PRESS-ING AFFAIRS.
If you can’t blow your own horn, you probably haven’t accomplished anything in the first place. That’s why we’re spending the next two years uncovering dusty boxes of faded issues, reconnecting with old colleagues, smiling and sometimes cringing over ALTERNATIVE PRESS’ past 18 years, while looking toward our 20th birthday.

“In the end, all we can hope for is that we will succeed in adding to the support the local scene needs and deserves. We may last a few months, or we may last five years, we don’t know. Yet, we won’t give up.”

The above paragraph isn’t pulled from the Web site of a new punk band or an old issue of MRR. It was taken out of an editorial that appeared in the very first issue of AP, which hit the streets of Cleveland back in June of 1985. In hindsight, the author of that editorial, AP publisher Mike Shea, obviously lowballed the level of success of the magazine you are now holding. But what’s never changed is the conviction he’s had about music and culture.

Oh, who are we kidding! You know what made Shea start AP? It wasn’t the free records. It wasn’t to be King Of The Scene (like there was that big a scene to lord over in Cle back then). It wasn’t a God complex fostered by repeated viewings of Citizen Kane. You know what AP staffers have to thank for our jobs every day? Huh? Mononucleosis. Mike?

In the spring of 1985, I came down with mono, and I contracted some weird virus that attacked my peripheral nerve. It paralyzed my right arm. I was misdiagnosed; the doctors told me, “Don’t use your arm for three weeks.” My muscles deteriorated, and I couldn’t even hold a pen.

While I was going through muscle therapy (basically turning doorknobs for an hour), I decided that I was going to write. So I decided to do a fanzine about the punk and new-wave music I was into at the time. I always wanted to stand up for the underground and unite it. Back then, I felt there was so much happening and no way to find out about it. When was the new Meatmen album coming out? Are the Exploited touring? (Obviously, there was no Internet in 1985.)

A lot of the fanzines and college radio stations back then were really negative. Everybody was fighting one another. There wasn’t any kind of cohesive voice. I saw an opportunity to unite these factions and get the word out, whether it was about DRI or Dead Or Alive. I got heavily criticized for putting Depeche Mode in the zine beside Black Flag. I didn’t care-we were all one scene; we were all in the same boat. We hated all the music on the radio, and all the crap bands that would come to town. We’re all into the underground-let’s put it all in the same spot.

There was this zine from Parma, Ohio, Negative Print, that hated us the most. They were all about tearing the scene apart, that whole “We were there, these kids don’t know nothin’.” They were an older bunch of punks who dismissed you if you weren’t into the Ramones, the Dead Boys and Pere Ubu. Which is fine: You should respect that music, but you should be willing to let people learn about it, without judgment. People started agreeing with AP’s philosophy, and Negative Print wasn’t around too much longer.

My grandmother gave me the money for the first issue, and my mother helped out as well, but I didn’t know anything about the business side of things. As time progressed, we started to make some money through ad sales, but we weren’t charging enough. In fact, we weren’t charging at all, and this was during a climate where anybody with access to a Xerox machine and a stapler could charge a buck for their zine and people would pay for it. I was trying to build AP, and I didn’t feel right charging for it.

Instead, I began booking punk shows. There were a lot of local bands that were into what we were doing enough that they played benefits for us. There was this older guy, a road manager for huge acts like Van Halen and Barry Manilow, who befriended us and was totally into what we were doing. Since he knew all the local light and sound companies, we were able to get top gear for our shows. Some of these punk bands that were only together for five months were playing through state-of-the-art PA systems. Some of these bands didn’t realize how badly they sucked until they heard themselves for the first time.

We made money on the first five shows, but when we started booking bands like Suicidal Tendencies, the promoters in town realized we were cutting into their business, so they began booking punk bands. The money began to dry up.

By the end of the year, we were starting to get great positive feedback locally and nationally. But I was too busy stressing out over money to appreciate it (we didn’t spend money on anything but the print bill). Everything we worked hard on looked like it was going to slip away.