Messenger Music Service - about

Messenger Music service- A Labour of love

This multi-media digital magazine is something that I've always wanted to do; well at least since 1995 or so. Back then I had just begun a serious hobby as a dj. I was devouring british music magazines and I always thought it would be really cool to start a magazine. I had read URB and XLr8R since their beginnings but even before them I read the early version of Details, back when it was an underground mag that opened the doors of New York's vast cultural substance.

I was addicted to Stephen Saban's articles of club life, I loved the stories of club kids and drag queens, even Willie Ninja's infamous vogue performances were fascinating. I was not interested so much in gay culture, just music and club culture. I didn't really care about celebrities, or fashion but I was interested to know what was happening.

My friend Rudy and I shared this common interest; he was responsible for a lot of my early music taste and he would regularly turn me on to british acts, magazines and club life. He turned me on to Meat Beat Manifesto, Nitzer Ebb, Front 242, Erasure and others. I was already familiar with Depeche Mode, New Order, Arthur Baker, Afrika Bambatta (sp), and much of early Hip-Hop since we were already interested in the culture itself. He was (and still is) an amazing Dj who had a truly unique ear for music, culture and design beyond the norm.

He wanted to create a magazine and soon after he purchased a Macintosh he began to create one. The first was called On Time Productivity, which was named after our mobile DJ business. It was sort of a newsletter with limited content but it was good. At the time I was heavily involved in airbrushing so I made an illustration for the cover and Rudy did the rest. We passed out the first copies while waiting in line for the Depeche Mode/Nitzer Ebb concert tickets that summer. I didn't get a chance to enjoy it much since I was already on my way to South America to be a missionary for two years.

While I was gone Rudy created a new magazine called Nettwerk which was excellent; it had good design, great articles and it looked like a real magazine. He started receiving promo material and access to interviews of serious up-and-coming acts such as Alice in Chains, Biohazard, and San Diego's own Depeche Mode clone Red Flag. He was a great friend and would send me promo tapes; the best was when he sent me a copy of Red Hot Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magic since I was a serious fanatic and had no access to any alternative music in South America. when I returned, Details was on its way to becoming a parody of itself, and there were many others taking over. Rudy was doing quite well with his mag and was involved with DJing and was even involved in throwing one of the very first underground events in San Diego.

I returned to San Diego as quickly as I could, wanting to get involved in anything related to music, clubs and art & design. After some time Rudy, myself and a friend named Brock began tocreate another magazine called Messenger.
As usual Rudy did almost all of the work and he wasn't too happy about it. We were all involved in DJing and throwing small parties so there was little time to work on the magazine, but we did the best that we could.
Rudy made sure that the first and only issue came out and it was great. It had some good content, some reviews, charts, a little history of Meat Beat manifesto and some illustrations by me.

Soon after it became evident that we didn't have the resources to do a magazine and Rudy was not able to do it all on his own. Brock ended up moving to San Francisco and while he was there he carried the torch and continued the Messenger legacy. He threw some parties-- one of which I got to play (although it was poorly attended)--and put to use some cool promotion ideas. One of them was to get chinese food containers and fill them with flyers and a custom-printed fortune cookie. He then put them in a box labeled "Fresh Hot Delivery" and left them in local stores.

Anyway, it was a great concept because we truly wanted to be messengers for quality music.
I still wanted to be involved with a magazine in some way. I would read URB and the others, always hoping to find my way into their pages. Andy and I received a good mention in the Massive section for our party Massive Luxury Overdose (a name we took from an Army of Love single) which featured SF dj Carlos and Rudy (DJ Myxlplyx) as headliners, and took place in an 18+/21+ w/ID venue, but Quanus the observant club reporter who was kind enough to write about us later moved to New York so that was the last of my involvement with URB.

So quite few years later in 1999 I was lucky enough to get a gig writing for Where @ magazine. The publisher Chris Howland gave me ad space if I would write reviews and interview guest DJs that were playing in clubs around town. I was glad to be involved and did the best I could. i didn't even have a computer being that I was so addicted to fresh wax that I was surprised I even had any clothes to wear. I think Chris let me borrow a garage sale Pc to work on.
I was really interested in promoting my own gigs and those of other local DJs and promoters. Where @ was kind of cheesy since it focused more on the hot chicks and VIP room activities of the clubs than the music, but Chris was interested in better content. I think it was tough to keep a balance of substance versus the people who would pay for ads. Anybody familiar with San Diego culture knows that the people that have control over most of the venues are only interested in money and catering to the people who have it and who are willing to spend it.

The majority of the crowds in San Diego want commercial Hip-Hop and any other trendy music that may be popular at the time. The people who are really interested in good music either put on their own events, are assimilated into the other clubs or move away all together. I've done all three--it's a tough town.

Anyway. I was willing to work double-time to promote my ventures so I went to BPM Culture to see about buying a small, cheap ad for my initial business, The Sonic Company, or Sonico. for short.

BPM Culture was San Diego's entry in to the magazine world; there had been others but they didn't make it; BPM was barely making it but it was still alive. David Ireland was its creator whom I had met before he started it. He was a newcomer to the club scene having just graduated from San Diego State with a journalism degree and a little investment capital. He seemed like an OK guy and at least he was willing to learn, so a lot of locals were willing to work for him for nothing. As with most ventures where people have to work for nothing for very little return, he went through many helpers, Rudy was one of them, and he didn't stay long since he really knew what he was doing and David thought HE knew more since he had a degree. As usual Rudy worked really hard and wasn't appreciated so it was all for nothing.

I waited a long time before even approaching them. I always wanted to be involved but I didn't want to get involved in any local politics so I stayed away from all the bickering.

When I did approach the magazine to buy a small ad I was open to helping, but I never imagined they would ask me to be the music editor. They needed someone to do it for nothing and I was smart enough to know that it meant I would get access to free records. After about six months it seemed like it was going to go under so I was sure it wouldn't last long, then I found out that David was trying to sell the magazine. He went through a couple of potential buyers and eventually settled with the owners of Moonshine records in Los Angeles. They planned on partnering with David and starting a new company called djmixed.com which would be the parent company of the magazine. He offered me a job with a pretty decent salary so I was soon off to L.A. to work at the new BPM Magazine/djmixed.com.

I was really excited but I was weary of leaving everything I was working on behind; it seemed insignificant to others but to me it was manageble with limited reources and it was growing.Chris Howland even warned me against going. he knew David and he said that he would use me and toss me aside. It's funny because that's exactly what he did.

Starting BPM over was a big job. The three of us moved all our shit to L.A., found two nice, brand new apartments right next to each other, just one block from Melrose (two blocks from beat Non stop and WAX)and got started. We were given brand new Powerbooks and a new office in West Hollywood and a whole lot of work to do.

We had to take all of the previous content of the magazine and upload it to the website. I had very little computer knowledge and no other skills so I was a little slow. We had all kinds of technical problems so it made the progress very slow at first. we also had to produce a magazine, very quickly and it had to be great. David recruited Josh Mintz who was a senior designer at MP3.com to move up and be the creative director. Josh had a huge job since he had to design everything, act as the pre-press and production manager and help to correct all of our mistakes. He did a great job and most importantly, he gave the magazine style. I don't think it would have been very good without him.

David is very good at what he does, he had a vision and he realized it. He also had a great right-hand man in Rob Simas. Rob is a workhorse, he makes things happen and he handled David's treating him like shit very well. They hired Lori Hamilton as a promoter and web content manager and that was it, four people doing the work of thirty full time staffers at other magazines.

We worked our asses off. I remember being there for 16 hours many days. My computer screen looked all blurry and I was drinking so much coffee, but I loved it. I had stacks of vinyl and CD promos, I had PR people calling me and anybody that I called would take my call--it was pretty cool. I didn't really get to enjoy much else, for the first six months we didn't go out hardly at all, but we were all dedicated to making the magazine good, and keeping our jobs.

After the first year I was getting a little burned out but I kept at it. I had gone through a year of supporting my mentally ill mother and my brother, I was paying too much rent and I had very little money for anything else. I felt bad for Rob, he wasn't getting much more than me but he had child support so he was making a lot less than me. David was buying new stuff and living the good life. I know he was trying to pay back his parents for all of the early financing of the magazine but he was still doing OK. He should have paid Rob more, he never would have made it without him.

Anyway, relations were strained a little between me and David and even with Rob sometimes.I let my friend stay with me since he was struggling and I had a huge room so I didn't think Rob would mind. He didn't seem to, since my friend would also buy us food and give him rides to the train station sometimes. But I know I was pushing it too far, my friend was there a lot so it wasn't that easy. Plus I knew David and he didn't like each other so that caused some friction.

In late July just two days after my 31st birthday David fired me. I was really surprised and pissed that he would have me leave everything behind in San Diego, only to fire me for no reason a year later. A few months before he talked to me about missing deadlines--everybody was missing deadlines--and learning to type. He asked if it was too much work and I said of course it's too much work, but I'm willing to do it. He mentioned something about how we would have a problem if these issue continued but he never said he would fire me. I remember that before my birthday I had a bunch of work to finish before I could take off to San Diego for a series of gigs and Birthday parties, and I finished it all. I never caused us to miss any production deadlines, so missing small unrealistic deadlines that he set in production meetings seemed irrelevant. I was also the most expendable person in the office so it was logical for him to get rid of me to set an example. He also wanted to hire his friend ( which he did) who is a very talented writer but didn't know much about music and soon after got fired for something very stupid. I think he was also mad that I didn't finish a review for the new Mixmaster Mike release, since we always gave the parent company top-review priority.

The worst thing is that just one week earlier he watched me sign a year-long lease with our landlord. That ended up being a pain in my ass because I didn't want to leave Rob hanging so I couldn't just leave. They gave me severance pay that equaled one month's pay, David assured Rob that I would be fine but the truth was, that money didn't last long at all since my rent was more than half of what I made. Plus I owed Moonshine money from a loan that I took out to help my mom, so I ended up with enough to pay my rent and buy a few groceries.

So that was the end of my relationship with BPM. They continued to humor me with little illustration assignments here and there but I was struggling, so I ended up moving back to San Diego six months later.

I still wanted to create a new version of Messenger, but I knew that there were most likely other businesses called messenger and I knew that aquiring "Messenger" as a domain name was very unlikely. I came up with Messenger Music service, which was perfect since the name should reflect my true intentions which are to provide a service in which good music should be easy to track down or learn about.

Now with the internet it's a hell of a lot easier to find different music, but much of it still goes unnoticed, and many people are not too willing to dig for it. They mostly rely on friends and media to tell them about what's out there.

My primary goal with this venture is to utilized current and future media. To have a successful print publication is nearly impossible since it is so expensive and most companies with ad budgets do not want to risk losing money on an unproven eneterprise.

Money is not my primary interest because I know that I can make money from residual resources that this venture will provide. I do have a plan for this project to generate income but I will not rely on it.

So there you have it, a little about me and a short history of how this project came together. I hope it proves useful to you and I hope that if you wish to contribute, you'll contact me.

Respect,
Jon Wesley Ewell