Ray Van Horn, Jr.: Editor-wise, I left one venue because I’d pitched a couple of interviews that I never heard back on, and then found out the editor took them behind my back and did them himself. Publicists are generally my bread and butter and I have enjoyed many, many great relationships, considering the majority of them politely told me to get bent when I first started! A bad publicist is one who tells me I’m set up to cover a show and the venue doesn’t have me down on the list. There has been a lot of change in the guard with the publicists I deal with at the record labels and private agencies. It’s very alarming to me because it shows instability in this business that is already shaky due to technology altering profit margins. I’m quite irritated that one of my favorite labels has changed publicists, because I was given instant attention and handled with extreme professionalism, but the new replacement is lax in communication and I’ve had to let assignments go because of the lack of response. That’s bad business and I hope the label picks up on it soon before their good name is mucked.
Tour managers I often see are the scapegoats and consciences of bands, so I tend to cut them some slack, but in one particular case, the tour manager infuriated me a couple of times. I had trekked 4.5 hours to cover a band, and everything was kosher as far as the ticket and the photo pass were concerned. When I arrived in town, I called the tour manager and told him I was there. The band had finished sound check, but still the TM was trying to push me off until the next morning, which he claimed the band would still be in town then. Come on, man, who’re you trying to kid? I had to assert myself on this guy, indicating how far I’d driven to do this, and finally he relented and had me come to the venue and I had a terrific interview, though I took note that I was on a stopwatch by my interviewee, and at exactly a half hour’s tick, we stopped. On the other hand, my interviewee was a terrific host and said I could hang out backstage as long as I liked, and furthermore, he offered me his hotel room because he told me they were leaving pretty quickly that night. They’d be in town the next morning, huh? Riiiiiight. So my interviewee then tells me I should hang out after the gig and party with them, giving me full invitation. Problem is, a photo pass, if you’re a part of this business, is not a V.I.P. pass, and though the band’s TM knew I’d been invited to hang out after the gig, he blew me off completely since he was busy wrangling up girls for the after party. It was a shameless display, and as I tried to get his attention to vouch for me past the same idiot bouncers who had seen me run around the club all day, he looked at me with a dirty grin and kept moving. The bouncers refused to let me pass, and I became far wiser about this business that night.
Who are some other metal writers that you respect?
My editor for Metal Maniacs, Liz Ciavarella probably wins that award, because the woman carries a tremendous weight on her shoulders in getting the issues out each month, but I also enjoy reading her interviews and did take a note or two before I even started writing for them. Liz is highly respected in New York, and one of the best times I’ve had ever in this business was when my wife and I went up to New York and we met with Liz, her publicist husband Dave, who is one of my best allies, and John Comprix, the guitarist from Beyond Fear. This was on St. Patty’s Day weekend and we were out until 5:00 a.m. carrying on together. Considering I had an interview with Tim “Ripper” Owens that had gotten botched due to our being stuck two hours in the Lincoln Tunnel, it was an amazing time up there. Liz has had to deal with a lot of stuff from her writers (including this one) and she handles it all with grace. She lives a life I partially envy.
There’s a number of writers out there I really like, but Scott Alisoglu is one I had a nice little bond with for awhile. He interviewed me for my one-day-it’ll-be-done metal book…
You also write a blog. What type of writing do you do there, and who is your target audience?
I write for two blogs, my personal one entitled “Pulses, Verses and Other Flotsam,” and another one with three other bloggers called “Whole Lotta Album Covers.”
“Pulses” really has no target audience; all are welcome to come read. Granted, I have a heavy slant towards metal themes and topics, but I write about whatever comes to my mind regarding all music genres, movies, politics, world events, and on occasion I toss out some of my poetry that I used to read at open mike events. I have a couple of regular events on my blog, the first being “Repeat Revolutions Wednesdays,” where every week I post my top-10 albums that I’ve listened to more than once, and I ask for my readers’ lists to keep it interactive. I also have a long-term blog project at “Pulses” called “CD Shelf Clean-Up,” where I’m listening to every single CD on my shelf (which is over the 2600 count) and determining whether it will remain in my collection or be cast away. So far, I’ve only made it through the A’s, but that was a very long trail in itself. I also talk quite a bit about my experiences as a metal journalist; this past week I chronicled my weekend road trip to New York City to cover Skinny Puppy one day, then down to Virginia the next day for the Doro Pesch and Chris Caffery gig.
“Whole Lotta Album Covers” is a simplistic though highly fun exercise where four of us post an album cover we either think is cool or it’s trash and write brief anecdotes about them with the intent of generating discussion. Two of the other bloggers are amongst my oldest friends.
