The first turning point in The WholeNote’s 29-year-plus journey was when a column originally called Classical Heaven on $100 a month, in a scrappy neighbourhood newspaper called The Kensington Market DRUM, outgrew its host, So we took the plunge and spun it off as a separate publication in September 1995. We called it Pulse.
“We” were Allan Pulker, who had come up with the idea of the Classical column in the DRUM in the first place. I had helped start the Kensington Market DRUM eight years earlier and was its editor. Allan, a classical flute player himself, knew his way around the classical music community. I had been in the DRUM editorial trenches since it was founded, so I had a bit of an idea about mistakes to avoid.
The way “Classical Heaven” worked in the DRUM, Allan would gather together all the relevant listings he could lay hands on, for events within a “reasonable distance” of Kensington Market. (I think we defined “reasonable” as a ten-minute bike ride.) All those listings would get published and he would then make his “picks” (within the $100 budget) and write about why he had chosen them. Even within our “ten minute bike-ride” radius we were getting way too many listings for the amount of space the DRUM could afford.
We modelled Pulse physically on the first issue of the DRUM, eight years earlier – a forward-fold four-page newsprint tabloid, for the print nerds among you. We also adopted the DRUM’s distribution model – controlled circulation (i.e. free to the reader), with no more than 20 copies to any distribution point. And we agreed that we would never charge musicians and concert presenters to be in the listings because spreading the word about their work was the whole reason for the magazine to exist.
Our first print bill (4,000 copies) was $150, and we more than covered it on ad sales!
Turning point number two was the kind of sideways thing you think is a disaster, but thank your stars for later on. It was early 1997 and Pulse was sailing along quite nicely. Circulation was up to 12,000 copies and the magazine (still black and white but no longer tabloid) was up to 24 pages. Then the letter from the big law firm: Tower Records, a big US chain had just arrived in town and was flexing its muscles. “Pulse” we were informed by Big Law, was Tower Records’ trademark for their in-house music magazine. We were forthwith to cease and desist.
First instinct was to fight. Good publicity, big US bully picking on the little guy, and all that. A very wise lawyer friend explained: “if you have a trademark you have to defend it or lose it. Just tell them you need time to change the name and they will be only too happy to oblige.”
So we did, with our TMFKAP cover getting a bunch of smiles while we asked readers to help find a new name. Why “WholeNote”? Some obvious reasons, content-wise. But one reason that really helped cement the change. The name, WholeNote, is very hard to hear the first time round. “HomeNotes?” So you get to repeat it, and even spell it. And then people get it. And don’t forget it.
Next defining moment, I’d have to say, came in the summer of 2001, when we launched DISCoveries. “CD Reviews with a difference” the tagline said. Remember CDs? 11,183 reviews later, despite being told that CDs, like print, are dead, we are still receiving around 160 every print cycle, by mail no less, for consideration for review. Remember mail? And the artists reviewed don’t ask for links to online reviews, even though we are online. They want pdfs to show that the review was in print. Go figure.
More to the point, our DISCoveries section brought dozens of new writers, and dear friends, into play for us – and a tranche of readers as passionate about recorded music as our most fervent concertgoing readers are about the editorial coverage we give to the live events we list.
April 2020 needs no explanation as to why it was a turning point. Maybe just an explanation as to why we decided to keep going through those terrible two and a half years, when live listings dried up entirely, and we went through one false start after another, conjuring phantom turning points as we went. “We’re all in the same boat together” was a favourite rallying cry back then, remember? More often than not from people whose livelihoods were relatively unimpaired. “More like ‘we’re all in the same storm’” one arts worker colleague dourly said.
And so here we are at another turning point. Entering our 30th year of operations, with hopes as high as in the euphoric early years when we snipped our classical music listings out of the DRUM to set sail on their own, creating and publishing information that over the years has helped float a lot of artistic boats – craft of all sizes. And here’s the funny thing. Right now, The WholeNote is in the position the DRUM was in 29 years ago.
The world of music we need to continue to document, as a community good, is far more diverse and extensive than can be accommodated within the confines of the space The WholeNote can afford.
So, here we are, just about ready to take the plunge!
David Perlman can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com
