Doug Van Pelt

Rock and Roll might not be dead, but it's gettin' sick

...all over the world disc jockeys talk the same
every town I'm sounds like the one from where I came...

Busy as a bee in my old chimney on this deadline. It feels like the worst deadline in HM's 24-year history. Not sure if that's the case, but we're aiming to be a week behind. I am so looking forward to the "collapse in a heap of exhaustion" at the end.

We have a cover story on White Collar Sideshow, a cover story on Skillet (what? how do you do two covers? huh?), big features on Paramore, TFK, Pillar, Showbread, Chiodos Says, Superdrag and Leeland.

Christafari

Excerpt from John Davis interview

There's only so much room in a print magazine, and there's always great stuff that's agonizing to cut. The following quotes might not be earth-shattering, but nevertheless it's a part of the story I didn't want to cut.

Sometimes I wish I would have taken an editing class at UT. But another part of me is glad that I get so attached to words that are important to me. It's hard to cut some of these things. I praise God for the vehicle of this website, where we can sort of add extra content.

"I think, to a certain point, when we first started and made the first couple of Superdrag records, we didn’t know anything. Prior to that we recorded on 8-track cassette. On the second record we tried to make this epic studio album. We recorded it with Jerry Finn, who passed away this past summer. That’s why we dedicated this record to him. He used to call us ‘HIGS’ – Huge Industry Giants. It was super meticulous and I think we squeezed some of the vibe off this record. We told Jerry we didn’t want to fix anything in Pro Tools, which was foolish. But he was like, ‘Okay, you’re just going to keep playing and keep singing until it’s as precise as I can make it in Pro Tools.’

“Ever since then, I think I’ve tried to work in reverse to make it more and more immediate - sing it once, maybe twice, and just don’t lose the fire.”

[Where the reunited band is now...]
“It’s kind of like the end of the rainbow. We went through this whole mess and lived. The first song is called ‘Slow To Anger.’ It’s like the book of James meets Superdrag. There’s a lot of thanksgiving. The other guys wrote songs for the record and they totally jibes. It’s not like we’re butting heads."

Lord willing, I'll put some more of this interview in a future HM Magazine Podcast. Look for it here.

Terry Taylor

I pulled myself away from deadline to see a show by a Christian alternative rock legend -- Terry Taylor. The guy is touring solo with acoustic guitar, Steve Hindalong on drums, and Terry's son on bass.

My favorite anecdote from the night. As he was introducing the song "Bibleland," he talked about this older man that built a "theological response to the Happiest Place on Earth (Disneyland)." He dryly said, "You know, it'd be real easy to ridicule and mock the man," and he paused for effect. The point he was about to make was poignant. But he said, "which I'm about to do in the next song..."

:)

He talked about how the man, who is probably long gone by now, did this Christian/biblical themepark in Southern California out of faith. Terry mentioned how, "without faith, it's impossible to please God," and he mentioned that, with his measure of faith, this man might have pleased God with this park.

I'll try to add more later...(as time allows)

My friend acted like Jesus

Recently a friend of mine acted just like Jesus. A close friend of his that had wronged him took an opportunity in front of friends to repent to this guy. It was the kind of repentance you hope to see: sorrow for doing wrong and a commitment to not repeat the offense in the future. It was good. My friend stood there and looked in his friend's eyes. This guy had every right to say something, to remind this person how he'd been wronged, how it hurt, how it wasn't the sort of thing a friend did to another. But he didn't. He showed restraint. There was kindness in his silence. Like the woman caught in adultery before Jesus, my friend was making a statement in a non-verbal way that said, "Neither do I condemn you."

It was so beautiful to see that. I'm grateful I saw that. I'm glad I have friends like that.

Advertising Experiement

I'm experimenting with uploading several "info-mails" I use as tools to tell people about our advertising specials/packages/opportunities. Below should be a list of links, each of which will be a page that describes and presents an aspect of our current marketing opps...


Let's talk about marketing....


What can I tell you, a marketing person, about marketing?


HM Marketing Packages


The Rock & Roll Town Hall


Special Fashion "Advertorial Section"


Add'l Indie Artist Specials


Buy 2 Get 1 Free Offer


HM's Twitter Advantage


Ad Price List


Ad Specs/Sizes


And with 118+counting text-subscribers to this service (sign up yourself!), here is a marketing tool that we'll start offering soon (when we feel like the number of mobile alert subscribers are up): HM Text Messaging Service

blogs are for griping...and this is a complaint!

Okay, it's been a trialsome time for me lately. Whether it's our trailer blowing tires on the way to Cornerstone Festival, magazines not arriving there when they should, or bands not granting interview requests to a "Christian magazine," it might be a skunk spraying its odor all over and underneath our office and making our working environment one stinky situation...

But here's something weird. One of the bands we wanted to do a cover story on (prior to choosing Skillet as one of our two covers) was Paramore. They have a new album that is likely to get a lot of attention. The publicist, who has always been great to work with, gently informed me that the band did a "cover exclusive" sort of thing, where no other magazines can have them on the cover until October.

What kind of situation is this?

I understand someone getting exclusive use of a certain publicity photo (we've done that on occasion), but exclusive use of a band for one magazine title?!?!

What magazine was this? I wonder. If you're a band or a label, what's wrong with your band being on the cover of every mag in the universe at the same time? Wouldn't that be a cool thing?

I guess I have experienced this before. Some band that shall remain nameless (but rhymes with a larger, former capital of Germany) and some magazine that shall remain nameless (unless I accidentally said the word "relevant") did this to us a few years ago. A big magazine can tell a label, "We'll put your band on the cover, but we want an exclusive," and the label and the smaller magazines have to just grin and bear it.

I guess I'm kind of shocked that this would be done in the larger mainstream market. Maybe it's not... Maybe it's that cool (I really do enjoy it) twenty-something mag out of Florida again. It's hard for me to imagine AP or Spin or Rolling Stone doing something like this. It'll be interesting to find out come late August, huh?

Another couple of weird things: I can't get a review of the new Paramore album unless I have a writer in LA or NY go into the label's office and listen to it. No streaming sites, no watermarked downloads. Only in-office listening experience. I wonder if they'd comply with a "Go back! Play that chorus again!" request...? Isn't that weird?

Also, the publicist (or label or band or management) denied my request for a large photo to use for our centerfold poster for the Sep/Oct issue. It's kinda weird when a band doesn't want the publicity, promotion and prestige that comes with this kind of coverage. Makes you wanna scratch your head, huh?

Okay, enough griping! Now let's listen to some cool music.

My bio

Doug Van Pelt is the founder and editor of HM, a 24-year-old Christian hard music magazine that Guitar World refers to as the Bible of Christian Rock.* HM covers the wide span of hard music, including hardcore, metal, emo, rock, indie rock, punk, and industrial. Releasing the first issue in 1985 as Heaven’s Metal, Van Pelt’s magazine soon competed on the newsstands with the likes of Circus, Hit Parader, Rolling Stone, Metal Edge, AP, and Spin (the last three of which also started in 1985). Propelled by the popularity of Christian heavy metal bands such as Stryper, Heaven’s Metal soon became the most respected rock magazine in the Christian music industry, which led Van Pelt to concentrate his efforts on the magazine full-time.

Van Pelt penned columns in both CCM (“On The Beat: Rock/Alternative”) and Guitar World Magazines (“Stairway to Heaven”) between 1987 and 1994. He has been the focus of articles in newspapers ranging from The Dallas Morning News to The Austin Business Journal; as well as the recent book, Body Piercing Saved My Life. As for his own magazine, he guided his interviews and relations with artists and recording industry staff with journalistic integrity while also staying true to his faith and concern for his writing subjects. With this in mind, Van Pelt began interviewing non-Christian bands for a feature called “What So & So Says,” which has become one of the magazine’s most popular features. Artists as diverse as Green Day, Def Leppard, Thrice, Megadeth, Kiss, My Chemical Romance, Korn, Collective Soul, and The Misfits have been interviewed by Van Pelt, uncovering their thoughts and feelings about the person of Jesus Christ. The artists usually appreciate the unique questions and the fact that they actually get quoted accurately in the pages of HM. 20 of these interviews were recently published in the book Rock Stars On God.

Doug currently lives near Austin, TX with his wife Charlotta, and daughters Kaela and Rachel where they attend Calvary Chapel.

* Guitar World, October 2000 Issue

ACL Fest

I'm looking forward to the ACL Fest in September. I'm especially excited about seeing MUTEMATH (which, I discovered this past month, is all one word and in all-caps) and Ben Harper. Here's who I wish were also playing: mewithoutYou, Hundred Year Storm and Seabird (to name just a couple of very worthy bands).

Cornerstone.3

Here's some photos:





Children 18:3 getting up there...





Owl City





Spoken fans awaiting their energetic set





Matt Baird getting the crowd connected so he could speak a blessing to them. Very cool blessing, too.





Showbread setlist





A crappy photo of Austrian Death Machine (just to give you at least a muddy look at what went down. Look around the cornerstonefestival.com site for clear, actually good photos of ADM).

Cornerstone.2

Brief notes:

I have limited access to internet, so for the best, up-to-date (live, while it's happening) updates on the festival, follow me on twitter.com/dooglar or on my facebook.com/HM.Magazine page. I'll post the occasional photo, too. While you're at it, follow many tweeters at the cornerstonefestival.com page, which has a twitter update on the main page.

Other brief notes (coming briefly)...