why did these Australian acts decide to jump on board?
• What are the acts’ expectations of the quality of submissions?
• What’s the value of the music video in 2009? (I’ll speak to some Australian acts who’ve had viral video ‘success’, to determine the outcomes)
• Is this just a way for lazy bands to turn creative control over to their fans for cheap, or is it a genius idea to shorten the distance between artists and their fans?

Coincidentally, Sneaky Sound System last week announced the winner of a $10,000 fan-sourced music video competition that they ran through their website. They’d provide a good supplementary viewpoint to this article.

As with my first Rolling Stone story on streaming music subscription services, the interviews I conducted far exceeded the article’s word limit. Check back for outtakes from these articles here soon.

Rolling Stone story: Sony’s Bandit.FM music subscription service

In October 2009, my first story was printed in Rolling Stone Australia. It’s 600 words on a couple of music/tech issues; not exactly the most glamorous first RS article , but it’s a start no less. The story is below; click for full-sized PDF.

This was the fourth story I’d pitched to the magazine. Here’s my original pitch:

Bandit.FM: Under The Hood

Sony are launching their Bandit.FM music subscription and download service in October 2009. Let’s take a closer look at the strategy and technology behind the site. Are subscription services really the future of music consumption – as everyone seems to be yelling this year – or is at all hot air and marketing?

What will I discuss? (sample questions)

• Who’s backing the site? (eg. venture capital beyond Sony’s involvement?)
• How long has this been in the works?
• Why launch now?
• How long did it take to get all four major labels on board?
• Each artist seems to have a unique ‘content rich’ splash page containing imagery, a bio, and artist recommendations (eg. http://bandit.fm/sixstring/karnivool) Who supplies the content behind these pages? Were these compiled specifically for Bandit, or is the content supplied by external sources?
• How many staff are working on Bandit full-time?
• What are the advantages of a subscription-based streaming service as opposed to an advertising-based service?
• What opportunities will Bandit allow for Australian indie bands?

Clearly I was unable to answer all of those questions in the article, but the issues I raised warranted a commission.

Hey Andrew,
Am quite interested in the Bandit story, but only as a short thing, maybe around 600 words tops. You think you can get something meaningful in that space?

It would be good to get perspective on it that wasn’t just from Sony – the main thing is this can’t be a PR piece for them. A non-Sony artist who will be for sale there is good, maybe a comment from someone at one of the other majors. Nokia also do a subscription of sorts, so maybe that’s something to consider…

After submitting the story initially, I was asked to rewrite, as the tone was “a little too “essay”, not “news” enough for one of our short pieces”.

To give you an idea of the timelines associated with the story,  the article was finalised in late August, and it’s only appeared in print this month, for the November 2009 issue [pictured right].

It’s been a great experience, and I look forward to writing many more stories for Rolling Stone. Many thanks to Matt Coyte, Dan Lander, Stephen Green, Nick Crocker and Neil Strauss.

A Conversation With Neil Strauss, New York Times Bestselling Author, 2009

It’s June 23, 2009. Minutes away from meeting Neil Strauss, I catch myself being self-conscious. I realise that when I sit, my jeans reveal my red-and-white striped socks above my white basketball shoes, which were hastily pulled on before a flight from Brisbane to Sydney earlier that day. Shit. What will Neil think?

I can see him in the opposite corner of the Sofitel Hotel’s lobby, closing an interview with another young, starry-eyed guy, and chatting with his publicist. I change sitting positions a couple times to try and find the optimum spot that’ll make me look relaxed and in control. I want to exhibit both of these traits before Strauss, one of my favourite writers, because I want this to be perfect.

As I walk toward them, the publicist turns and says, “you must be Andrew”. We shake hands, and Neil offers his. “Hey Andrew, what’s up man?” he asks warmly. They’re finalising his plans for tonight; an opportunity to watch a taping of The Chaser’s War On Everything seems to be on the cards. Neil turns to the otherwise empty lobby antechamber and asks me to pick a comfortable seat for our interview. I select a window seat, and run my eyes across the page of questions written in my notebook.

I don’t admit that I was self-consciously readying myself just moments earlier. I don’t describe to him the trepidation I feel as a fan almost half his age, speaking to my favourite writer. The one who wholly shared his personal demons and sexual exploits in the 2005 book The Game: Penetrating The Secret Society Of Pick-Up Artists; an autobiographical account of the two years that Strauss spent investigating the lives of men devoted to improving themselves by attracting women.

As I ponder, Neil bounds over and sneaks a look at the page.

Neil: Ready for all fifteen questions!

Andrew: I think fifteen’s a good number. Or is it too many, or too few?

Here’s what I do. I write out like a hundred questions, even though I rarely get to ask them all. I write them out, while researching and studying them beforehand, and then just have a conversation. And if the conversation stalls, I turn to a prepared question.

But that’s just the way I do it. I don’t know if it’s the best way; no-one ever told me!

So I really enjoyed Emergency [his 2009 book on survivalist preparedness]. What did you set out to achieve with the book?

The main thing was to write an interesting, hopefully somewhat humourous story. But what I set out to achieve is always different to what I achieve. I originally set out to write a book that would influence the (2008) American election, so that a Bush-like type of person didn’t win the election. So the original goal was to look at the country and ask, “Why isn’t anybody having a revolution?” That’s even almost how I pitched it. And they let me do the book like that in the first place – “okay, go do your fun little pet project, and then give us a real book” – and then it just turned into this whole other thing about self-sufficiency and learning to be independent of the system.

Did you come across that accidently?

My favourite composer is John Cage, and his credo is “be open to whatever comes next”, and I think that’s it. You start with one idea in mind, but you have to be willing to go further. Like when I did the Marilyn Manson article for Rolling Stone, I planned to tear him apart, because I didn’t like him. And when I met him, I liked him, and it turned out to be a positive article. The first book I wrote was with him, and if I hadn’t challenged my preconception, maybe I wouldn’t have started my career writing books.

So the original thing was to activate and politicise apathetic Americans, but then I realised that the whole idea of voting for a person is a pretty pathetic way of empowerment. One person isn’t really doing that fucking much. It’s like that lyric – “meet the old boss; same as the new boss” [The Who's 'Won't Get Fooled Again'], you know. And even though there are major differences, I realised that it’s more about one’s own self, and not entrusting your safety to someone else. To become self-sufficient, and not depend on the system so much. The way you leave home when you’re a child, and eventually have to leave your parents and become an adult, in the same way you have to eventually step outside the normal political system.

Was one of your goals to encourage others to become self-sufficient, as opposed to living a life of convenience, which you describe at the beginning of the book?

Yeah. It’s also to wake up from some of the delusions you were taught as a child, from the history books and in class. And to do whatever it takes to give yourself peace of mind. The other thing is to – rather than having these anxieties and fears – take them to the extreme and get rid of them. In that way, one of my aims for the book was basically generational Prozac (laughs).

The economy’s falling apart around you; people are freaking out over these pandemics; terrorism alerts are always in a shade of orange or red.. so, you know, learning what this stuff is and what it means, and how to protect yourself. That was my Prozac for this generation’s panic attack.

How soon did you finish the book before it was published? There’s some stuff near the end that’s pretty recent.

I literally finished it in February, and it came out in March. That’s the cool thing about publishing, and why I love writing versus movies or TV, because you can literally get it from your pen to the reader so soon. And I’m lucky enough that my publisher’s pretty cool, and they can turn it around (quickly). I think if it came out now, it’d be a slightly different time.

I’m really interested with what you’re doing with your publishing company, Igniter.

Thanks for asking about that! I’m fucking stoked that you asked me about that.

How did that idea come about with [fellow Rolling Stone writer] Anthony Bozza?

We were on Tommy Lee’s tour bus. He’d just written the Tommy Lee book, and I’d written the Mötley Crüe book [The Dirt: Confessions Of The World's Most Notorious Rock Band]. And we started talking, and exchanging notes, and found that the same people had been approaching us about books. We both got approached by Slash to do a book, and Axl Rose. Over the course of that night, three different people approached both of us about writing their books. And we were like, “fuck, this is weird!” Every now and then, there’d be a good one that we didn’t have time to do.

So when someone came to us with a good book that they wanted written, we’d pass them onto agents and publishers and it’d never get made. It couldn’t get through the (publishers’) doors. So we just thought “fuck it, let’s put these books out ourselves.”

Why do you think that they couldn’t get published? What was stopping these projects – the idea of working with unknown, unpublished authors?

Yeah, unknown authors, and that most people don’t trust their taste. The phenomenon of social proof – no one thinks something is good, unless other people tell them it’s good beforehand.

I was going to ask you about social proof, because you’re now, what, a six times New York Times bestselling author? That’s a pretty massive social proof there.

Yeah, exactly.

So with you and Anthony behind Igniter, do you think that your names will hold sway in the publishing community?

That’s our hope, that we can get people to read good books. And also, we don’t want to deal with agents. If an agent has a book, he’s already shopping it to every publisher. We want to go find raw talent. I’ll give you an example: in our first book, which is out this fall…

Is that the book on the mafia guy?

No, the first one is on Bozo The Clown.

Ah, I know you’re a big fan of his.

Exactly. So you’re on my mailing list, I take it, since you knew about the mobster book?

Yeah.

When I did the writing contest, for the mobster book, there were three guys who got through to the final. The mobster chose a different guy to the winner of the public vote, who was Ian Kelk. He’s an unemployed computer programmer. So Ian didn’t get to do the mobster book, but I said to him “listen, I’m going to find writing work for you.” And so a few weeks ago, Amber Smith [pictured left], who’s this gorgeous supermodel – she’s been on the cover of Vogue, Playboy, FHM, and also now has a reality show – she wanted to do a book. Her story is insane: she’s a supermodel, but she’s only been in two relationships for like three months each, and afterwards she stalked the guys for like ten years. It’s awesome – she’s one of the most beautiful women in the world, yet she stalks guys and they run away from her! (laughs)

So I called up Ian, and said “why don’t you phone her, see if you guys get along, then come down and work on her book.” So this guy who applied for my writing contest – an unemployed computer programmer – is now hanging out with, and writing a book for a supermodel. That’s the kind of stuff that we like making happen.

So Igniter’s goal is to get unknown writers published?

It’s just to get good books published. It could be a known or an unknown writer, it just has to be good. But I’m more excited about someone, maybe, who.. like when I wrote for the New York Times, there were certain bands that I was one of the first to write about, like Elliott Smith, or Built To Spill, or Ryan Adams. There were artists I’d find and write about, and then the world would embrace that person, and I could be like “cool, I hope I helped in some way”.

That’s the kind of feeling (of talent discovery) that we’re looking to replicate with Igniter.

It’s interesting how certain writers can hold that kind of control, or influence, over popular culture.

In my case, The New York Times was a good platform because it reaches a billion people. And they’ll let you do.. do you know who Robert Randolph is?

No.

In other words, I could say to my editors, “man, there’s this guy who performs pedal steel music in churches, it’s an old church tradition, and people just fucking dance on the rafters and it gets crazy.” I did a story on him, and now he’s huge. He plays at Bonnaroo and all those kinds of festivals. And they put it on the front page of the Arts section, so it was cool to have a platform like that for people be able to listen to.

As well artists you liked, were you pressured by the Times to write about artists that you didn’t like?

All the time, but I could choose how I wrote about them. For example, I had to write about [the saxophonist] Kenny G [pictured right]. I thought, “well, I could write the normal fucking shit about Kenny G – he’s too easy to make fun of”. But then I found out that he was a pilot. So I thought, “why don’t I have Kenny G pick me up in a plane, then we’ll go fly somewhere, then have dinner together, and we’ll talk.”

So I did that and I realised that I’d developed a respect for Kenny G, because he’s a guy who plays what he feels. And what he feels just happens to be very simple, and sweet. He’s just a simple, sweet guy playing simple sweet music, and he’s playing what he feels. He’s not like, you know, [jazz musician] Sun Ra. I have respect for Kenny G’s integrity, and I’m glad that I met him, because it would have been too easy to make fun of him.

You seem to have preconceptions of artists and people before you meet them. Have you tried to stop having those preconceptions?

I think it’s okay to have preconceptions, but you have to be willing to discard them in the face of the truth. I only think they’re bad when you stick to them, regardless; that’s just dogmatic thinking. It’s impossible to learn if you don’t listen.

What preconceptions do you think that people have of you, based on your experiences in The Game?

Generally when I walk into an interview, they definitely expect to see some arrogant fuck. You know, some arrogant, shallow fuck. And that’s fine, because people who think that generally haven’t read the book. They think it’s some lad’s manual, and that there’s a guy out there acting like that guy from Magnolia, screaming “respect the cock!” at guys. It’s fine for people to have preconceptions about me, because I usually am not like the preconception, and they’re thrown off.

I lent The Game to a bunch of my friends, and the ones who read it loved it. But the ones who didn’t pick it up had that preconception of it being a guide for guys to get laid. They find something morally wrong in the idea of a book teaching something that should be inherently known.

It’s the weirdest book, because the people who’ve read it know what it is, but those who haven’t don’t get it. I think the book is like that – you expect it to be one thing, but it turns out as something else. Like how it begins with the greatest pickup artist in the world about to kill himself. And while reading, you think “okay, maybe this isn’t going to be like what I had in mind”. And I think with all my books, I try to give the audience what they wouldn’t expect. Like with the Jenna Jameson book [How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale], you know it’s going to deal with sex and porn, so I started it off somewhere really dark.

When did you realise that you had a book on your hands with Emergency?

It was originally just going to be a story about getting the St Kitts passport, and that was it. The original pitch was just ‘escaping America’ (laughs). And then I went to Tom Brown’s Tracker School, and I called my editor and said “listen man, I need like, another year!” I realised that I had so much to learn; I had to learn how to be human all over again. And he was cool enough to be okay with it. I still remember that cell phone call to my editor from Tracker School.

I guess that’s before you dropped your Blackberry in the water?

Exactly! (laughs)

You mentioned your parents throughout the book, and that they’d always lived a ‘life of convenience’ in the city. Have their views changed since they read the book?

It’s funny, because I went to visit them, and I was doing a radio interview from the back of their car, and the interviewer asked what my parents feel about the book. I was like, “I don’t know, ask them!”. And they said, on air, that they wished they got the St Kitts passport with me, now.

It’s funny, that always happens with everything I do. When I’m doing it, all my friends and family make fun of me, but once it’s done, they’re like “oh, I should have done that”. Whether it’s The Game, and learning to be more attractive to women, or Emergency, and the need to be safe and self-sufficient.

What do your parents think of your evolution as a writer, from starting with places like Ear and Village Voice, to writing New York Times bestsellers?

Man, you want to know something hilarious? My next book’s probably going to be an anthology of articles I’ve written for Rolling Stone and stuff, and my parents just sent me a book proposal letter I wrote when I was eleven years old. It’s the fucking funniest thing!

In it, I’m like: “Dear publisher, this is my book. Please send a printed copy, and all money to..”, and I gave my address. And the grammar is really good, it’s just weird to read that I was sending out book proposals at age eleven.

What was the book proposal?

It was a series of fictional mystery novels. “The Smith Mysteries“.

Did you end up writing them?

I wrote the first book, and I think my parents attached it to the letter they sent. I can’t wait to read it again, it’ll be fucking weird.

Dude, eleven?!

Yeah, I know. But my parents were always against me becoming a writer; they actually cut me off when I was writing for Ear Magazine and stuff. I had to support myself, because they really wanted me to study business, and do what they felt was safe. Ironic how business is the least safe thing to do right now! It’s much safer to be writing.

But eventually, once I was at The New York Times.. they were always a little hard [on me], but I think it drove me to excel more. Like when the Marilyn Manson book [The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell] reached the New York Times Bestseller list, they told me, “well, it’s awesome that you’ve been on the list for one week, but it doesn’t really count unless it’s for two weeks”.

Damn, they’ve got high standards!

Yeah, and that’s why in Rules Of The Game, the book is dedicated to “Your parents. You may be upset with them for what’s wrong with you, but don’t forget to give them credit for what’s right”. So I can’t really blame them for shit, because I feel that I’m happy with stuff I’ve done, and I feel that they gave me everything I needed to succeed.

How do you feel that the experiences in The Game and Emergency have shaped how you view yourself?

They’re completely different. With The Game – even separate from the book – I always think about how if I’d never come across this underground group of guys, I always would have lived my life in the dark, and died never having emerged from my little shell. Like, there are good things and bad things about The Game, and I thought I’d neither attack nor defend it, but when I do interviews, I will defend guys’ right to learn it. The right that guys should be able to learn those skills if they want to. Because I think “fuck, if I’d never learned it, I would have just lived my life with blinders on”, not knowing who I could be, or the experiences I could have.

Even if the book never came out, I’m so grateful for those experiences. It’s just weird, I was just a completely different person [beforehand], and I just wasn’t me. I was just so intimidated, and shy about everything.

But after going through your experiences and sharing them, you’ve allowed how many thousand people to improve themselves?

Yeah, it’s pretty fucking weird. Because I didn’t know that the book would have that effect, and I think if I was trying for that effect, I probably wouldn’t have had it, because I would have tried too hard.

You share a lot of yourself and your experiences through your writing. Did that come easily, or did you hesitate?

No, I had to do it. When I did those books with celebrities, I had a rule, which is you have to tell the whole truth; you can’t hold anything back. You’d have to be willing to make yourself look bad, if that’s how it happened. I hold myself to the same standards I held those other people to. I couldn’t be hypocritical about it.

With The Game, many times I considered doing it under another name. My alias was ‘Chris Powles’. I used ‘Style’ online, but if I needed to use my real name, most of the time I was ‘Chris’. I thought I’d write the book under that person’s name, and pretend it was another book I had ghost written for somebody else, like what I’ve done using my real name in the past. I thought many times about not doing it, and then I thought, “If you’re not willing to put your name on what you did, then why did you do it?”

You mentioned at the start of Emergency that when you were researching those crazy groups around the the year 2000 that you were a bad reporter because you got nervous talking with people. That’s not still the case, is it?

I still feel like a horrible reporter. My last two interviews were with Jay Leno and [comedy film director] Judd Apatow for Rolling Stone. I still feel like, “Oh shit, I didn’t ask the hard questions.” I still leave every interview feeling like I didn’t get all the stuff.

If I do an article for Rolling Stone, I feel like it’s got to be the best article and that I’ve got to get the most out of the person. I always just leave feeling I should have asked them harder questions, or been tougher, or I don’t know what. But then I listen to the interview afterward, and I actually end up getting good stuff, so I don’t know.

Even after your hundred questions, you still feel like your hundred and first would have been the best.

Yeah, exactly, like I missed something or I didn’t explore something with them or didn’t dig in deep enough or didn’t have enough rapport with them, or whatever.

How do you prepare for an interview?

I just make myself an expert on them. I brainwash myself. If it’s music or movies, I listen to every album, watch every movie, read every interview, and write down every possible question I could ever think of. So I brainwash myself with their lives. (laughs)

How does that compare to being interviewed? Do you prepare for things like this?

Talking about a book is different than writing it, so before each book comes out I’ll think about how would I describe this thing I went through and summarize it. Sometimes, I come to realizations I didn’t have in the book. People ask me about The Game and Emergency. I don’t friggin’ know. I just wrote this book and that book. If I think about them, it’s “Well, both books are really about fear.” The Game is about fear of approaching women, getting rejected, social humiliation, let’s say. Emergency is about fear of dying. Both are about ways to conquer your fear through knowledge and experience.

So you’ve been a journalist, biographer, and an autobiographer. Which do you prefer?

I think I just like writing, whatever it is. I love storytelling; anything that is storytelling, I love.

You’re pretty good at storytelling. Your writing style in The Game is so good. It’s one of my favorite books, just because of how you wrote it. The Style Diaries, at the end of Rules Of The Game, some of those stories are really different to the style of The Game, as well.

I’m curious; how do you feel they’re different? You’re probably right, whatever you’re going to say.

The Style Diaries were more personal, more focused in each vignette, and in how those stories fit into the whole picture of ‘the game’. The one where you were climbing up the back of your apartment building; that one was pretty crazy.

I think it’s funny; I like the writing in The Style Diaries better. I think The Game is a better book. I think I like the writing in The Style Diaries better because it’s like you said; it’s more focused and on the subject. That some of my favorite stuff that I’ve written, all those little vignettes. Also, it was just exploring the idea of relationships, which doesn’t get to be explored in The Game.

One of the main arguments against the concept of pick-up artists that you raised in The Game was “what do you do after the orgasm?”.

Exactly.

So in The Style Diaries, you explored that a little bit.

Exactly. I think I also want to expand on that writing. I’ve had some even crazier experiences than what I described in The Style Diaries; insane shit. I was thinking of just putting it all out as a little secret book. I might do that.  (laughs)

I read in another interview that you were a bit of a workaholic when you first started writing.

Yeah.

But I’ve seen you tweet about procrastinating by watching YouTube and stuff. How do you deal with procrastination or maintaining productivity, when you’re on deadline?

The best thing for procrastination is a hard deadline looming over your head, like your editor is saying, “If this doesn’t come in now…”

[American actor and 30 Seconds To Mars singer/guitarist] Jared Leto [pictured below right] told me that he had a thirteen day deadline for the band’s next album. If it wasn’t done, they were going to fine him $2 million. That’s a good way to not procrastinate, to have a hard deadline with consequences. I find that’s the only way to get shit done.

I’m a workaholic but I’m also a lazy workaholic. I fucking work really hard, but at the same time, if I don’t have to work I can be at the beach.

It’s hard; I was much the same with university, and now with writing assignments. It all comes together right near the end; for better or worse, and I often think it’s for worse. You think you could do it better if you plan the whole way along, rather than cramming it all in.

Exactly. What I’ll do is wait until the night before it’s due and fucking really transcribe it and then, “Fuck, I gotta…” But something I noticed when I started working at the New York Times, when I had a weekly column: it went from ‘finish your work the night before’ to writing it on the due day. Sometimes I find I do my best stuff under pressure.

Do you have any interview transcribing tips?

Yeah – outsource it. (laughs)

For real. Even if I couldn’t afford it.. I just have to have someone else transcribe it. Sometimes it’s good to listen to because then you relive the conversation, but sometimes I find it easier if if I can fucking find someone I could pay a little bit to do it. Even when I didn’t have the money, I was like, fuck – it just makes my life easier.

Do you have any advice for people who want to start becoming contributing writers to Rolling Stone or New York Times; those big-name publications?

I think they need to be willing to write wherever, for no compensation. I never applied for Rolling Stone; I never applied for The New York Times. They just saw my writing in little shitty magazines and were like, “Why don’t you write for us?”

I think you could be the greatest writer in the world, but unless someone can see your writing, no one is going to know. Just get your stuff seen. I would take every opportunity. I did a weekly column in the paper called the New York Press. I got paid $75 a column but it would take me all week to research and write it.

It was a free weekly paper, and because of that, everyone in New York would read it on the subway, and that’s how it came to the attention of The New York Times. When the job opened up at The Times, someone recommended that I apply for it. I didn’t even apply for it. I thought, “I’m not good enough; I just write for this little paper,” and then one day they called me and said, “We like your stuff.”

I think you should not be precious about shit. My advice would be that paragraph in The Game, about not waiting for opportunities to come to you, but meeting them halfway and putting in the work.

Have you read the book Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell [pictured below left]?

Yeah.

I think that 10,000 hours concept is pretty interesting [where Gladwell suggests that expertise is built after spending approximately 10,000 hours working toward a skill or pursuit]. The first stuff I wrote fucking sucks, you know? (laughs)

If I look at the first articles I wrote for Ear Magazine, you’d never know I could be a decent writer.

I guess you’ve got to start somewhere. How did you get the start with Ear, did you apply for that?

Yeah, it was an internship. I was in my college dorm room and a guy had gone to New York and applied for an internship at this magazine. He was rejected because he was too well-dressed. I thought, “That sounds perfect for me!” and I just wanted to be in New York. I didn’t really think about writing. I got the internship. It’s good to have an internship somewhere small, because after a while they’ll let you write for them and take on other responsibilities.

I’ve read that you kind of fell into writing; you didn’t set out to be a writer.

Now I don’t know. Now my parents sent me that thing from when I was eleven years old. Maybe, I don’t know; it’s confusing. I feel as a kid you want to do everything. You want to be a writer, you want to be an astronaut, you want to be a farmer, and you want to be a movie star.

I take it that your journalistic urges haven’t been quelled, because you’re still contributing to Rolling Stone.

Absolutely.

Do you read newspapers?

I still read The New York Times, not just because I work for them, but I do feel like that’s the closest you get to the full story.

How do you feel about newspaper readerships declining?

It’s fucking weird, especially the idea that a lot of these papers folded and going online. I just feel like online is a place for information, not writing. You don’t necessarily go online to read good writing. I still like the printed word.

That’s one of the theories behind the decline though, that people are becoming less attached to good writing, and strong reporting. They want instant facts, which is what the web is for.

You know what I think is interesting though? I think Twitter and all that are making people better writers. Twitter is what I had to do my whole life, where you need to get a certain word count. On Twitter, everyone is becoming their own editors. “How can I express this idea in..” How many characters is it?

140.

“How can I express this idea in 140 characters?” You have to slim it down, change your words, cut out things, so it’s making everybody an editor of themselves. I think that’s the closest that the mass population has come to being writers. Do you know what I mean? It’s pretty cool.

You started a book club with Emergency after it came out. How did that go? I knew you were trying to organize some teleconferences or something, to get everyone together.

It went so well that I had another book club that I killed and made this one my main book club, because I got really good people on it. We read Emergency, and then we finished that. I thought, “I like this group; let’s do another book,” so we read a book called The Rise And Fall Of The Great Powers, which I mentioned in Emergency. We all read that and it went great, but I think we’re going to do one more book and then I’ll close it down. It’s kind of fun and it motivates me to finish reading some books too. It worked out pretty awesomely.

What are your reading interests? I assume you read widely in music and culture.

I mostly read fiction, almost 90%, because I feel it’s good writing and I want to be influenced by stylists. I also think you learn more about life from fiction than nonfiction because people feel with nonfiction, “This is useful,” but to me fiction is metaphors for real life and the brain works better through metaphor. I feel like I learn more through fiction. I love it.

Can you recommend any good fiction books that have come out recently, or even historically, old things?

Some of my favorites are Ask The Dust, by John Fante. It’s a story about a struggling writer in Los Angeles; it was written maybe seventy years ago, but it could’ve been written now and it’s fucking hilarious, especially as a writer. You would love it. He has a picture of his editor on his wall that he worships and it’s a total AFC story too. He has a crush on a waitress, and he totally blows it with her. There’s a horrible movie adaptation, but the book is great.

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski is a brutal book about a kid wandering through the villages during World War II, in Poland. I like Life Is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera, which is about life choices; doing what you’re born to do, versus doing what society and family pressures you to do. I like Mishima Haruki Murakami, Gabriel García Márquez; Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries is awesome.

I don’t know; I really love fiction, which is ironic because what I do is so different from what I love.

That’s really surprising to me.

It’s weird to me, too, because my goal is always to be.. there’s this bookstore called St. Marks, in New York. Behind the desk, they have a counter of their most stolen books. There’s [Charles] Bukowski, and William S. Burroughs, and my goal was to be on that list of their most stolen books. One day I saw The Game there and I was like, “Yes!”

I went to another bookstore once and they said their most stolen books were the Bible and The Game. I don’t know if that means people thought The Game was the Bible and stole it, and I also thought it was kind of fucked up; how could you live with yourself if you stole the Bible? The book’s about ethics, yet people still steal it. It’s so weird.

When you’re writing, actually sitting down, and writing a book, do you shut yourself away from the world?

Yeah, for sure. I have to. It involves an intense amount of focus; a lot of it is organisation, and how you organize 500 type-written pages. How do you organise that? It’s like there is a string unspooling in your head and you need to focus to make it snap taught, if that makes sense.

There’s a little place I go to on the beach in southern California, a little shack on the water where I go and get focused.

Not St. Kitts?

Yeah, I go to St. Kitts [pictured right] a lot to write, too.

What ever happened to Spencer [the character from Emergency]? Do you still see him?

Yeah, I just saw him in St. Kitts. He bought a couple of Segways for his house and so we were riding those around. Now he has all his money out of U.S. dollars. He has a lot of money in Australian dollars. He wanted currencies that were backed by something stable. I think the Australian dollar is on the gold standard?

Gold standard?

I think it’s backed by gold, versus the U.S. currency which isn’t backed. Canadian currency is kind of backed – he studied it and he felt he wanted a currency backed by something solid, versus a free floating currency, if that makes any sense.

I’m still friends with Spencer, and the same with the guys in all the books; Mystery and Spencer and the Manson guys. Everybody I’ve written with and about.

I never watched [the VH1 reality TV series] The Pick-up Artist. How did that fare, ratings-wise? Did that get a good response?

I think it did really well. It did well enough for a second season. They represent it pretty well. There’s a lot of empathy for the guys trying to learn it. As far as reality goes, I thought it was portrayed in the best possible light,as far as the TV medium goes.

I watched the videos that you did for Rules of the Game.

Those are my favorites! (laughs)

I like David Faustino in those.

Yeah, he’s fucking hilarious, isn’t he? He’s so fucking funny. I really think he’s a comic genius. Those are really eye-opening. To me, the video where he goes blindfolded – no, with his hands tied behind his back, and gagged, and has to meet women and get phone numbers. He has a hat on and no one can recognise him. The fact that he got four out of five phone numbers, while fucking gagged and blindfolded; it kind of means most of this stuff guys are worried about are just their own limiting beliefs.

Yeah. You mentioned your next book project earlier – I didn’t catch the name.

It’s just an anthology of stuff I’ve written for The New York Times and Rolling Stone. I’m probably going to do something to make it more interesting, like weave together funny, early writing days stories.

Like maybe your first book proposal?

Exactly, the book first book proposal, and I got cut off by my parents when I was trying to write, and dealing with all that stuff.

Stylelife [Neil's "online academy for attraction"] is still going on, while you’re doing your book tours abroad. Who takes care of that?

I really like the Stylelife guys. I don’t know if you know the guys, but they’re really sweet. Gypsy, Bolshevik, Bravo.. they do a really good job running it and they’re good-hearted guys. They do it. I feel bad because I haven’t been around enough; I’ve been traveling too much.

They just put together an anthology of our newsletters. I couldn’t believe that it sold out really fucking quickly.

The other good thing is the teleconferences we did with most of the guys in The Game. We did a seminar, and those guys are all pretty good. I know I spent most of the time talking but when I saw The Sneak do his thing, I was like, “Fuck!” I like those guys. It’s fun; I’m proud of them.

Well, I’m out of questions. How did I do?

You did awesome. I was just thinking as we were talking. The TV interviewers, they generally haven’t read the book and they just want some entertaining shit about “five tips for our viewers”. This is more fun for me because you know – I can talk about Igniter, and talk about the stuff that I’m passionate about right now. It was great. I enjoyed it. I thought you definitely cover your stuff pretty well.

Cool. I’m still pretty new to this.

I knew when I saw you that it’d be a cool interview. Plus you just had a regular conversation, which is better than just going one-by-one through the questions. I thought it was interesting. I like these interviews the most, because it’s someone who knows the work versus somebody who is like, “Here’s the world’s greatest pick-up artist; let’s get some tips and say “this wouldn’t work on me!”

To back up their bias.

Exactly.

I knew when I saw that interview list, I knew you and the guy I talked to before, I knew you guys would be good.

Who was the last guy?

I think he writes for a student newspaper, at the university of whatever it is. I knew you guys would be guys who follow this shit.

Cool.

Are you going to stick around for the book signing thing on Wednesday?

No, I’m flying back in about two hours.

Are you serious man? You just came down today to hit and run?

Yeah.

Did you fund it yourself?

Yeah.

That’s cool man, thank you.

Thanks for having me, man.

That’s really cool. I did the same thing. With Emergency, I spent more money on the book than I made from the book. I’ll do whatever it takes for the stories, even when I was a kid; I flew to Europe to cover a festival when I was a sophomore in college, just because I would do anything for a story. That’s awesome.

What are your interests? What do you want to do?

Writing, but I kind of want to pursue your style of writing, like the interviews written in feature style; the kind of thing that you do for Rolling Stone. I’m not sure if I have a book in me, yet.

Even though I did that book proposal [as a kid], I never thought seriously about writing a book. Even when I did the Marilyn Manson book, I wasn’t ready to write my own book yet. It just happened. You know when it’s right.

I think that ten thousand hours thing is true, too. You pay your dues writing for websites and writing for magazines, and then when you get that opportunity for your book, your reflexes are there.

I’m writing for four publications at the moment.

That’s awesome.

The bylines are gradually getting bigger and bigger, and they’re paying more and more.

That’s cool. That’s exactly what I did. Are you out of school?

Yeah, I just finished last week. I studied Communication, which is half journalism, half media studies. It was a lame course, man.

They’re all lame.

It was a waste of my three years. Well, no; I was at college two years, like residential college on campus, and that was great, making friends and stuff. In terms of the educational content…

It doesn’t matter what you major in. Unless you’re going pre-med or pre-law. Just because I majored in psychology doesn’t mean anything; I learned so much more about psychology from living and writing The Game.

I think it’s important just to get real life experiences. I think because I took those internships in college, instead of writing in college, I learned more from the people I was around – like from that kid in the dorm room who said he didn’t do that internship – than I did from any economics class I took.

So you write mostly for websites?

Half websites, half print.

Cool man, what kind of print?

Street press, which is a free newspaper you pick up off sidewalk, like music newspapers.

Cool, it’s like me with the New York Press! (laughs)

As well as a weekly publication for the  music industry , which is really aimed at the major labels [The Music Network]. I’ve been writing a column about digital music and the changes that are happening in the industry.

That’s cool.

I have to be careful with what I say, though, because they’re so major label-centric and I can’t really be attacking their methods, or how they’re still tied to the old way of thinking when distributing music and stuff.

It’s so weird; I remember I worked for The New York Times when I first heard about ‘the World Wide Web’, but I never knew what it was. I heard The Rolling Stones were doing a promotional thing where they were doing something on the World Wide Web, broadcasting a concert. I didn’t know what it was. I just knew what the internet was. I didn’t know what the World Wide Web was. To me, the internet was all the news groups you had.

I remember someone said, “It’s the backbone of the internet,” and I still had no fucking idea what the World Wide Web was. Everything was dialup. Then I remember writing about the first music download, which was the quality of an AM radio in a bad car, and it took like two hours to download. Then I remember going to these conferences every three years, and someone saying that one day it will be “all you can eat”.

I think that’s the future; it’s the all you can eat services. Like the subscription model with [online music service] Rhapsody. I have [the multi-room music system] Sonos. Do you know what that is?

Yeah.

It’s fucking life-changing. It’s changed my entire musical life. When I come home, the first thing I do is “Where’s Sonos?” It’s like a pet. I pick it up and I’m like, “Okay, shit, I went out and I talked to that guy on the street and he told me about a fucking Sleepy Jackson album [pictured right]” or whatever, so I put it in and I hear it right away. It’s fucking great. Then someone comes over, like some club girl, and she wants to hear Lil Wayne, and I’m like, “Okay cool, here’s Lil Wayne.” If you’re talking on the phone and someone recommends a song, you can hear it right away.

I got it for my parents for one of their birthdays. They love it. I think it’s game-changing, even though it’s just hooked up to Rhapsody. The whole idea that it’s your home stereo component and it’s all you can eat.. I love it, and it’s also the price of one CD a month. Napster is now like $5 a month. It’s fucking insane. 80% of what you’re going to want to hear is going to be on that.

That’s the challenge for new artists though, because there is so much music out there. How do you get heard? How do you differentiate your product from everything else that’s going around?

I think it’s always true that gatekeepers emerge. In other words, the internet happened, and there was so much shit out there; then search engines come up as the portals. I think gatekeepers always impose themselves. I keep a running list of everything that people recommend to go ahead and listen to.

I have a physical recommendation for you.

Oh, cool.

It’s a Brisbane electronic artist. He does pop songs with an electronic edge. [Yeah, I pimped Hunz to Neil Strauss.]

Cool, like The Notwist and The Postal Service kind of stuff?

He’s influenced by Radiohead and Boards Of Canada.

I love both of those. This sounds great. Is there anything else I should listen to?

There’s a band called The Middle East. They’re indie folk from North Queensland, way up north. They’re really unique and powerful.

Cool, I’ll see if I can get that. What kind of music are they?

Indie folk.

Cool. It’s kind of old, but have you heard the Yeasayer record? It’s about a year old, but it’s awesome. It takes a couple of listens to get into it, but I’ve been listening to that a lot lately. There’s also a group called Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s, do you know them?

I’ve heard of them.

It’s about a year old, but I like that too. Then there is a band I liked, called The Felice Brothers. Their first album was amazing; their next album wasn’t as good.

Do you still find that face-to-face recommendations are your strongest musical markers?

Definitely. When I was in Australia last with Mystery, I bought a bunch of CDs and did an article on the top ten favorite Australian CDs back then. It’s cool to see that sometimes they end up getting to the States. I think that was maybe five years ago. I think it was when The Sleepy Jackson and Architecture In Helsinki were first getting popular. I always take recommendations because even if one in twenty is good, it’s worth it.

Shit man, I can’t believe you just came down for the day. That’s crazy.

Totally worth it. I really appreciate it.

Cool man. It was cool meeting.

Can I be cheesy and ask for a photo?

A Conversation With Shan Welham, FasterLouder.com.au Queensland Editor

Shan Welham (aka QueenNahs) is Queensland‘s newest FasterLouder.com.au (FL) state editor. FL is a popular Australian rock music portal whose coverage is divided into six key Australian city centres. Shan assumed the role in January 2009 and now guides the creative contributions of over 40 keen writers and photographers through the south-east corner of Queensland.

Hey Shan, congrats on the shiny new FL QLD editor badge! I gotta know – what was your motivation behind applying? I understand you’re working this around a full-time job; are you driven to make a difference to a popular Australian music portal.. or just a sucker for stress, punishment and a sleep deficit?

Thanks Andrew.  I thought long and hard about whether I really wanted this role as there were many things to consider.

You’ve pretty much answered the reasons why I was debating it with myself and also the reason why I chose to give it a shot and apply – namely, the full-time job and the sacrifice of time with my partner and friends, versus the opportunity to do what I have always wanted: help those who share that passion increase their contribution, develop their skills and demonstrate that there’s a real melting pot of talent here in Brisbane, on and off the stage.

The goal: to help all contributors, and the site, reach their potential. And here I am!

The professional skills I have developed in my 9-5 corporate leadership position provide a strong grounding in building and leading teams, organising events, and the like.  But it’s not just me that will make the difference to FL QLD – there’s a whole team who are working hard to achieve this aim. Finding a balance is my next challenge, as with any change program, it takes a great deal of time and effort at the outset.

But if there’s a strategy, a plan to execute and a willing and motivated team, the results will come – and already the lack of sleep feels very worthwhile!

I like that the job was advertised on-site and that the community was encouraged to discuss the suitability of potential applicants within the QLD portal. Did you enjoy the trial-by-media process? Judging by the public support you received before you were appointed, it seemed to work in your favour!

The support was very humbling, really. However I don’t feel it was necessarily a defining factor in FL / Sound Alliance‘s [note: FL's parent company] decision to appoint me, as there were many equally qualified and community-supported.

FL were very clear about the aims they have for Brisbane in 2009 and the type of person they needed to achieve them.  I guess they embraced my ideas and saw what they were after in me.

To be very honest, the appreciation that I’ve had come my way since starting this role has been surprising. It gives me a sense of pride that I hope to instill in everyone!

As a national music portal, FasterLouder occupies a particular role within the Australian web community. How do you perceive its role, and how would you like to see it develop during your tenure?

FasterLouder presents itself as the go-to portal for interesting rock music information and a sense of music community; however, I feel it only skims the surface right now.  As on online presence, it’s about accessibility, the swiftness of delivery of breaking news, reviews of music releases, retelling and photography of live performances etc while providing a medium for social networking, discussion and free expression.

Speaking for myself when coming aboard in January 2009, the focus appeared to reflect a very southern-states centric vibe; that is, a lot of stories from Sydney and Melbourne or even moreso on the international… and not in any great depth. Though perhaps this is a product of the medium and our shrinking attention spans.

There’s so much happening locally in Brisbane: we’ve got more than our share of amazing musicians, artists, bands, venues, exhibitions, studios, labels and people in general in this scene. They need to be represented and celebrated.  I am working with all interested team members and people in the local industry to increase the coverage of local gigs, news items and encouraging more in-depth articles and photographic assignments in the region.

I’m always happy to make more contacts and hear from more people. The aim is for FL’s Brisbane/Gold Coast pages to be the primary online resource for current, relevant, quality information, writing and photography, that sense of community with a very Brisbane / south-east QLD sensibility.  It’s a long way before we’ll be Queensland’s answer to Pitchfork, but we’ve a pretty good place to start!

It’s widely known that FasterLouder contributors operate on a volunteer basis. What effect do you think this has on the quality of the writing and photography that appears on the site?

There was a disgruntled contributor who wrote to me when I first started who complained about not getting certain gigs, and having to purchase CDs and the like themselves in order to contribute.  They asked to be removed as a contrib, especially as they had an ethos of journalism being a solo occupation.

I found this quite odd, as after after three years of writing for FL and knowing that if you worked hard, covered a range of gigs and delivered consistently, then the spoils of free CDs to review, interviews and those coveted gigs would come your way.  Additionally, media is a team like any other – promoters need media who need writers who need editors and publishers, presenters need cameramen and sound guys, and so forth.

I may be jumping like a CD with a scratch, but this is a team effort and anyone who is keen will be embraced and supported. For some it’s about the gig tickets, for others it’s an opportunity to get a leg up into the ‘paid’ music media through experience and a demonstrable portfolio of work.

For myself, I didn’t feel so much like a volunteer unless the gigs were free or an $8 local show. $35-$130+ priced tickets (often with a free plus-one) is a nice little sum for a couple of hours writing about what you saw, smelt and heard.  Plus there are generally some freebies – such as those where tickets are available gratis, where no review or photos are required – along the way as “thanks” and a show of appreciation.  I intend to up the ante in this regard while I’m in the hot seat.  I am working to ensure the team feel appreciated in different and measurable ways.

For photographers, it’s a bit different. I feel they’re undervalued in terms of their contribution in promotional material, especially considering the limited time they get to enjoy the performances (or payment when it’s very seldom applicable).  Most work extremely hard, spending a great deal of time, money and effort on their chosen profession – or passionate side-project.  I can’t imagine how much it used to cost to get a professional-quality set of photos done and out to thousands of people almost immediately.. or even if it was possible, as it is now.

The proliferation of free online commentary, photography and other media content serves to diminish the commercial value of these art forms and skills.  It’s tough when Art (capital A as a professional passion) rarely pays much/at all, especially in this business.  This is the way the world is unfortunately – sweat the asset.   For FL to not be in the red and to pay more staff, the commercialism that’s already present would need to become pervasive and voluminous. I believe this happening would damage the site’s credibility.  Just like when your favourite underground, no-commercial-airplay song somehow ends up on a micro car ad…

Now, as to quality.  Honestly?  Hit and miss.

But that’s all part of people having and refining their own ‘voices’ and skills.  Development of talent is something that FL should look to do much more of, and that’s why I’m starting some writing and photography workshops in the near future for contribs – an idea which has been warmly welcome, particularly by the photographers – to help impart the learnings and skill of those who I would call the more “senior”, experienced contributors.

I’d be absolutely ecstatic to have anyone whose talents I help develop at FL land work with radio, or such publications like Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Q, NME and – my personal favourite and type of voice I aspire to – The Word.

I’m interested in the ‘voice’ that you endeavour to portray in your writing. Can you elaborate on your personal style, and discuss the kind of music writing that turns you on? Proverbially, of course..

Something that’s real, knowledgeable and insightful without snobbery or affectation, has integrity and always strives for an edge – with a great sense of humour.   I’ve really gotten into reading The Word in the last 12 months. Rob Fitzpatrick is a gemini wordsmith after my own heart.

Though your career finds you managing srs bsnss operations, you’re effectively wrangling a bunch of hyperactive young’uns in this new role. Which is easier – rational, boring suits, or creative, driven youths – and of the current FL QLD stable, whose work is shining brightest?

Fortunately when reigning from 9-5 corporate battlements I choose my own brave knights to fight the wars.  This makes it easy.  Plus, they’re in the same realm, so they understand the pressures of competing priorities while being time-poor.

With the rapscallions of FasterLouder, you don’t get to choose, but if I did have to, I’d certainly select the greater majority of the “regulars” – they’re all so motivated, enthused and awesomely talented. As well as being super-nice people! I wish FL was a profitable exercise and they could be paid in more than free gigs and promotional oddities from HQ. It’s fairly evident that the younger contribs don’t quite appreciate how much time goes into this role and maybe don’t know that it’s not my only occupation!

In this world of instant gratification, it’s a challenge to communicate with everyone from all the various media and social-networking sites we’re ‘expected’ to maintain!  But that’s okay… they’ll learn in time that quality is what counts…

As you may have gleaned from your interaction with me and what’s happening with the FL site, I encourage active collaboration and participation – that is, empowering those who are working “for” me to take the lead where the opportunities present.

I’m not here to get all the kudos and opportunities myself, I’m here to find them for my team and support them in their development however I can.  They’re all doing so well that I’d say the regulars all take their turn to shine.  It’s the way it should be.

Alright, I suppose that I should ask you about your musical past, given that you’re now editing a frickin’ music site. This is where you flaunt your fantastic taste, boast about legendary shows witnessed and describe which sounds you’re currently fond of, from the streets of Brisbane to worldwide. Go!

Far out.  I could go on for ages… Here’s what I put on my resume for FL:

• Attend 2-3 live music performances per week, generally these are local up and coming bands in small or underground venues. Eg. Hangar, guerilla gigs (eg Art’s building alley), Ric’s, local pubs.
• Travel regularly for significant events – eg. Sigur Ros’ release of Heima and live performance in Melbourne 2007; Air at the Hard Rock Hotel, Las Vegas 2007.

Have attended the following music festivals:

• All Big Day Outs
• The original Homebake/s (back in the 90′s – those lineups were epic)
• All Splendour in the Grass (Splendour Member)
• Falls Festival – 2 x Lorne, 1 x Marion Bay
• East Coast Blues and Roots (brought this to FL as my first contrib. – arranging media passes with the promoter, attending and covering by myself in 2006)
• Cockatoo Island Festival 2005
• All Laneway Festivals (QLD)
• Meredith Music Festival
• Coachella Festival
• (planning Glastonbury and Roskilde in the coming 2 yrs)

Which sounds I’m currently fond of?  Too eclectic to give a comprehensive listing..!  Let’s just say I have a very wide range of tastes, jazz (like to sing it a lot) through blues to rockabilly & psycho billy to pure rock, prog to post to post-post, desert, stoner & electronic ambient (still don’t get math so much), LOVE psyche & shoe-gaze indie, oh… man the list just grows!

My favourite band of all time without question is The Beta Band.  I cried like those who disintegrated when Elvis or John Lennon were shot on the news of their demise.  Seriously.  I had to leave work, assume The Caterpillar’s position and lose myself in their sounds for two days. I almost flew to the UK to catch their last show at some summer festival over there.  My one true regret… I should have bought those tickets and boarded that plane.  Now I console myself with rarities, The Aliens and King Biscuit Time to mix it all up…

Locally?  I really dig Idle Cranes and Restream… whatever Tim Steward does always pulls my attention as well… oh and my friend Richie’s rocka/psychobilly band Zebra Rodeo is always a tonne of fun, Richie’s voice is a delight.  I don’t have the chance to get out as much as I used to since I’ve taken on this role, which is a shame really… but it’s for a good cause!

Re: other musical dabbling – I’d send you a shot of the band room in our house, but there’s a shit load of equipment, including some tasty vintage items… so… yeah… *puts hand up to the camera lens* “no pictures!”

Finally: got any hot tips for 2009?

Split various chilis length-ways and put them open in an oven tray with your roasting vegetables, cover with oil and roast as normal. The chili spice will infuse through the vegetables – yum!

Oh, and hit the FL QLD home page… there’ll be a hell of a lot more Brisbane content than ever before!!

FasterLouder Queensland is forever searching for enthusiastic young music writers and photographers. If you’d like to gain experience in either of those fields and you live in south-east Queensland, you should email Shan Welham.