A new exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame pays tribute to the history of Alternative Press. The influential music magazine was founded in Cleveland as a fanzine --- or just plain ‘zine’ --- thirty years ago. But, Northeast Ohio has long been home to self-published journals catering to the musical tastes of new audiences.
Music fans, sporting a rainbow of hair colors, are packed along a line of temporary security fencing, arms stretched to beg a selfie from popular indy rock stars, Panic at the Disco. This largely teenaged crowd is happily gawking at the performers heading into the Alternative Press Music Awards, in downtown Cleveland. This gala event, last week, celebrating the magazine’s 30 th anniversary was unimaginable to founder Mike Shea, back in 1985.
"We had no idea what we were going to become," he recalls
But, he says, he and some friends shared a sense that the local punk, metal and alt rock communities were not being served by mainstream radio and newspapers. And that led to the creation of Alternative Press.
"It really was a philosophical, but generational difference with AP. Why do all the individual music communities in Cleveland, why are they not all connected? We’re all freaks. We need something for us."
Alternative Press began as a four-page flier, which started to grow in size and popularity, but then almost folded after just eight issues.
"Did we have a business plan?" he asks. "No, we always kind of made short-term plans, and then winged it. And then, prayed to God that we weren’t wiped out."
Euclid native Sharon Lee Caddick began a similar journey almost a decade before. Her passion was the original heavy metal scene emerging from England in the 1970s. Caddick’s initial plan was to create a music publication as an excuse to meet visiting musicians. A Rag, A Bone & a Hank of Hair was a two-sided, photocopied collection of music news and gossip, and she says that the record companies quickly dismissed her when she requested interviews.
"At first, it was really hard," she says. "They wouldn’t listen to me, so I would go and hang out at Swingos --- because Swingos was the place where most of the bands stayed, at the time. I would find the road manager, I’d tell them my spiel, and I’d interview the bands."
Then, she’d go home and put her new found facts and concert reviews into the next issue.
"I would sit at home with my little typewriter, type it all up, and I would xerox 200 copies," Caddick remembers. "And then, that night, I would run them around and drop them all off."
She took them to local bars and clubs, where they were quickly snapped up.
Kent State University journalism professor Jacqueline Marino says publishing a Zine, back then took a tenacious and independent spirit. "It wasn’t like you had anybody showing you the way," she says. "But, you knew there was stuff going on, and you wanted to be the one to put it out there."
Marino adds that the home-made music magazines that succeed – then and now -- still use traditional journalism techniques to get their information.
"You need to go out, you need to talk to people," she says. "You need to find facts that other people haven’t found. You need to be hanging out at the hotel where you think the band is, even though it’s so much harder now to talk to a band member. Maybe you should be stalking them on Twitter, too."
Mike Shea says that Alternative Press continues to evolve with a mix of old school reporting and new technology, like social media and video to reach younger readers. He also has to contend with younger competitors
"And I asked a couple of them, last year, why do you guys keep sniping on us. And one said, ‘We see you as the Death Star.’ And I thought about it, and I went, ‘Of course I’m the Death Star.’ Rolling Stone was the Death Star to me. It’s a new generation. Of course I’m the Death Star."
Bill Lipold is part of that new generation, but says his “I Rock Cleveland” music blog can’t even begin to compete with Alternative Press --- at least not yet. Though Lipold doesn’t have to deal with the low-tech production and self-distribution challenges that AP faced in the early days, his seven-year-old site is still largely a one-man operation.
"You always look at those people as: I could do that bette," he says. "The attitude is, they're doing it all wrong. The big guys are all corrupt, these days. I should be the one."
Today’s zine – whether it’s online or in print – is still built on the same indie ethic that launched Alternative Press 30 years ago. Lipold says, it’s tough to hold down a full-time job and do this on the side. But you don’t take down a Death Star in a day.
