We are working with the Midwest Music Summit to produce their program. This is a beefy 56-page book that will be given out to all the attendees, spread around town, and sent out to all the industry kids. Great place for people to be. So if you are looking to promote a product, your band, yourself, please check out the following link: www.bigfatcat.net/MMS

Also, the September issue of PLAYBACK is already starting to cook so check out information about that at www.playbackstl.com/scream/issues/pbstl0906.htm.

Call me, we will chat, we will make deals, we will be lifelong friends.
Jim
314-630-6404

In the few months since I have been here the magazine has gone through some very positive changes. Most important we have found a national distributor in the wonderful folks at Disticor (of Ajax, Ontario...just the name of their city makes me giggle). Starting with the September issue PLAYBACK:stl will be available in national locations for just 3.95 (4.95 in Canada). That amount of money won't even buy you a lunch in most finer pizza joints. But that money will buy you one of the coolest magazines around. Wordy and cheeky...we will hopefully end up on your coffee table, your nightstand, your toilet back...anywhere where fine reading is done.

Where are preparing to put that issue together in the next few weeks and I would love to hear your suggestions about what you want to see in your music magazine. My email is jim@playbackstl.com and I would love to hear from our Imeem friends. I will also be assigning a staffer to be here in Imeem land more often. He or she will be posting pictures, letting you know what is coming up in the new issue, making all sorts of deals available to you, and answering your questions.

Now I am off to upload some pictures.

cheers. jim

A quick posting. We are in the midst of production for April. The reaction to the March issue has been fantastic. It is scary how much glossy makes people love you all the more.

We will have the new issue in to the printer on Monday. Tuesday we hop in a van and drive on down to Austin Texas for SXSW. I am really looking forward to it. Amazing bands, amazing people and an amazing amount of food, beer, and other free shit.

For those of you in the St. Louis area, we have Matisyahu tickets for the Pageant show. Want some? Write me at jim@playbackstl.com.

Off to make 64-pages appear.

Jim

I do this on the MySpace site and would never want to slight imeem members so here is the deal. All friends of PLAYBACK:stl on imeem receive a 25% discount on all advertising with PLAYBACK:stl. Our deadline for the April issue - which features the awesome Flaming Lips - is March 10 with art due by the 13th. If you have questions, give me (Jim) a call at 314-630-6404 or email me at jim@playbackstl.com.

Have an awesome weekend.

J

Arrived at our door this morning. Well, 50 of them. The printer is a bit late on getting them delivered and it fills me with all those mixed feelings. I feel like I am 13 again and Sandy leaned over and exposed herself (wait, too much information? Probably) This is our first issue that is semigloss. It does what four years of brilliant writing seems to have not done, made us look like a real magazine. 64 pages of really good looking magazine and we just showed a few copies to some of the writers. They nearly fell over with enthusiasm. People walked by our table and glanced down at the magazine and I could tell they were interested in what happened to their little monthly. Seems weird that taking that step puts us in another league.

Unfortunately, it also feels like we are hitting a wall. Money is tight and the advertising is sparse or just not enough. I honestly worries me that this is an insurmountable wall. Next month we go to SXSW and we take the magazine and tons of promotional material. I know we can raise some eyebrows with it, but I feel like the eyebrows are going up too late.

You can check out the new issue on the Web at www.playbackstl.com or, if you are lucky enough to be by one of our distribution points, you can stop in and pick one up. Let me know what you think.  

I believe the idea of blogs is to get you so interested in something that every day you check it to see what new thing comes up...like a soap opera. Not that much opera here, but lots of music and other interesting things that go on.

A little history. My wife, Laura, and I started a magazine about 4 years ago. We felt it filled a need in our home town of St. Louis for information about music, local and national. St. Louis has sort of a hole in its heart when it comes to music. Sure we got Nelly, but we also have a pretty disjointed club scene and a local weekly that could give a rat's buttock about local music. So Laura and I decided that there is simply nothing better that we could do with our time and money but put out the best monthly we could. Four years later we are broke, tired, and pretty stoked with the results. PLAYBACK:stl is a color, 64-page behemoth that is slowly working its way across the US.

Over the years we have tried to keep the local in our publication, though there is little chance that the magazine could support itself here. Wrestling club owners to the ground and trying to get them to pay for ads is simply for the birds. A few have been our angels and we think the world of them, but for the most part it hasn't been going great. So we expanded our distribution out and are hoping for the advertising dollars when we get a wider distribution. We have about 300 locations here in town and 150 nationwide. We are hoping to flip that.

We sponsor a lot of local shows, and we spend quite a bit of time chasing down bigger festivals across the country and in Canada. We love Canada. Next month we go to SXSW in Austin TX. It is one of the largest festivals in the country and the schmooze factor is incredible. We will have a booth at the tradeshow and stuf to give away to promote the magazine and some other side projects.

In my next riveting blog (yes kids, it is a must see) I will update you on our March issue. If you want to check out the magazine online the address is www.playbackstl.com.

Till then have fun.

J