Miscellaneous - October 2008

  by Admin

published: 11 / 10 / 2008

intro

Hello and welcome to the 10th anniversary edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. Nobody can remember exactly when Pennyblackmusic first went on-line. It might have been the end of the September, or the start of October of

Hello and welcome to the 10th anniversary edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. Nobody can remember exactly when Pennyblackmusic first went on-line. It might have been the end of the September, or the start of October of that year, but at some point during a three week period, between approximately the 19th or 20th September and October 10th or 11th 1998, we flicked the switch and put ourselves on the world wide web. About a month before that, Neil Landowski, Pennyblackmusic’s then co-director, who I had known for fifteen years before that and since the first week of university, phoned and, remembering that I had done some writing then, asked if I would be interested in doing some music writing for the magazine that he and his business partner and then flat mate , Richard Banks, were hoping to run as an appendage to the on-line independent music shop that they were about to open. It was to be the start of the most extraordinary adventure and a now decade long labour of love. People have asked me a lot in recent weeks if it has seemed like ten years since Pennyblackmusic first began. Yes and no is the answer-yes, because during the last ten years and, in those very early black and white days on the web, life, both in the world as a whole and also personally, has changed often a lot, and no, because in a long succession of late night calls between Richard in London and me in Edinburgh, it is very hard now to imagine not doing Pennyblackmusic. From those very early days Pennyblackmusic has gone through a lot of changes. The shop took precedence in the early days, and while Richard and Neil did quite well with it, selling £10,000 worth of CDs at one stage, but with 10% profit on each sale, never enough to live on as they had hoped, it then became less of a priority and eventually not one at all. The magazine has grown from very humble beginnings, in which, starting with a frankly appalling article (although it seemed good at the time) about the Bathers it was mostly written by me, to feature the talents of 30 odd writers. Creating our own radio station is now the immediate priority for the future. During the last ten years we have been lucky and have gradually built up to a level in which in independent music circles we have been able to interview some relatively big names-Spiritualized, Sonic Youth, the Magic Numbers, Mudhoney, Hugh Cornwell, Glen Matlock, Pere Ubu, the Dirty Three, the Jesus and Mary Chain and Mogwai. Yet always of equal weight with us has been the smaller acts, those who may never become especially well known, but who we have thought deserved a voice, and many of whom have played our Bands Nights-Idiot Son, Viarosa, Rothko, Copenhagen, Bikini Atoll, Baptiste/Kelman, Last Harbour and the late, much lamented Saint Joan. Usually with this editorial I provide a list of what we have published in the last month. This month I would rather let things, whatever their successes, whatever their failures, speak for themselves. Love and thanks go out though to our current team of Peter Allison, Katie Anderson, Neil Bailey, Aaron Brown, Malcolm Carter, Andrew Carver, Daniel Cressey, Anthony Dhanendran, Richard Ernill, Tommy Gunnarsson, Sophie Hall, Ben Howarth, Adrian Huggins, Sarah Johnson, Chris Jones, Geraint Jones, Jonjo McNeill, Sarah Maybank, Anthony Middleton, Sarah Mwangi, Chris O’ Toole, Jamie Rowland, Mark Rowland, Maarten Schiethart, Dominic Simpson, Olga Sladeckova, Kelly Smith, Anthony Strutt, Helen Tipping, Andy Vincent, Denzil Watson, Matthew Williams and Rachel Williams. Thanks too are due to former writers and photographers Darrell Angus, Gilbert Blecken, Laura Branch, Andy Gardener, Anastasia Grabov, Anna Gudaniec, Emma Haigh, Alex Halls, David McNamee, Paul Raven, Cara Ross, Julia Willis and Adam Wood without whom we wouldn’t have got this far. Above all thanks are due to Richard Banks, whose idea Pennyblackmusic originally was and who remains its webmaster. I sometimes think that while I might be by editing the magazine the mouth of Pennyblackmusic, Richard is its heart. I think it has lasted for so long, because while we both do day jobs neither of us find especially inspiring, Pennyblackmusic has provided at nights and weekends us both with a creative base for something we really have wanted to, but otherwise couldn’t do, me with putting the magazine together every month, and Richard with all his design and web work. We have had some good times over the last ten years. There was the exuberance of the first Pennyblackmusic Bands Night in 2003, in which over 200 people turned up on a freezing cold night in January in an out-of-the-way part of London to hear four relatively unknown bands, and we realised that people really were visiting the site. It has been a constant thrill for both of us to see where we can take the magazine and the site next, and the many Writers Nights now we have had in London have provided the best of hangovers. There have been some very sad times as well. Neil Landowski’s departure from the site wasn’t good, and has left a bitter after taste which has never been properly resolved and I think all three of us regret. There was a time around about our fifth anniversary in which the whole site went down and we were unsure briefly if we would be able to continue. Both Richard and I have lost someone we loved in the last year. Richard was also rushed too into hospital at the start of September with a pulmonary embolism. He is okay now, but it gave all of us at Pennyblackmusic a hell of a fright. Yet ten years on we’re still here. It is a great achievement and it is something that we should definitely be celebrating. This one is, therefore, dedicated to all our writers, past and present, and above all it is for my other best friend Richard, without whom none of this would really ever have been possible. Thank you, dear reader, as always for reading and for the last ten years. John Clarkson Magazine Editor www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk