LAST
EXIT IN NEW JERSEY- HOBOKEN/ WEEHAWKEN
Interview by Phil Rainone
For the last 26 years Jim Testa has
been publishing Jersey Beat, supporting the
local music scene, helping those in need,
and being "punker than you!"
"Read a lot, write a lot." "Like
Christmas, it's always a lot more fun when
the kids are around!"
I've been carrying around those two pieces
of advice that was given to me by Jim (The
Boss) Testa for about the last ten years.
Starting back in 1982 from his house in Weehawken,
with just a handful of writers (there's now
about 20,) Jersey Beat has been supporting
the New Jersey/New York City (and I could
probably list all 50 states and a few countries)
music scenes, developing strong friendships,
and lending a helping hand with benefits and
fund raisers, all done with Jim's low-key,
friendly, intensely-dedicated style of journalism.
Jim's also very generous when it comes
to helping people get started writing. My
son Steve, daughter Melissa, and our good
friends Frank and his son Tim (who calls it
"The Beat") have all written for
Jersey Beat after I started. And as I already
quoted Jim as saying, "Like Christmas,
it's always a lot more fun when the kids are
around!"
With journalists like Johnny Puke (besides
a devilishly cool writer, and the singer of
the classic pop/punk band Cletus, he's one
of Jim's bowling buddies that trek to Vegas
every year for The BYO Punk Rock Bowling Tournament),
or local musician/author/blogger Tris McCall,
there's such a wide variety of opinions, stories,
and of course wicked humor on the Jersey Beat
staff that it's more like an extended family
(we're the relatives your parents warned you
about) than a group of writers.
Boss, I'm sure if all the writers, bands,
fans, and everyone who's read Jersey Beat
over these past 25 years could, they'd want
to thank you, and wish you health, happiness,
and a gazillion years more of publishing one
of the coolest zines around, Jersey Beat!
What follows is an interview
with The Boss, Jim Testa, marking the 26th
anniversary of publishing Jersey Beat. - Phil
Rainone
Jersey Beat #1 -
March/April 1982
Q: What inspired you to start Jersey Beat
25 years ago?
Back around 1980, my best friend from college
Howard Wuelfing started a fanzine in Washington,
DC called Discords. This was years before
Maximum Rock N Roll came along, but Howard
had the idea of running scene reports from
different cities. He had people from L.A.,
Minneapolis, Athens GA, Boston, and so on
all writing about their local scenes. Remember,
this was at the very birth of local DIY music
as we know it today, so it was a very exciting
time. You had bands like Black Flag, the Descendents,
Husker Du, and the Replacements playing basement
shows and backyard parties in all these different
cities. I had just started hanging out at
Maxwells and was very excited about the pop-music
scene there, with bands like the Bongos, Individuals,
dB’s, and so on. At the same time, hardcore
had just migrated to NJ from California and
the first NJ/NYC HC bands like Adrenalin OD,
Kraut, Nihilistics, Agnostic Front and so
on were doing shows. So I started writing
a column for Howard’s zine called “Jersey
Beat” about the northern Jersey/Hoboken
music scene. I interviewed the Bongos for
a cover story in one issue. About a year later,
Howard got divorced and had to stop doing
his zine, but I was having so much fun that
I decided to keep going and turned my column
into my own zine. That was March, 1982, and
Jersey Beat was born.
Q: What was the music scene like in the Hoboken/Weehawken
area?
There was no music scene in Weehawken, ever.
There was one band around back in 1980 whose
members I had gone to high school called Wind
At Night who were amazing. They were a fusion
of pop music and Cuban/African music. They
had this conga player/percussionist who banged
out amazing polyrhythmic beats. But the only
place to play back then was Maxwell’s
in Hoboken. Otherwise, I went into NYC to
see live music. By the early Eighties, there
was another club in Hoboken called The Beat’n
Path doing bands and the Court Tavern opened
in New Brunswick. There was also a place called
The Dirt Club in Bloomfield that had local
bands; I interviewed the owner, Johnny Dirt
(who was a real character,) in the first or
second issue of JB. The guy showed up an hour
late for the interview, dead drunk, at like
3 in the afternoon.
Q:
How have record albums, 45's, and CD buying
changed from when you first started?
Well of course when I started, CD’s
weren’t invented yet. Everything was
vinyl. The 7-inch single was a still a huge
marketing tool for major labels, and there
were still a lot of radio stations that played
a Hit Singles format. So of course when indie
music started, one of the first things that
happened was that bands started releasing
their own 7 inches. You also saw a lot of
cassettes in those days. Putting out any kind
of record was expensive, so typically a band
would release several demo cassettes to get
their music heard before they ever released
a record. And as far as buying records, you
went to the record store. (When I was a student
at Rutgers in the Seventies, there were five
record stores in town; today, even though
it’s still a big college town, there
isn’t one left!) There was no Internet
back then, of course, and even mail order
didn’t become a big thing until the
fanzine underground blossomed in the mid-Eighties
and zines like Maximum Rock N Roll made it
easier for bands and small labels to sell
records through the mail. We could do an entire
interview just on the subject of how the Internet
and digital downloading has change the music
world!
Q: What clubs and bands did you cover when
you first started & which ones are still
vital?
Like I mentioned, the first two bands I was
really passionate about were the Bongos and
AOD. Both are gone now but they both do occasional
reunion shows (the Bongos just headlined the
2007 Fall Music & Arts Festival in Hoboken,)
and Chunksaah Records is going to be releasing
a compilation of out-of-print AOD tracks early
next year. Both of those bands were a huge
influence on all kinds of popular music today
(for instance, the Ergs were big AOD fans
growing up.) As far as clubs, the only two
that have survived are Maxwells and the Court
Tavern. CBGB was always a huge part of any
local music scene – whether it was pop,
garage rock, hardcore, or Nineties genres
like scumrock, funk, and grunge – until
it closed. CBGB is definitely the club I miss
the most.
Baboon Dooley visits
Jersey Beat
Cartoon by John Crawford - 15th anniversary
issue (1997)
Q: I noticed in your record collection you
had a lot of 60's rock (Byrds, Dylan), 70's
(Raspberries, Flying Burito Bros.), 80's (Springsteen,
etc.). How did that music influence you and
how did you get into punk rock?
You have to remember how old I am! I grew
up in the Sixties, I was in college in the
Seventies. The first record I ever bought
was the Beatles’ “She Loves You”
on 45. I listened to the radio growing up
like all kids but by the time I got to college,
I was already into what was then considered
“underground” music like the Velvet
Underground, Iggy and the Stooges, NY Dolls,
etc. Even in high school, when all the popular
kids were listening to Led Zeppel and Black
Sabbath, I was listening to Simon & Garfunkel
and those weird post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys
albums like “Holland” and “Smiley
Smile.” When “Punk” came
along in the late Seventies with bands like
the Ramones, Sex Pistols, Clash, Patti Smith,
and so on, it was like I had been waiting
for it my whole life.
Q:
Who were your first writers for Jersey Beat,
and how many are there today?
The first two writers besides myself were
Pattie Kleinke, a girl I went to high school
with who also hung out at Maxwells, and Jim
DeRogatis. I met Jim at Maxwells when he was
still in high school; in fact, the day we
met, he had just interviewed Lester Bangs
for his high school newspaper. Two weeks after
that, Lester died and, coincidentally, I started
Jersey Beat. Of course Jim is now a published
author and the pop-music critic at the Chicago
Sun-Times. An early Jersey Beat writer who
was a huge help to me and became a very good
friend for many years was Bruce Gallanter.
(He owns a record store in NYC today.) He
had very different taste than I did and introduced
me to a lot of bands I probably never would
have heard otherwise. Some other famous Jersey
Beat alumni are Karen Schoemer (NY Times,
Newsweek,) Ben Weasel (before he did his column
for MRR, he wrote for JB,) and Mickey Ween
(Mickey wrote for me when his was 15, years
before anyone ever heard of his band!) There
have been dozens (if not hundreds) of contributors
over the years. Today there are about a dozen
people who contribute regularly, some of whom
have been writing for JB for many years. I
never would have been able to do the zine
without them, and I’m very grateful
and proud of all of them.
Cartoon by Chris
Francz (1997)
Q: Who was your favorite interview, and who
was your worst nightmare for an interview?
There are a couple of interviews that are
my favorites. I think the interview I did
with Jawbox might be the best interview I
ever did. I went down to Washington, DC ,
saw a show, and stayed at their house to do
it. Ben Weasel was always a great interview,
although really all I did was turn on the
tape recorder and he’d just talk for
an hour! Mike Watt is like that too, a great
conversationalist and a real character with
a thousand amazing stories. I interviewed
Quicksand when their first CD came out and
they liked it so much that they used it as
their presskit for their 2nd CD on Island
Records, which was quite an honor. They are
barely remembered today but Quicksand were
a huge alternative band in the early Nineties.
I don’t really remember that many horror
stories. The best interviews are like conversations;
there’s a natural give and take, it’s
not just questions and answers. I guess the
worst is when you try to interview someone’s
who’s very shy (a lot of performers
are; that cliché is totally true,)
or not terribly articulate and replies to
every question with one word answers.
Cartoon by Dave
Zukauskas (1986)
(He also did the banner at the top of the
page)
Q: I noticed that the first couple of Issues
of Jersey Beat were pretty much handmade.
How has the printing/creative process changed
in the last 25 years?
When I first started doing Jersey Beat, I
had a manual typewriter, a pair of scissors,
and some paste. I would type everything out
in columns, cut it up, and paste it onto pages,
then bring it to a business printer (who usually
did stuff like stationery and business cards.)
Then I would bring it home and fold, collate,
and staple everything myself. Luckily I had
some newspaper production experience from
my college newspaper days at Rutgers so I
knew the mechanics of paste-up and layout.
You can pretty much trace the evolution of
the personal computer by the changes in Jersey
Beat through the years. As technology progressed,
the zine started to look better and better.
I remember when they first came out with scalable
fonts so I could do headlines in big type!
(Before that, I used rub-off letters called
Letraset.) When the Internet came along, Jersey
Beat was one of the first zines with a web
page. And now we have the website, two blogs,
and a podcast.
Q:
What have been some of your favorite bands
over the years?
Wow, that’s a tough question, there
have been so many. Just in terms of the bands
that I featured prominently and repeatedly
in the zine, I would have to say the Bongos
and AOD of course, Mod Fun, Screeching Weasel,
Smithereens, Jawbox, Quicksand, Bouncing Souls,
a lot of the old Lookout bands like the Queers,
Pansy Division, and MTX, the Milwaukees, the
Wrens, Tris McCall, and currently, the Ergs.
Q: As a musician yourself, have any of your
CD's or shows been reviewed by other zines?
What's been your inspiration as a singer/songwriter?
It helps being friends with a lot of writers
and zine people for many years! When both
of my CD’s came out, I got a lot of
reviews because I knew where to send them
and who’d be most likely to write about
them. I also got a really nice review in the
Village Voice (by someone I don’t know
personally, ) and I was interviewed once in
the Sunday New York Times, which was a huge
thrill. In terms of my own inspirations and
influences as a singer/songwriter, the list
would have to include Bob Dylan, Neil Young,
John Prine, and Loudon Wainwright III at the
top of the list. Really I think you’re
influenced to some degree by every song you’ve
ever heard and every performer you’ve
even seen, but those are definitely my most
powerful influences.
A cover by Weezer
that never got used
Q: Do you have any advice for anyone wanting
to start their own zine?
I actually get emails all the time from people
wanting to start zines and I’m always
happy to offer advice. If you want to do a
print zine, the one thing I’ve always
stressed is to know your budget. How do you
want to print it, how many copies do you want
to make, how much will that cost? You have
to expect to pay for your first issue yourself;
once you’ve produced a zine, you have
something you can show to record labels and
bands and try to sell some advertising. But
the first one is almost like printing a business
card; you have to be ready to give it away
just to get your name out there. As far as
a webzine, there’s very little cost
for that and so it’s much easier; but
there are also a million websites out there
competing for people’s attention. I
guess my best advice is to try and make sure
you have a point of view to offer and some
ingredient that will make your webzine stand
out and worth reading. Oh, and people like
to look at photos!
Q: You've been interviewed on various internet
shows like Blowup Radio. How has the internet
affected the printed zine?
I think almost everyone would agree that
the Internet has come close to killing the
printed zine, at least as we knew it in the
Eighties and Nineties. Other factors have
contributed: The music industry is in such
bad times that there’s less advertising
money to go around, and distribution has become
almost impossible., especially with the “mom
and pop” record store almost vanishing.
Something that a lot of people don’t
know is that Tower Records was also a big
magazine and zine distributor, one of the
last few big ones left. When Tower Records
went out of business, a lot of zines not only
lost a lot of money but also their distributor.
I really applaud the print zines that are
hanging in there, like Big Takeover and Maximum
Rock N Roll. It’s so much harder in
the Internet economy than it used to be.
Q:
Have you written for any other publications,
and what advice did you get when you first
started writing?
Thanks to the exposure I got in Jersey Beat,
I have written for many publications, from
other zines to big professional magazines
like Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, Guitar
World, and most recently, Harp. One thing
about a zine is that it’s a great way
to get yourself published; that was actually
one of the other reasons why I started doing
Jersey Beat. I had written for the Aquarian
right after college, but by 1982, nobody else
wanted to publish me so I published myself.
Within a few years, other zines started to
ask me to write for them, and that eventually
led to paying freelance gigs. There are really
only two ways to become a better writer; a
college professor told me this 30 years ago
and it’s still true: Read everything
you can get your hands on, and write as much
as you can.
Even Beevis and
Butthead read 'The Beat'
Cartoon by Spike Drudge, 1993
Q: A few years back, my son
Steve, Frank, Tim & I went up to Boston
to cover The Warped Tour. We were waiting
in line talking to some of the people, mentioning
that we were there from Jersey Beat. It was
amazing all the people and bands that knew
of your zine! How far has Jersey Beat been
read around the country, or overseas?
Even when I was just mailing out copies from
my basement, the zine went all over the place.
The international zine sub-culture was huge,
especially in the Eighties and early Nineties.
Maximum Rock and Roll had great distribution
in Europe and their zine reviews helped a
lot of American zines get known overseas.
I have gotten letters (and today, emails)
from all over the world. A kid from East Germany
sent me a piece of the Berlin Wall when it
came down because Jersey Beat was his favorite
zine. And of course between record labels,
bands, and fans, I’ve met and talked
to a lot of people all over America. I always
joke that the U.S.A. has three million people
but only about 2,000 of us actually like punk
music, so eventually we all wind up meeting
each other anyway!
Q: You play a lot of fund raisers and give
a lot of ink in Jersey Beat to help spread
the word on fund raisers like The Christmas
Dogs of War Show that raises money for cancer
victims. Is there a charity or fund raiser
that is close to your heart?
Well, in the last few years of the print
zine, I organized several benefits just to
raise money to help me publish the zine, with
artists like Ted Leo and the Wrens. But I
do believe that it’s very important
for local music to be a part of the community,
so I try to never turn down an offer to play
or help with any kind of benefit, whether
it was for a huge cause like Multiple Sclerosis
or just to raise money to help some local
kid pay his medical bills because he didn’t
have insurance. My friend Chadd Derkins has
been doing an annual benefit for MS called
Carlapalooza (after his girlfriend, who has
the disease) and that's probably my favorite
charitable event right now.
Q: Have iPods, MP3 players, MySpace, etc.,
been a help or hindrance to bands and their
music, and to zines?
I don’t think there’s any question
that digital music (and digital music players
like iPods) as well as social network sites
like MySpace and Pure Volume have helped bands.
The only problem is that there are SO many
bands today, and so much music competing for
people’s attention, that it might be
even harder than ever for the good bands to
stand out. In a way, back in the days when
someone had to hand you a cassette tape or
a 7 inch for you to hear their bands, it made
the music seem a little more special. And
because it took more effort and expense, fewer
bands were doing it. Today we’re bombarded
by music, not only on the Internet but on
TV, in the movies, in videogames, everywhere.
I worry about the next generation of kids
who won’t think of their iPod as all
that much different from their PS2 or Xbox.
But the bottom line is that I think music
is a basic part of the human condition; we
need it, we respond to it, and not everybody
but some of us will always treat music as
something very special in our lives. Not matter
what media we use to hear it.
Q:
You had mentioned that you had been covering
CBGB's back when it first got started. What
was the music scene and fans like back then?
Much smaller and much older. You have to
remember that bands like the Ramones, Talking
Heads, Blondie, etc were all in their late
twenties or older when they started. The first
time I went to CBGB, I was 21, and I was one
of the youngest people there (and the drinking
age was still 18 back then.) Punk rock didn’t
become a teenage thing until much later. And
today, you have this huge “tween”
demographic of 10 to 13 year olds who are
a big part of the music industry. (Which is
why “High School Musical” was
the biggest selling rock CD last year, and
“High School Musical 2” will almost
certainly be the biggest selling rock CD this
year!) The bubble really expanded in 1991
with Nirvana, and then a few years later with
Green Day. That’s when alternative rock
and punk entered the mainstream. The audience
for that music had been much, much greater
ever since then. Back in the Eighties, when
we were all doing zines and buying 7 inches,
anyone who liked indie rock or punk or hardcore
was part of a very small minority. Today,
it’s as much a part of American high
school life as football or zits.
Q: You had mentioned about Jersey Beat being
added to an archives project. Could you tell
me about the project?
The Rutgers University Library recently added
a complete collection of Jersey Beat back
issues to its permanent New Jersey collection.
So the zine will be available to future generations
who wanted to read about what punk and indie
rock was like in the Eighties and Nineties.
This would have
been the cover of Issue #79.
#78 turned out to be the last print issue.
Art by Marissa/Screaming Females
Q: Why did you stop doing print issues and
move Jersey Beat to a webzine?
There were a lot of reasons. I had gone through
some tough personal times in the early 2000's,
losing both my parents to illness. Money was
getting much tighter, and then it became apparently
that I was going to have to sell the family
house where I was living and move to a smaller
apartment. Advertising was getting much harder
to come by, and distribution had become nearly
impossible. The last several issues, I was
giving away a lot more zines than I was able
to sell through distribution or mailorder.
It really hurt when See Hear (the NYC fanzine
store) went out of business, but the writing
was on the wall. Tower was a big magazine/fanzine
distributor and when they went bankrupt, it
hurt a lot of print zines (although I had
already switched to a more local distributor
by then.)
To be honest though, the biggest reason is
that I just lost the heart for it. Doing the
print issues was expensive (about $2000 per
issue just for the printing, several hundred
more to mail out complimentary issues to all
the bands, labels and publicity firms that
were sending us promos.) Most of that was
covered by the advertising we'd get, but more
and more of it was coming out of my pocket
every issue. There was the storage issue -
with the house for sale, I wouldn't have a
big basement to house all the back issues
anymore. And doing the print zine just wasn't
as rewarding as it had been.
But I didn't want to stop, and I was already
very involved with the Internet. Jersey Beat
was one of the first fanzines to have its
own website (our first URL was earthlink.net/~jerseybeat,
for anyone who remembers those early Internet
days.) As the period between print issues
became longer and longer, I started using
the website not just as a way to advertise
the print issues but to publish new and original
content. Then a few years ago, I started doing
a blog, then the podcast - Jersey Beat Radio,
if you will - which gave the zine an even
larger Internet presence. So turning Jersey
Beat into JerseyBeat.com was a pretty natural
progression.
Q: Is there any thing you'd like to add or
comment on?
I just want to thank you, Phil,
for your enthusiasm and contributions to the
zine. It’s people like you and Rich
Quinlan, Paul Silver, Joe Wawyrzniak, Johnny
Puke, and the others who have been contributing
for years that keep me going. And it’s
the young people who discover the zine in
their teens and start writing for me (like
All Ages Dave Dillon, Jon Robinson, and Noah
WK among the current crop of young ‘uns
on the staff) who are a never-ending source
of inspiration.
The
Jim Testa Interview: 26 Years On The Beat
