DOWNLOAD HERE or COVER STORY HERE

A lot of the music we receive here in the office is self-released. No labels, no glamorous studios. Just hard work, determination, and the belief that the music being created needs to be heard. Being a DIY artist in today’s industry is, let’s face it, easier than it’s ever been (that’s not to say there aren’t challenges). The explosion of home recording we’ve seen in the past 20 years can be traced back to a few renegade computer geeks, who decided to steal some ideas from Xerox back in the 1970s. Those geeks came from a little upstart called Apple.

Steve Jobs passed away about a week we went into production, and while the media has done a good job covering his life and accomplishments, their assessment of his place in music history, while apt, is a bit misguided. Sure, iTunes and the iPod changed the way that people purchase and listen to music on the go (even if the iPod is a glorified Walkman), but the Jobs’ true legacy (at least as far as I’m concerned) will be the Macintosh and how it forever changed the creative fields.

Before the Mac, computers were hard to use. They required the knowledge of complicated command-line interfaces, they were ugly, and they didn’t really do a whole lot for the average consumer or creative professional. Enter the Macintosh, which featured the first GUI available to consumers (pretty much lifted from the research facility Jobs and crew visited while touring Xerox in 1979). Nothing was ever the same after that, and that Jobs was right; 1984 didn’t turn out like 1984.

With the advent of consumer-friendly computers, the software boom of the 1980s led directly to monumental advancements in the fields of audio recording, desktop publishing and graphic design. Skip ahead a few years, and bedroom studios equipped with a Mac can produce records, design album art, and distribute that music directly to the consumer. Who would have known that a few hippie pirates would have sparked such a revolution?

This month’s issue is dedicated to the dreamers who had the courage to think differently.

-Benjamin Ricci

Editor

P.S. – We’re excited to announce our partnership with Teenage Heart Records for a badass compilation called Still Beating, featuring more than 25 New England hardcore, punk and metal bands. The compilation is available for FREE on our website, and is full of killer cuts from awesome bands we’ve covered in the past, and some we need to! Big thanks to Joshua Bottomley for handling all the logistics, and basically doing all the work to make it happen. Head to www.performermag.com/stillbeating for more info.