Now that I have actually finished college and am holding a degree in elementary education, I have numerous goals this summer. One of which is the obvious of becoming employed again. That goal, however, probably means very little to the people outside of my family. But of interest to the people outside of the family would probably be the idea of my getting Sonic off the ground again. I have said all along that Sonic was only being put away while I became obsessed with finishing off the college thing, and that it would be back. Over the years I have been forced to rethink certain aspects of the 'zine and came to realize I would have to change certain aspects.
Format:
I know one of the charms of Sonic for the three people that bought an issue was the fact that it was a print 'zine. The fact is, though, that print is dying. I love print also, but I am seeing more and more fanzine/small press 'zines decide to fold up shop due to the cost not being feasible. Sonic never made any money, and it actually never paid for itself. I think that in the end I probably sold 10 copies of each of the issues 100+ print runs. I gave the rest away.
I am cool with giving the 'zine away for free. It came with enough freebies from bands that it was worth it, in my eyes. Not so much in the eyes of my wife. For her those bands were just giving me more crap to clutter up the house. I also started to share her views once more and more bands found out about Sonic, and I was suddenly flooded with bands that I had no interest in covering or ever listening to. Eventually for every Glam/Sleaze/RnR band I was sent, I was sent 20 Rap/bad Alternative/bad Metal CDs. I was flooded with REALLY bad stuff. So my incentive for keeping it going was suddenly becoming the clutter my wife accused the cool stuff of being.
So my idea is to do a .pdf copy, and then look at a print on demand site. This way if somebody insists on having a print copy they can go and just order a copy. The company that did the last issue of Sonic was just such a company, but they have since gone under. I do believe that I know of another one, and I will be looking into that company. If I can't find any print on demand sites, then .pdf will be the format until I am employed and making a decent living again.
Content:
O.K., Sonic was supposed to be about covering only the bands I love. That kind of died away once I was flooded with freebies. I suddenly had a lot of garbage sitting around here and I felt obligated to give it some form of coverage as somebody put their money into it and thought about sending it my way.
Sonic was also only about music. I started out thinking I wanted nothing but music in it. All music, all the time.
The new version of Sonic will be going back to covering only what I want to cover. This time that includes things other than music. If I want to cover a novel, comic book, TV show, movie, whatever, I am covering it. If somebody sends me something, I will be placing a disclaimer by my address that warns the person that sending me something does NOT guarantee coverage. Sender beware, in other words.
I found that the music was burning me out. I was getting tired of trying to write about it. When I was suddenly being flooded with stuff that I really didn't like, that started to hurt the stuff I did love. When I was in college years ago for the first time, I was in it for art. I found that being forced to do art killed my love of drawing. It turned a passion into a job, and that really killed the love. That started to happen again with music. I started to associate negative feelings to it all, so I am going to try and avoid that this time out.
This blog:
This will be the testing area, by the way. Before I start to assemble the .pdf thingy I am going to play around here for a few to get back into things. The picture above shows my iPod being loaded up with a bunch of CDs I have not uploaded to it yet. There are many CDs around here that I have yet to listen to. Many of those will get quick little blurbs on this page. I have also been watching more movies as of late, catching up on a lot of movie that have slipped by over the years. Those will also get little blurbs.
Rock City Angels:
There will be a special edition of Sonic that I still intend to run print copies of. It will be a tribute issue to RCA. Issue 4 of Sonic was supposed to be an issue similar to issue 3, with a lot of the attention given to RCA. In the years that have passed Bobby Durango, vocalist and main guy of RCA, passed away. I have a decent chunk of interviews he did for me with interviews of the band. I will be able to pull together a decent sized issue with that and writings I will do covering the four Rock City releases I have here. We will also see what else I can pull together for that one. He was a heck of a nice guy, and the band had become what they had promised to be when the Geffen album was released. I, for one, expected them to actually keep getting better. Sadly, that will never happen now.
So that is what I am planning for Sonic Ruin. Will it happen? Who knows? I'm going to sure as heck try again. I know I will be seeing the Quireboys on the 15th of August, so expect something about that to be written. Hopefully I can pull off an interview!
Until later . . .
