Springhouse today
- from l. to r., Jack Rabid, Larry Heinemann,
Mitch Friedland
by Jim Testa
It’s hard to believe that it’s
been over 25 years since I first met a pimply,
hyperactive, and ridiculously precocious teenager
named Jack Rabid at an Adrenaline O.D. show
in Hoboken. The first thing he did was hand
me a one-page mimeographed sheet of paper
– his “zine” – called
The Big Takeover. We’ve been friends
and colleagues (but never, ever “competitors”)
ever since.
Back then, Jack was playing drums in a hardcore
band called Even Worse. Years later, he re-emerged
in a brainy, melodic indie-rock trio called
Springhouse, which released several albums
in the early Nineties.
The Big Takeover – today, a thick,
full-color monster of a zine, whose typical
issue takes weeks to read cover to cover!
- remains one of America’s great fanzines,
and Jack is and has long been one of my favorite
thinkers and writers on music. So on hearing
that Springhouse was going to release a third
full-length album and reunite for a short
tour, I knew it was time to do another interview
with Jack, who remains as loquacious, eloquent,
and ruminative as ever. – Jim Testa
Q: From all reports, the three members of
Springhouse have been quietly gestating this
new album for over 10 years. Why now? What
changed and made you decide this was the time
to finish it and release it? How is this album
different – musically, lyric-wise, production-wise-
from the first two Springhouse albums? And
I don’t mean this to sound mean-spirited,
but why do you think fans today will want
to hear it?
That’s a good series of questions,
a lot to explain and a lot to answer! Holy
smokes! Let me give it a go, though, one question
at a time!
Although the whole process was an evolution
more than any planned timetable, As quickly
as I can distill it, when we broke up in 1993,
we were feeling pretty broke, unloved, and
desolate in the age of grunge. We’d
been dropped as expected from our record deal
with Caroline Records in the face of the new
commercial alterna-rock ruling the day, like
our two former labelmates Smashing Pumpkinheads
and Hole, and Soundgarden and Stone Temple
Idiots, and all their rewarmed cock-rock all
over the “alternative radio.”
Oh, we were a depressed little bunch the last
few months before we called it quits!
But our farewell gig in October 1993 was
actually a really lovely experience. People
seemed really sorry we were going! And so,
amazingly, we did a reunion tour in June 1994
with half the Chameleons, opening for Mark
Burgess’s solo band who were doing Chameleons
songs. That was just so much a polar opposite
of our second LP’s 7-week touring experience,
that it was like a cleanser! We couldn’t
believe how well we were received, in that
element, in that context, only a year later!
We were so glad we’d left off that way
instead!
Two years later, our singer/guitarist/songwriter
Mitch starting working on a solo LP. But Larry
and I flipped over his new songs and their
more acoustic-rock folk-pop direction. Next
thing I know, Larry said he wanted to produce
it. And play bass on it. And who should they
get to drum? Aw hell, they wanted me! So that’s
how it started, anyway.
The reason it’s taken 12 years since
then (although we didn’t actually start
recording the LP until 1998, which is when
I did my drum parts, all in one day!) is a
very, very good one: Larry is just an incredibly
busy guy, not only producing other folks,
but also his main gig as musical director
for Blue Man Group (now just a touring member).
And in the late ‘90s, they were really
taking off! He was responsible for the music
for all their new theater runs, not only in
New York, but the new launches in Boston,
Chicago, Las Vegas, etc., while touring with
them all over the world. So he just wasn’t
available for huge chunks of time. And in
the middle of that, Larry moved his house/studio
and had to set it up his new digs.
And in this manner, a decade passed. Really!
Springhouse, 1990
But somehow he and Mitch kept at it, getting
together in Larry’s studio whenever
Larry’s time permitted. I give the two
of them a lot of credit for never losing sight
of finishing the job. And whenever they were
making a lot of progress, they would invite
me in to hear what they were doing so that
I was always in the loop.
So, to be honest, we never gave a single
thought to timing, market trends, industry
changes, or the amount of time that passed
and the aging of our old fan base, what little
we had cultivated. We just wanted to finish
an LP we all loved and wanted to see completed
for us and others hopefully to enjoy. And
the results were always so good all that time,
that it always seemed worth it!
To address the rest of your questions, I
think we were always inspired by the idea
that we weren’t “picking up where
we left off,” but that we were making
a fresh start of things. And yet, it wasn’t
so far afield to what we were doing before,
that we thought anyone would be really that
thrown by it. I think history has vindicated
us in that we were one of the very first and
one of the only briefly better-known shoegaze
bands out there from the U.S. back then, when
it seemed that, outside of San Francisco,
there weren’t any other shoegaze bands
that were American to play with! We just played
with every indie pop group we liked instead!!!
But history is more kind to shoegaze bands
now—I know, I’m seeing My Bloody
Valentine tonight; hell we used to cover their
b-side “Thorn” in our 1992-1993
sets!!!—and people have said a lot of
nicer things these days about our old genre
now that we are back, than they said about
it as a whole back then as it waned!!! (Oddly
we always got kind press then. Possibly because
a lot of the other writers respected another
writer doing music in a signed band, putting
money where a mouth was!)
But this music we’ve been making since,
and are about to take on the road, feels as
much like “us” as playing punk
rock did to me as a teenager in the late ‘70s
and early ‘80s with Even Worse, or the
shoegaze music we made in our 20s. You have
to make the music you feel in your heart.
And I love a lot of the orchestral folk-rock
and baroque pop that has come along since
we started the record--everyone from Pernice
Brothers to the first Jeremy Enigk record
to the early Eric Matthews stuff, Ken Stringfellow
and Jon Auer, Belle and Sebastian, the new
New Pornographers, Shins, Fugu, you name it!
In my heart of hearts we would be the Zombies
or Left Banke or Arthur Lee’s Love,
but that’s just the gods, you know?
We aren’t gods. We just like to play
music like them!
Next question. Lyrics? First LP Land Falls
was an even split between protest songs, things
that pissed us off like environmental destruction
(“Layers,” “Eyesore”)
which we are also looking good for in retrospect
these days, as well as New York policies and
attitudes about the homeless back in 1988
(“Eskimo”), and the stupid culture
wars on both sides then as now (“Again”),
and songs about relationships, like “Landslide,”
which is my own favorite lyric I ever wrote.
(I’ve read it at poetry readings! No
kidding! I think well of myself, I do!). If
Billy Bragg or the Newtown Neurotics could
sing about both things on an LP, that so could
we!
Second LP, the aptly named Postcards From
the Arctic, Mitch took the lyrical reins from
me for the most part, and it’s really
our “divorce” record, as that
is what was happening in his life. That’s
why people who seem to like dark albums prefer
that one, and it’s more thematically
whole. Songs like “Worthless”
and “All About Me” and “The
Light.” It was perfect for a band about
to splinter after terrible road exhaustion
without even a roadie to help and a bitter
van break-in that cost us $6000!
The
new LP? More relationship songs from Mitch
(and one of mine), only this time—surprise—it’s
shot full of optimism and even glee at times,
which really fits the great, loving heart
at the core of the record that was made for
nothing but pure love of the music. Again,
you have to sing what is in your heart at
any given time! Note, the first song on our
second LP was about how touring was killing
us and yet we were trying to be valiant and
play everywhere anyway (“Asphalt Angels.”).
Whereas the first song on the new LP is about
how glad we are to be back--a “story
of the band” kind of song in a modest
way. It’s called “Passion!!!”
And the one I wrote, a conflicted-feelings
saga of someone vainly trying everything possible
to save a relationship that can’t be
saved, despite tremendous lingering affection,
is about several ex-girlfriends all rolled
into one. But it’s also a thinly veiled
reference to our band’s 1993 breakup
and what that felt like, since we’d
parted such strong friends! So we’ve
come full circle in just those two songs.
And Mitch wrote some lovely love songs for
this too, too, like “Pomegranate,”
and a few more wobbly ones, too, that reflected
the up and down nature of his days with his
wife before they finally settled on each other,
from Postcards to know. Another happy ending!
And thus the LP’s title! Somehow they
made it to “OK.”
Finally, why would anyone want to hear it?
I don’t know! Beats me! They might not!
We had a sub-major label (Caroline was owned
by Virgin) and their full might behind us
on the first two LPs. That was an entire staff
plugging our LPs and tours to radio and press
and even MTV, where we got some valuable play
on 120 Minutes and elsewhere. Now it’s
just three Joes out of pocket. But we’ve
found that a lot of people surprisingly still
not only remember us, but also seem to remember
us fondly. Stuff like “underappreciated
album of the month” in 2002 in Delusions
of Adequacy for our second LP, Postcards.
That was a thrill to read, 9 years after the
LP!!! And finding out that the people at Magnet
and Paste were glad that we were coming back,
and things like that. We’ve had some
nice write-ups of late from Brooklyn Vegan
(amazingly, none of the readers who responded
to that on that page slimed us like they always
sadly seem to do on that site!!!) by Bill
Pearis, and from Fred Mills on Blurt, from
people who remembered us kindly from back
in the day. That means so much to me! And
I am totally honored that you, Jim, are nice
enough to remember us as well, here! You were
always so great to us in Jersey Beat when
we were first around and trying to get heard.
When you guys say nice things about us, it
makes people who aren’t old enough to
recall us become more curious, particularly
if they ever heard our name mentioned somewhere.
And it fills people like me with gratitude.
But ultimately, it really can’t matter
to us, can it, whether the time is right or
whether people will care or not? You have
to do it if you love it, and see what happens.
We hope that anyone who would like our music
does hear it. That’s all we can do.
If we can get a bigger label to take the LP
on and issue it on their imprint with some
real backing, that would be fabulous, fantastic,
and the fulfillment of my ultimate wish! Interested
parties please get in touch, ha ha! But we
can’t control that. It’s enough
to the three of us that the LP is done after
so very, very long, and is out there for anyone
who wants to try us on!!! I think people will
really like it if they do! Please do!
Q: The last time Springhouse released a record,
the Internet was still this great mystery
that consumers accessed through CompuServe
and AOL, the few people who were online had
slow, cranky dial-up modems, indie labels
were still independent, fans still bought
CD’s at mom and pop record stores, and
print fanzines were still the best media available
for an indie band to get any exposure. Clearly
the world has changed a lot in 15 years. How
will this affect how you try to reach an audience
with this new release? And do you think the
technological advances of the last decade
and a half have made things easier or harder
for the local band trying to find an audience?
Jack: Wow, too many other good questions.
That’s a boatload! For anyone!
I think it has helped a lot for the bands
that get a buzz, from blogs, or hip tastemakers.
They are storming the charts, even on indie
labels! A band like Arcade Fire or The Shins
could never sell several hundred thousand
or a few millions on a label like Merge or
Sub Pop back in the old Superchunk or Fastbacks
days!
But what no one writes is that it has hurt
struggling little bands trying to gain a foothold
that don’t get such attention that might
deserve it. Because the more organic, grassroots,
build it slowly idea built on college radio
and fanzines if just too slow for people’s
attention spans nowadays. The other band I
was in, Last Burning Embers, could never get
anyone to listen to us outside our personal
friends, so we gave up. No one wanted a band
in their 40s just starting out, on their own
label, for their hip blogs. That could never
really be hip to cognoscenti. (Of course,
I refuse to believe it is because we weren’t
any good, but then again, I would, wouldn’t
I?). So it cuts both ways.
Whereas it has been a help to Springhouse,
because we did the work when we were still
in our 20s so many years ago, to have a “story”
worth telling to younger people. Or, for those
our own age who came across us then and are
pleased to hear they will get another chance,
or a first chance, to see us now and hear
what we might be doing now.
Look,
I will put it this way. I’m sure you,
Jim, saw Dinosaur Jr. a few times, right?
I remember them having no draw at all back
when Lou Barlow as in the band on the first
three LPs. It seemed like every time I saw
them, the place was pretty empty, and I thought
that was crime. Even the Ritz with Celibate
Rifles and Volcano Suns. Like 30 people there
at $3 a head! And so it was with Mission of
Burma’s gigs here from 1981-1983 that
I saw. But look how well both draw now! I
think it took a few decades for the people
to really appreciate how good those two trios
were in the ‘80s and really respect
that they did it back when there were so few
outlets for a band to have their music heard
or read about if they weren’t on Warner
Brothers or EMI or something. So now they
sell out a few nights at Irving Plaza. And
better late than never, I say!
When all the hype campaigns disappear, and
have all faded 20 years from now, we forget
all the music that really was only popular,
not any good. But we celebrate the people
who fought the good fight and made music because
it was burning inside them. I’ll bet
you have as many people asking you about the
Minutemen or Replacements or Husker Du or
so many others we saw, as much as I do. I’m
not saying we are of that strata—just
that we aspire to be loved just for our music’s
lasting qualities the same. And the internet
has helped us keep our old music before people
even though it’s long been out of print.
And in this day and age, the web and MySpace
and Facebook and all the rest give people
a chance to mention us and our comeback, and
get people to hear something from the past
made totally present! It’s been a help,
in other words. It was a help to us in 2002
when we did our other reunion tour, this time
with the whole Chameleons! I’m glad
for that help. I’m just sorry it’s
so little help to so many small and worthy
bands I write about in my mag that never seem
to get much attention on the net. It’s
one thing to have a MySpace site, but what
good is it if no one ever visits it? That’s
the part no one wants to talk about! It’s
a shame how few hits some of those great bands
get.
Q: Springhouse came along right about the
time that Nirvana up-ended the music industry
and for the first time, made it possible for
an “indie” or punk band to actually
earn a living (albeit a modest one) just by
making records and touring. When Springhouse
was on Caroline, you flirted with that level
of success but never quite achieved it. Looking
back, was it foolish to think you could be
self-sustaining making the kind of music you
played? What went wrong (or what would’ve
had to have gone right) - was it the label,
the industry, MTV, dumb luck, or some uncontrollable
combination of factors that kept you from
“making it”?
Jack: Oh, we wrestled with that a lot as
we were going under in 1993. But that’s
not what our band was really about, much as
we would have liked it to be! I remember an
interview feature with us in Melody Maker
in England in 1991 for the Land Falls LP,
which took place at my apartment in New York,
that marveled that all three of us still had
to work day jobs, and had to find a time between
all three of those jobs to schedule the interview;
and that Larry had to be given 15 minutes
off his then waiter job just to take the photograph!!!
I told the guy, Andrew Mueller, that we weren’t
like English bands on the dole, we weren’t
making any money to speak of from our record
contract, and the government wasn’t
paying us to stay home and rehearse material
all day! All the money in it went to recording
and promoting us, not to us ourselves! We
had to scrape by there for 5 1/2 years from
1988-1993 just to make the rent on our rehearsal
studio for three days’ use a week, let
alone our apartments and food and what not.
Mitch used to have to ask for whole months
or two months off from his paramedic job back
then just to go on tour or go to L.A. to record
the Postcards LP over seven weeks.
So I don’t think the lack of making
a living ever stopped us, as much as the decline
in the modest success we had known on the
first LP. Let’s make no mistake. Land
Falls came out in the summer of 1991, and
we were all over the underground press (we
got like 90 reviews I put in a Xeroxed press
packer), had some nice features in Rolling
Stone and Melody Maker, a tiny bit of MTV
play, radio play on college radio and commercial
stations like WHFS in D.C. and WDRE in New
York and the Bear in Chicago that really helped
our turnouts. We were touring and doing fairly
well, at least on the East Coast and Midwest.
And then a few months later is when Nevermind
came out, later in ‘91! Not only did
the entire industry’s ears change over
night, but also all those avenues started
to close to us. Not only because our music
was too elegiac and subtle and even a little
shimmering for such a suddenly macho world,
but the majors all signed up 400 alterna acts
overnight and poured a volcano-load of money
into them. And so suddenly there was no room
at the inn.
All
the bigger mags that had reviewed our first
LP like Spin just laughed at the idea of reviewing
the second one. They had 40 CDs from Warner
Brothers that were “indie,” which
was pretty ridiculous to me. All with expensive
marketing campaigns in the six digits behind
them… and money talks, alright? For
the same reason, the little alterative commercial
radio largely dried up outside the three I
just mentioned. Etc. Etc. It really snowed
us under in the awareness department. And
it pissed me off at the time.
I mean, I thought, “Now you want aggressive
punk-like rock, when all I was listening to
10-14 years before that was punk rock? You
bastards!” And all I had heard in the
punk days was what a loser I was for liking
that stuff! “And you can’t even
get it right this time, you still want metal
in your punk instead of the real thing? You
can’t just take it straight up like
it was?” So yeah, it felt like we were
beating our heads against a brick wall. The
last straw was that break-in. And seeing all
the record bins in stores across the country
with no copies of our second album, and plenty
of our first. It was so obvious the label
didn’t care about us outside a few people
in publicity and radio plugging that liked
the band and did what they could. The guy
who had signed us, Keith Wood, had been kicked
upstairs to start his own label, Vernon Yard,
so we lost our champion and advocate, and
that really killed us as well. The new regime
cared about the newer bands they were signing.
And so it goes! There’s more but I can’t
go on and on about it. It does my head in,
as the British say! I wrote a huge editorial
about it at the time. Called “Why Band’s
Die!!!!” [I remember that editorial
to this day, and that’s what inspired
this question!- JT]
The only thing we had going for us at the
end of 1993 was that we were such great friends,
and we still had a small base of appreciative
fans largely forged before Nevermind who had
also had enough of being screamed at by music
with little nuance (Nirvana were so much better
than all the bands that rode their coattails
and ruined everything, but my favorite songs
of theirs are all on the last LP and the MTV
LP!!!), and a record deal and shows to play.
So we thought we could just continue, against
the tide. But after the van breakup and the
record company dropping us, we felt it was
too high a hill to climb to find a new label
with any muscle/money to help us fight that
battle. And we were flat broke after the break-in.
We couldn’t even finance new demos to
interest a new label!!!!
It’s so much easier for bands now with
home studios and cheap recording processes.
Look at us! We’re totally in-house produced
now! Not only did that make this LP feasible,
instead of having to come up with 8 grand
like the original demos that made up 6/10
of Land Falls, but it allowed us to work whenever
we were ready, which wasn’t often!
So I don’t know how to answer your
question except to say that it was all those
things you mention that did us in, all together
in a perfect sequence of events. Everything
climbed on our back and drove us into the
ground together, and we really had no choice
but to capitulate at the time.
We had some bad luck, that’s for sure.
But we also had bands coming up to us on tour
all the time wanting to be us—wishing
they were making records and touring! So I’m
glad we got at least a chance to live the
life for a while! Every band that doesn’t
make it has their luck and timing run out
on them, I think.
You and I both know a hundred bands that
couldn’t quite gain that high ground,
where they had enough backing to keep making
records and tour for decades instead of a
few years.
As to what could have prevented our fall,
that’s a toughie! The only thing that
could have really happened for us that didn’t,
was our label could have let us tour in England,
where we were released on Virgin. We had some
great press there, we even made Select’s
Top 50 for the year in 1991 for Land Falls,
and our music sure fit in well with those
bands over there! We played over here with
Ride, House of Love, Kitchens of Distinction,
New Model Army, New Fast Automatic Daffodils,
Psychedelic Furs, Wonder Stuff, Milltown Brothers,
Chameleons, and more, and always seemed to
do well on those bills, same as the gigs we
did with American bands.
And all these bands over time have made it
over here by going there and making a splash
there first--from the New York Dolls to The
Strokes to Interpol and others. But as our
old lyric goes, “They would not let
us go.” We couldn’t afford to
fly ourselves over to introduce ourselves
without a label’s help. And our day
jobs paid the rent!
Yet we’re back now because all those
things eventually went away, and the love
we had for each other and the music remained,
I’m glad to say. We were never trying
to make a living even back then, though we
would have been glad to and it would have
helped tremendously. We just wanted to make
as many LPs we loved as possible, like all
the albums I love in my 30-year vinyl and
CD collection. They are like pieces of great
art to me, my collection! We wanted to leave
something behind that would last long past
our recording dates or even our lives. We
still want to do that.
Money be damned, it’s the art that
matters in the end! If you really have something
to say and play, you just have to make it,
and hope the audience finds it in the end.
Whenever they find it! Maybe we’ll be
like Nick Drake and we will all be dead for
30 years and our surviving relatives will
hear our music on a car commercial or something!
Too late for my own satisfaction, maybe, but
I would still love it if it happened! Cause
that is why we made/make it!
Q:
Looking back at your time in Springhouse,
what stands out as your favorite moments,
achievements, and memories? And what do you
think you still have left to accomplish?
Jack: Oh man, from the old days? How about
playing a show at CBGB between Smashing Pumpkinheads
and Hole the same day I’d gone to see
Buzzcocks at Maxwells do an afternoon show--and
all four Buzzcocks came to see us that night
and were really excited by our set! Wow, I
still can’t believe it, 16 years later!
Pete Shelley told me he was wrong about me;
that he had always though I was just some
overzealous if intelligent and friendly fan
boy obsessed over his band--but that in fact
I was a real musician in a great band with
something to offer of my own. Man, that made
my head spin! I couldn’t believe my
ears! I had his poster all over my walls in
1978 when I was in 10th grade! And you know
what else that night, when I jumped off the
stage, somebody-- I didn’t know who--put
me into a big bear hug and kept yelling in
my ear in an English accent “You were
great! Your band is great! You’re a
great drummer”, and I was thinking,
“Who is this?? Friend or foe?”
And it was Mike Joyce from The Smiths! He
was drumming with Buzzcocks back then, and
he was basically saying the same thing as
Pete after spending time with me at a half
dozen Buzzcocks gigs. I mean, damn, The Smiths!
Mike Joyce! I’d been a huge Smiths fan
right from the first single, and his drumming
was a good reason why (especially the last
two Smiths LPs). Sometimes I think, did that
really happen? It was like when one of my
Big Takeover interviews ended with Joe Strummer
telling me I should write a book, and that
I really knew my stuff! I mean, what do you
say to stuff like that? I bought him a drink!
That’s all I could do!
Or how about having a single put out on Bob
Mould’s label and him offering to produce
us!! What a great guy! He made us feel so
good! Or having Martin Phillipps of The Chills
tell a New Zealand fanzine we were the best
band he’d seen in America after we opened
for them and Blake Babies in Chapel Hill,
NC? All of this seemed like a little dream
to me. It still does. You never thing of earning
the esteem of the people whose music you love
so much, but it sure felt good when it came
our way. It felt like I stopped being a writer
to them, and became a peer.
But apart from that sort of stunning feedback
from people I admired so incredibly, which
just felt great great great, it meant a lot
just to play the shows when they were good.
No kidding, that’s what it is all about
when you are in a band, whether young or not!
You just thrill all over when the show is
actually good. IT’S SUCH A DRUG! The
ones we did from 90-94 in Boston, Providence,
D.C., Grand Rapids, and San Francisco, a good
15 or so in all between them, were the ones
I loved best outside of our home shows, because
it was amazing to me that we could play near
sellouts so far from home and people were
really into our music. I never expected any
of that! I never saw any of it coming when
we were just starting out, playing CBGB and
the Pyramid Club with Naked Raygun!
The two best, though, were with Belly and
Velocity Girl at First Avenue in Minneapolis
in April 1993, where Tanya Donelly’s
band treated us like gold instead of some
dumb opening band—Tanya personally pushed
me back up the stairs for us to do an encore,
after I explained to her that despite the
applause opening bands didn’t do encores;
what an absolute sweetie!!!—and at Black
Cat in D.C. in 2002 opening for Chameleons,
our first show in 8 years. The latter was
the only gig I’ve ever played where
I could hear the audience singing along to
our songs, song after song. I couldn’t
believe it!!! I thought I was hearing things!
I had to listen to the tape later to make
sure I wasn’t crazy! Did that really
happen to us? That also feels like it was
a dream. I’ve never felt better in my
life as a musician or doing anything creative.
My hat’s off to D.C. We did so well
at the 9:30 club there in the old days, but
still, nothing like that! We are playing there
again on this tour, and I just can’t
wait!!! Hope they sing along again!!! Hope
Hope Hope! I can’t tell you what that
feels like! I’d wish it on anyone who
cares!
But for all that, the things I remember most,
if you really want to know, is the hugs the
three of us used to exchange together, and
the excitement we used to share in some other
fashion, whenever something big happened or
we played a good show or recorded a good take.
I really love those two guys. I gave them
all I had, and they did the same, we really
were like a small family! And we are again
now (with Dave Burokas helping us out on the
tour as well, he’s one of my oldest
and dearest friends and the best man at my
wedding.) Even the huge shouting matches we
had, which we had one on each of our three
tours--it was amazing how quickly we all apologized
and realized it was road weariness and frustration
over some of the shows and having no help
or anyone to drive or do much of anything
and whatnot. We could get through that because
of the love and respect. I always wanted to
be in a band where everybody contributed so
much and all pulled for each other, and it
feels like a lovely dream, again, to get another
chance to be in Springhouse! I thing people
could really see that in us on our 2002 tour
and will again this time! I am totally OVER
THE MOON to be playing again! So much for
studied cool or feigned nonchalance. Fuck
that! I’m pinching myself. There, that’s
your answer! My greatest memories are still
being made! And wow what a feeling that is.
Q:
Let’s talk for a bit about The Big Takeover.
Obviously music magazines like yours face
many of the same social and economic challenges
that the music industry does, as advertising
shrinks, distribution becomes harder to obtain,
postage rates keep going up, and operating
costs (like the cost of paper and printing)
increase. It seems like the few fanzines that
have managed to survive have done so by competing
with the commercial music magazines on their
own terms – full color, glossy paper,
and so on. What’s the future look like
for The Big Takeover, and what strategies
are you using to survive in the new digital
age?
Jack: Oh man, I get so nervous every time
I mount another issue from day one when I
start another one! Can I get advertisers?
Will our readers desert us? Will I have to
take up that idea I had in 1995 that I was
going to be a high school history teacher?
I may yet! Then again, I might not!
I’m right in the middle of a new issue
63 right now, and ad sales are a little slow,
but we’re already at the place with
it where I can say for sure we can cover our
costs if we tighten our belts a little, and
there definitely will be an issue 64 next
spring as ever. And I am still hoping with
this issue to arrive at the place where we
can still put out the same type of issues
we have been doing all along with the same
page count. And we might just get there! The
campaign is not yet finished.
I keep staying in touch with people who are
considering us for this issue, and I hope
they all do want in. It’s been so long
for me like this, I have come to expect it.
It’s such a struggle, but when it’s
a cause you believe in, you are willing to
keep doing it, because the end product is
so spiritually rewarding. It’s the same
as the band. I would make so much more money
if I had a straight job, and I would work
half the hours. That was true the four years
before Springhouse, where I worked in an insurance
company while paying off my student loans
from NYU. But I do this job — this life!
— for spiritual reasons. I’m not
religious, this is my religion. To try and
touch as many people as I can. So as long
as I can keep convincing others to advertise
with us and read our issues, I am glad to
keep it going.
Yeah, I’ve seen just about every print
music magazine I love go under in the last
two or three years. It’s depressing
as hell. I really liked those mags. Yours
for one! But I promise to do everything in
my power to keep making mags I can be proud
of, that hopefully provide a service for the
readers and the bands we write about and the
advertisers who advertise in it, which I consider
to be more info for people who care, for some
time yet!
I haven’t any strategies other than
to keep doing what I am doing and let the
market of those three constituencies decide
if they can keep me going or not. So far they
have. I almost feel more like a steward of
the mag and what it means to people rather
than a mogul or some kind of big shot or something.
I feel more like a caretaker of a good idea.
I love all the people I have met through doing
this. I think they know why I do it! Why we
all do it! And I like the idea that a lot
of the people who are still supporting me/us
understand that they make me/us possible.
We can’t exist without that sort of
love and support, kind of like public television
with their pledge drives! It’s an idea
the PBS keeps alive, and I have the same attitude.
I know a lot of other creative and interesting
people who publish mags or caretake valuable
web sites, or do radio shows, and write all
over the place for the same reason. The music
is bigger than us all, but it needs our help,
beyond the dictates of the industry and fickle
fans with no attention spans. It’s up
to us all to slow down that attention span
and take in the full force of the music that
matters on merits, not mere buzz!
So although I really don’t know if
the factors that have taken down all the other
music mags will eventually get me (and it’s
true it does not help that the paper, printing,
and shipping costs keep exploding, while the
recorded music industry keeps imploding!),
so far I’m/we’re still here and
will keep trying to stay here and put all
our focus on the quality of the mag, rather
than its survival, and see if by virtue of
being here and doing this for 28 years, if
people won’t still continue to value
us enough to keep propping us up for many
more years to come. I hope so!
And there are a few other mags that I love
that are still left standing, I am glad to
say, like Magnet, and Dagger, and Razorcake,
and some bigger ones like Paste and Under
the Radar who do a nice job. Even Spin, who
I have done some writing for of late, is 20
times better than they were when I used to
hate them. So we’re not all dead and
buried yet, even though I say so long and
farewell after much yeoman service to Harp,
No Depression, DIW, Jersey Beat, Amplifier,
Yeah Yeah Yeah, Under the Volcano, Punk Planet,
and if what I hear is true, Pop Culture Press.
All fine mags. We will miss you all. It’s
really too bad what is happening to print
media in general! We still have a place, I
am convinced of it. Again, print slows down
the attention span. It makes you think deeper!
So I wrote a letter to Magnet and Under the
Radar today, for reasons that are not important
here, and said to them, in the spirit of co-operation,
“I leave you with my favorite Ben Franklin
quote, after signing the Declaration of Independence,
‘Gentlemen, we must all hang together.
Or we will surely hang separately.’"
I think that is it in a nutshell.
Hopefully the music-loving people will let
Big Takeover and Springhouse continue for
some time to come with their love and support.
I can’t think of a better purpose for
my life, outside my wife, our 8-year-old son
Jim, and my other family and friends, than
to keep making and writing about music as
an extension of my ever-curious and hopefully
creative mind! So that’s my “strategy!”
If you’ll support it, I’ll keep
making it!
Thanks so much for the ultra challenging
questions Jim! You should have your own PBS
show. I’d watch it!
Springhouse will be appearing on Tuesday,
October 21 at Southpaw in Park Slope, Brooklyn
(CMJ first night, but open to the public,
with Magnetic Morning) - 8:30 pm, $12, 18+,
directions at spsounds.com
You can order a deluxe limited-edition
CD or the immediate "pay what you want
including nothing" download on Springhouse’s
brand new website at www.springhousemusic.net
