I've been reading this fun book, called Built To Grind. It's a 25 year anthology from the Independent Truck Company. It's fun to read about the glory years of skateboarding, its decline and resurgence as street skating. I remember subscribing to Skateboarder back in the day and how it changed its name to Action Now at the end, in an attempt to cover all kinds of action sports. It reminded me of my own decision to make in the mid-90s when metal was getting thrashed by the industry with a musical shift of grand proportions. In some ways, I wish I would have changed the name to Heaven's Mental and specialized in the harder edge of punk rock, etc, putting bands like Blenderhead and MxPx on the cover. I wonder how that would have gone over. Would I have caught any flak from those in the mental health profession?
For those that can remember MxPx was on the cover of the first issue of HM, although it was a "split" cover that had to be turned upside down to "switch" cover bands. The other one was the retro 70s group Imagine This. What was I thinking? The covers that followed were: Guardian, Michael Sweet, Jesus Freaks, and Stavesacre.
Posted by Doug Van Pelt at December 20, 2004 08:47 AM