By snoadmin
In my “The Scene Report” published in the Feb. 8 issue of the Daily Forty-Niner, I talked about mismatched artists on big tours. In that column I wrote, “Even odder than the Taking Back Sunday and Underoath tour is the Alternative Press Bands You Need to Know Tour featuring pop-punk poster boys Cute Is What We Aim For with the post-hardcore experiment Circa Survive as co-headliners. These bands don’t even belong in the same state as each other, but they will be playing on the same stage every night.”
While I still believe that to be true, I was recently presented with the opportunity to interview the managing editor of Alternative Press magazine, Leslie Simon.
Alternative Press has become known as the “scenester bible,” with its impressive track record of being first in excavating bands, trends and genres that go on to become mainstream. It has become a must-read for artists, record labels, A&R people and basically anybody in the industry. The magazine is based in Cleveland.
One of the most popular issues annually is the “100 Bands You Need to Know” issue. The editors choose two up-and-coming bands they think are going to impact the music scene the most in upcoming months, write feature stories on them and put them on the cover. In addition to that coveted pair, the magazine also picks out 98 more bands to feature. This issue is the foundation for the Bands You Need To Know Tour, which hits the Avalon in Los Angeles this Saturday night.
“This tour is kind of an experiment to see how far we could take it,” Simon said. “We always said we wanted to do a tour and we wanted to focus it on something that was special and specific to the magazine, and there really isn’t anything better than our 100 band issue. So we thought if we could make a tour and take a couple different bands from a couple different genres and have them not all kill each other that it would be a pretty awesome success.”
Alternative Press started in 1985 by its current president, Mike Shea. Originating as a “fanzine,” the magazine slowly started gaining steam through the late ’80s and ’90s with its rock and punk coverage. The magazine is kind of the Hot Topic of the magazine industry in that its content fluctuates as the music scene changes.
If you were to look at the magazine’s covers from the late 1990s and early 2000s, you would see bands like Korn, Marilyn Manson, Tori Amos and Creed on the cover. Toward the end of the nu-metal era, the magazine was struggling and needed a change. That’s when it put Dashboard Confessional front man Chris Carrabba on the cover.
“When we put Chris Carrabba and Dashboard Confessional on the cover, it was so different than what anybody else in a music magazine was really doing,” Simon said. “Zines has been following this music for years, but for a real glossy, national magazine to pay attention to this scene that kind of fostered itself in the VFW halls and basements across the country was such a huge step. I think it really stuck with readers because they wanted something real, they wanted something heartfelt, something that if they couldn’t do it, they could relate to it.”
Today’s covers of Alternative Press feature bands like Panic! At The Disco, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and Taking Back Sunday – bands that have broken into mainstream now but may have not without the coverage the magazine gave them. Alternative Press gave several of these bands their first magazine cover.
“It’s a very, very, very detailed and difficult process and if I told you I would have to kill you,” joked Simon about how the editors pick bands for the issue. “It’s very secret. It’s very scientific. There’s a lot of bloodshed that occurs. A lot of caffeine, and a couple cupcakes thrown in for good measure.”
“It’s a combination of everything,” Simon said “It’s not just full of personal agendas. You pick your battles and you fight for the bands that you think are worth fighting for. You have to compromise on the bands that maybe you aren’t so crazy about, but recognize that maybe someone else will be. The list always ends up kind of making itself.”
Looking at the stellar track record of the magazine that is first to cover bands that go on to be so successful, the bands on the Bands You Need To Know Tour could be filling arenas soon. Philadelphia-based Circa Survive – which features former Saosin front man Anthony Green – has emerged from the Warped Tour trenches with its powerful post-hardcore ballads. They are teamed up with Buffalo, N.Y.-based Cute Is What We Aim For on the tour. Cute also came out of the Warped Tour scene, but for different reasons. They are known for upbeat, pop songs with sugary hooks. The pair makes for one odd couple.
“It is [an odd match], but it isn’t,” Simon said. “I think that while maybe certain fans get really territorial, I hope that they walk out of there thinking, ‘Wow…that was really cool. I have never seen a bill like that. That was really diverse, and it worked.'”
While I have my aforementioned doubts about the tour, I will definitely try to go into the tour on Saturday with an open mind.
“It’s really too early to see how the tour fares, but I know already that the first couple of dates have been sold out,” Simon said. “The response has been great. [Circa Survive and Cute Is What We Aim For touring together] was almost a when-pigs-fly kind of situation, but we made it happen. Hopefully, it will make kids scratch their heads so hard that they’ll have nail marks on them.”
