Blog of Sal

Remembering Three Years of Zouch Magazine Three members of The Rolling Stones have been playing together for over 50 yrs There's an old adage in rock and roll that goes something like: "A band that plays together stays together". This adage has certainly held true for me in my life, in more ways than one. Some of the bands I was in in my teens and early 20s seemed as though they might be successful. Yet in the end, all save one of these music projects crumbled without achieving anything at all. One group quit because a band member went away to college, another time we lost a jamspace, etc. The reason these projects failed was simply that we did not follow the adage. There were no dramatic breakups for me, only a series of gentle decampments mostly owing to logistical difficulties. I've been running an online magazine called Zouch Magazine for three years, and I just now realized that the old adage has a parallel to my publishing experience. It relates to pub...

Think about how being an artist has changed. Back in the 20th century works needed a big release to have a chance. If this push wasn't big enough to blast something immediately into the mainstream, then it often faded quickly into obscurity. Now, everything lives on the web to be shared and experienced at any time, by anyone, in any instant. Of course, we still see the phenomenon of brand new things trending and dominating the media space. But overall, works are less likely to feel like wasted efforts simply because they've failed to immediately find a large (paying) audience. Most 20th century artists never cared about the big media outlets, but these were necessary evils. It isn't advisable to bite the hand that feeds when you're right in the middle of trying to accomplish something. It was  more useful than it was demeaning to be complacent. But today, thanks to the good ole internet, an artist can share their voice with everyone forev...