 |
  
 
 |
|
#102 01/1997
#103 02/1997
#104 03/1997
#105 04/1997
#106 05/1997
#107 06/1997
#108 07/1997
#109 08/1997
#110 09/1997
#111 10/1997
#112 11/1997
#113 12/1997
One of the things I was gonna say last month was that a very, very important part of being a good boss is making sure you recognize your own strengths and weaknesses. It’s a huge blow to your ego when you realize you’re not perfect and you can’t do everything like Superman, but it’s important to recognize. Otherwise, sooner or later, you’ll fuck everything up. So, thanks to my finally realizing that I was more of an editor than a numbers person, I asked Carla and Norman to handle that part and they really got the company organized financially for the first time. I licked my wounds but was relieved they made sense of everything, and they both taught me a lot. In the meantime, I focused on what I was good at, which was generating editorial ideas and organizing strategy sessions.
So, since not much else happened that year, I’ll repeat what we did last issue and let the covers (and staff) speak for themselves…
103: Marilyn Manson
The first time we ever did multiple covers. My favorite was the private-school children giving Manson a manicure. The boy in the photo cried for 10 minutes before the shoot; he was afraid of Marilyn. Manson had a private conversation with the boy, and everything was better. [NW]
104: Tool
With just two weeks left in the production cycle, I got called into Mike’s office. Apparently the writer who’d been assigned the story didn’t get along with the members of Tool—or, maybe they didn’t want to be his friend and swap cell-phone numbers. Whatever the case, I was commanded to bail out the cover story. The band held the media in great disdain and began making up their own legends—like being followers of Lachrymosity, an invented belief system that requires you to cry several times a day to achieve inner peace. (Does this mean Tool predicted emo?) They acted bored with the interview and visibly showed contempt for some of their fans during the brief time I was with them (one out of five Tool fans walked upright, if you catch my drift). God bless ’em: Their message has always been to think for yourself, and I hope their fans take that directive at the polls this year. [JP]
I got away with murder again: Aphex Twin’s Richard D. James as lead review. Ha. [DS]
105: Offspring
Today’s lesson in “How Times Have Changed” comes from a reader letter in this issue regarding AP 102’s now-classic Weezer cover story: “I think AP wins the sellout award this month for shameless marketing of an artistically lightweight yet well-sponsored band.” This was not the minority opinion, either. Wonder how many of the people who wrote us in ’98 are practicing revisionist history today. [AB]
Thumbing through 1997’s back issues is sobering. If nothing else, it confirms the transient nature of almost all bands (whither Ubzub and Bisk, two of my faves from ’97?), labels (more indies have died than survived since then), movements (the “Genocyber” column would be a paragraph today), recording formats (The “Singled Out” column would be a sentence today), and even writers (I hear Gil Gershman’s in med school now). Seize the gosh-darn day, brothers and sisters. [DS]
106: Helmet
AP was my first job out of college; Helmet was one of my favorite bands in life; this was my first cover story; and I was fucking terrified. In hindsight, it went well, the band liked the story, and I learned a ton about my craft, but I’ll never forget sitting down to lunch with three-fourths of Helmet in NYC and hearing bassist Henry Bogdan joke, “So, they sent a boy to do a man’s job.” (Gulp.) [AB]
Less than 24 hours after returning from the Tool interview, I was back on a plane out to L.A. to co-anchor a roundtable with Moby and Glenn Danzig. People have their minds made up about these two, but I can honestly say that both men were affable and forthcoming. Danzig actually looked bashful when Moby told him about how, as a kid, he used to sneak out of the house to see the Misfits. [JP]
107: L7
The girls wanted to do something memorable (or should I say pleasurable) for their cover shot, so they put peanut butter on their nether regions and brought in some Labrador Retrievers. This was also our first cover of all bitches—I mean ladies. [NW]
108: Veruca Salt
I remember cover meetings from this period as a mix of brainstorming in utter desperation (unless Korn or Marilyn Manson had a new record) and throwing shit against Rob Cherry’s wall to see what would stick. At the time, Veruca Salt clung well enough; $10 says no one under 30 can remember why today. [AB]
But it was at meetings such as these where Pettigrew proved himself to be among the great comedians of our time. His humor and vast repertoire of impressions kept us all from losing our minds, I think. [DS]
109: Mighty Mighty Bosstones
“AP READERS POLL ARTIST OF THE YEAR”
Lollapalooza’s organizers could’ve saved a ton of dough this summer if they’d just looked back at their showing in the 1998 AP Readers Poll: Even when “alternative rock” meant something, Lollapalooza was still No. 1 in the “worst” department. [AB]
110: Korn
As alternative rock became less commercially viable, we started looking further out for copy-shifting cover options. Enter nü metal. The seven-string-plinking, Bakersfield-based musical aberration known as Korn were selling shitloads of albums to frustrated kids in the hinterland, but they’d yet to receive any serious coverage in a non-techie mag. John Pecorelli wrote a sympathetic piece for AP, capturing the Coors-chugging quintet at the precise point of commercial liftoff. The story made it safe for other mags to cover the genre—but not entirely. When Spin attempted the same trick with Korn months later, their photographer reportedly received a physical drubbing for his condescending attitude. [RC]
We got some hate mail for putting “mooks” on the cover. I’d usually write these people back and tell them to get 50,000 of their best friends to buy Girls Against Boys back issues or shut the hell up. Nobody ever wrote back, by the way. [JP]
111: Fiona Apple
I’m pretty sure we got this two months before Rolling Stone did, but I still didn’t care. Legend has it, this is the first issue of AP our current managing editor, Leslie Simon, ever saw. This is also the first showing of Insane Clown Posse in our magazine. I have to go now. [JP]
This cover was supposed to be the Foo Fighters, but their photo shoot was a disaster—we got 15 minutes at soundcheck with the band in baseball caps. I’m not sure if they were aware that it was for a cover. Fiona wasn’t much better. She was extremely emotional and self-conscious—but she left her baseball cap at home. [NW]
112: Oasis
John Pecorelli’s brilliant participatory journalism in his “I Was A Casualty Of Gwar” feature should’ve won an award. My sides still hurt from laughing at it. And I’m proud to say AP had the foresight to review Jack Kevorkian’s magnum opus, A Very Still Life. Dude, we were on it. [DS]
113: Jane’s Addiction
We planned two different cover shots for this issue, and we couldn’t decide which was more enticing, so I and an intern were sent to a local CD store and coffee shop to do some market research. We showed the covers to several groups of people who looked like they had a clue, and most of the time we were met with a shrug. This should’ve tipped us off that Jane’s were already past their prime, but the AP staff is a stubborn bunch, and we don’t always let go of the past so easily. [AB]
114: Nine Inch Nails
“25 MOST ANTICIPATED ALBUMS OF 1998”
One of the proudest moments for me since ’97 has been the “Most Anticipated Albums” special issue we do at the end of each year now. It only took about two years before our competitors started copying the idea. Ha-ha! [MS]
