A Couple Final Notes On Entrepreneur

-An administrative judge this month ruled in my favor after I argued I was not fired for cause. In other words, the magazine fired me for no good, legal reason, according to the judge's opinion. That's a fact.

-The magazine had a freelancer recycle and regurgitate the last story -- with new quotes from some of the same sources -- I turned in about "the new entrepreneurial economy" for its December issue. That's a fact.

Entrepreneur Gives Me A Shout

It was strange to pick up the September issue of Entrepreneur magazine at my local newsstand the other day and see a front-of-the-book shout for one of my pieces, a cover Q&A with Patron founder John Paul DeJoria. It was a glowing shout. The issue was being put together about the same time I was fired. Bizarre.

Shea Responds

I love this. I write below that Entrepreneur magazine's editor-in-chief didn't do her job, lied, dropped the ball with at least one advertiser, once wasn't aware of what was in her own magazine, passed up story ideas that ended up in Forbes, Wired and Portfolio, hired people whose skills she wasn't fully clear about, and signed off on edits that weren't even made yet. I write that Entrepreneur, a national title with 600,000-circulation, lost at least one editorial staffer to a third-tier city/regional giveaway because it pays better. I write that when I told Cosper a person she was promoting was "a monkey with a keyboard" she did not refute it. And publisher Ryan Shea, whose response to the editorial staff's June exodus was verbose (and poorly thought out, because it opened up a flood of comments) has practically nothing to say. No denials.

This is what he tells Folio:

"We terminated his employment for cause. As you know there are two sides to every story."

So what's the other side? You mean the man who had a bizarre explanation for why most of his editorial staff left en masse last month (he blamed it on loyalty to an editor who hadn't been at the mag for more than a year) doesn't have more to say? (Funny, too, how Shea trumpeted a better class of editorial staffer and a new design -- with the July cover I wrote used alongside his comments). In California, by the way, it doesn't take much to trigger "cause."

A Note About My Time at Entrepreneur Magazine

My employment at Entrepreneur Media, as a staff writer online and for its magazine, was terminated abruptly on Friday afternoon. The reasons given: Failing to carry out the duties of my job and – I was actually told this – because it was clear I was not happy working there.

I will cede the second point. On the first, let me call bullshit: Since arriving to the job of staff writer at Entrepreneur in September of 2008, I have produced more copy, written more words, interviewed more people, and penned more cover stories than anyone else employed by the company. Repeat that sentence to yourself, then wait to see if anyone from the company refutes it. You’ll hear crickets, and I’ll put money on it. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not perfect, but the quality of my work was clearly above and beyond what the publication was used to, a fact that even the editor-in-chief who fired me admitted. I helped to pioneer the website’s news blog. And most of my online features, including a piece about iPhone apps for music production, were picked up by websites such as MSNBC, The Washington Post and U.S. News & World Report, a feat no one else employed at the mag can claim. During my time at Entreprneur, the editor-in-chief sung my praises, describing my writing to another editor as “beautiful,” and saying things like, Thank God Romero is here, because no one else seems to have a clue. In one email, dated April 30, she wrote, “You’re a great reporter.” When I was fired, I emailed a former Entrepreneur deputy editor. He left me a voicemail: “Failing to carry out duties? Give me a ******* break. You’re the only one that produced anything there.” To top it off, I commuted from the Westside of Los Angeles to Irvine, California (in Orange County) for the gig. The roundtrip took two hours, but spending three-hours on the road was not unusual. While the publication recently had an editor and a writer working from home in New York, I was told that I could not work from home – ever.

I left my last two jobs, as senior writer at alternative weekly LA CityBeat, and as staff writer at Ciudad magazine, sister publication of the mighty Los Angeles magazine and Texas Monthly, on good terms and with great clips. My point here is that, while Entrepreneur can claim that I did not fit into its culture of mediocrity, something I’d be happy to concede, it cannot state with any veracity that I did not carry out my duties as a staff writer. They put my work on the cover five times since I started there in September. (See some examples at my site). Given advance deadlines, I was eligible to write seven covers in my time at the magazine. Five out of seven isn’t bad. I stand by everything that went under my byline there, too, and I’m proud of my output and ability, again and again, to take on last-minute assignments from a wishy washy leadership and turn them around without breaking a sweat.

The real reason behind my termination was editor-in-chief Amy Cosper’s growing distaste for the presence of a knowing soul. It seemed like every time she saw my face she was looking in a mirror that reflects her own deceitfulness. You see, to call Cosper a journalist would be a stretch. Her own, official bio at Entrepreneur.com boasts that her previous claim to fame was the job of “entrepreneur-in-residence” at WiesnerMedia, a C-level magazine publisher whose titles include the stellar ColoradoBIZ and Trucking Times. In her bio, Cosper states that, while at Wiesner, “she solicited and evaluated new business plans, ventures and partnerships to drive the company’s initiative to diversify its portfolio.” I'm not sure what that means, but there’s not a word about being a journalist.

For good reason: During my experience at Entrepeneur, Cosper could not be bothered to make many assignments, read much copy, edit many sentences or manage many staff members. She once told an incoming editor to find out what the folks back in the cubicles did. This was after she had spent more than half a year at the mag. These were her people – her responsibility. She sometimes asked me and the other staff writer what we were working on, and what deadlines we had -- even when she was the only editor left at the mag. She didn't know what we were doing! She didn't give us deadlines! Ever! Recently I scored an interview with Mark Burnett, the reality TV king who's producing a series about entrepreneurs. Cosper told me to put it on the blog. Apparently she was too busy to edit it for a mag or web feature. So it got buried among daily posts.

In one springtime incident witnessed by another editor who is now also departed, a folder containing a printed-out story headed for the editing rounds for its first time -- it was virgin copy -- had already been signed off multiple times by Cosper. I lost count how many times I pitched stories – Dov Charney, the new (entrepreneurial) economy, the iPhone app bonanza, the impending entrepreneurial run on Cuba, the rise of alternative carmakers such as Fisker (based in the same town as Entrepreneur – Irvine, California) – that did not register or that were turned down outright. Those stories ended up being subsequently covered in the likes of Wired, Portfolio and Forbes. Even when I would show her a Forbes cover story that I had pitched long ago, she had a so-what response. On iPhone apps, Cosper later got it, but only after similar stories had appeared in competitors such as Inc. and Fast Company – and a few months after I finally went ahead and penned a piece for Entrepreneur’s own website.

Another example of Cosper’s detached character: At a staff lunch in June, I mentioned a story I had done for the magazine – published earlier this year – about the growing business of personal gene testing. Her face was blank again. What story, she asked. I had to explain it to her. It was news to her. This was a story that appeared in HER magazine!

When I was hired I was fresh from a job at one of the most respected magazine companies, Emmis Publishing, in the land. Anyone with a clue in the glossy business knows Emmis and how, for example, its titles Texas Monthly and Los Angeles are perennial winners and finalists at the National Magazine Awards. This was another fact lost on Cosper, as she concluded that my experience painted me as more of an online and news writer and, thus, I would be working more for the web during my tenure. A much younger reporter with virtually no magazine experience would be used more for print, I was told. I was dumbfounded. I’m pretty sure, at this point, that she didn’t read my clips before hiring me. I proved her assessment wrong (I, in fact, did it all – covers, inside stories, online features and blog posts), and as recently as June Cosper sung my praises in front of the entire staff.

In early April she hired a real journalist, award-winning magazine veteran Mike Kessler, as her new second-in-command. I was excited, as were my fellow staffers, some of whom I helped train in the basics of journalism -- if only by example. Kessler, a National Magazine Award finalist whose work has appeared in The Best American Magazine Writing, made quick work of the previously chaotic editorial process and soon had me doing some of my best work there (the July split-covers of Entrepreneur are both mine, and both are results of my work with Kessler). He helped Cosper weed out some of those cubicle dwellers who either did nothing, or didn’t have a clue. (One now-departed editor once told me that as long as a subject’s publicist was okay with it, a disputed fact goes their way, regardless of the evidence). Kessler cleaned the place up even as Cosper continually lied to him: She said he wouldn't have to deal with the sales side of Entrepreneur; he did. She said the magazine was a member of the American Society of Magazine Editors. It wasn't.

I am told I was never considered for layoffs at the time. To the contrary, I was praised by Cosper. After that round of spring cleaning shed the executive editor, managing editor and a few others, the layers between Cosper’s schizophrenia and me started to shrink. At the end of his second month there, Kessler issued an ultimatum to Entrepreneur’s ownership: Cosper wasn’t carrying out the duties of an editor-in-chief, and he was. They could give him a raise, or make her do her work. (In his presence, Cosper scanned over Kessler's 800-word memo in 15-seconds; she originally told him she could reallocate some money to meet his demands, but later recanted). In his final letter to the magazine’s publisher, Ryan Shea, Kessler wrote the following (repeated here with his blessing):

Amy lacks the, honesty, leadership qualities, and trustworthiness to be the editor in chief of a national consumer glossy. She may very well lack the skill, too ... She is completely uninvolved until the last moment of production … From day one, I watched Amy talk out of both sides of her mouth, telling me, and you, and others, what they wanted to hear. For example, she assured me during the interview process that I would never be required to work with the advertising side in any capacity ... As a leader, Amy is completely unavailable. Her staff fears her, and believes that she unfit for leadership. They are right. ... Amy refuses to read memos or see the art and edit through from inception to fruition, which she describes to me as "micro-managing.” (I told her it's actually called "editor-in-chiefing.") I think the quality of the magazine is a testament to Amy's lack of leadership. She introduced a mediocre redesign and put out a few decent covers, but eight months into her job, the overall quality would be an embarrassment to any respectable editor-in-chief of a magazine as huge and important as Entrepreneur.

I was in Kessler’s office, with the door closed, when Cosper walked over to have her final words with him. Since that day, I’ve been private enemy number one. My stories always seemed to elicit a nice one from Cosper – even though she was responding via Blackberry within minutes of me filing (not possibly enough time to read them, especially on such a small device). My pieces were soon met with “needs work” -- just as fast. Two well-reported stories were held without explanation. I was called into her office three times in the last two months to explain things I had said about the magazine to coworkers. I explained that the staff was so young and inexperienced they didn’t know how things were supposed to work. I said she was lucky to have me so that some of the younger journalists there – one actually asked me how to take notes – could get free training. I told them how things should be. Stop it, I was told.

On June 25, news of the last mass staff exodus had hit the FishbowlLA and FishbowlNY blogs. Nearly the entire print editorial staff, save for a franchise (special issue) editor had asked to be laid off with severance. That week Cosper had held a meeting in her office and stated that if anyone else is unhappy they're free to go too. (Way to rally the troops: Two others, including a web editor, took her up of the offer). A few weeks later two art direction assistants took off as well. One of them, a young man in his 20s, was asked by Cosper why he was leaving a national magazine for a third-tier city/regional. The pay is better, he said, and it seemed like the people there cared. They're more like family, he said. At that point, the print magazine’s editorial staff consisted of Cosper, the franchise editor, the art director and an assistant art director. (The other staff writer and myself technically worked for the web, although we contributed to print). This is for a 600,000-circulation national magazine that wants to steal advertisers from far superior publications such as Fast Company and Inc. Everyone near Cosper had gone running for the hills. The young editors were frustrated with having to do her work with little direction or leadership, only to face her rants when the printed product was shipped to the office. Cosper was left to hunt for someone to do her job for her. With such a revolving door, the company was a relatively big advertiser at Media Bistro. After one candidate came through and didn't end up attached to the magazine, Cosper blurted out, exasperated, something like, "No more newspaper people. The talent pool around here sucks." Of course that's not true. There are many good journalists are out of work in Southern California. But Entrepreneur's idea of talent is someone who kisses ass and does work without question. Those aren't job requirments that go down well with most journos, especially ones that are going to be running a magazine.

Cosper's M.O., as any of these editors would attest (had they not signed non-disclosure agreements, which I did not), was to create fires and put them out. When Shea complained about the magazine's design, Cosper asked Kessler to supervise the art director -- a woman who happened to be Cosper's longtime friend, and her hire. The next day Cosper skipped work to go motorcycle riding. Her two-hour gym breaks were notorious, as were her 5-on-the-dot exits. One editor noted how Cosper was enlisted to create an advertorial package for a huge advertiser, UPS, but threw it on the underling’s lap long after deadline. Cosper had more pressing fires to put out. Do the company's owners know, the editor asked me, that their editor-in-chief was so irreverent when it came to core elements of their business? She also liked to hire people that she believed could be pushed around, as if a saleswoman is any match for journalists with any seasoning. She once described a position she planned to create, an editor in charge of web content, as "my bitch." The position has since been filled.

Meanwhile, in the media blogs, Shea had blamed editors loyal to Cosper’s predecessor for the late-June exodus, but as FishbowlNY later noted, that’s not true, because at least some of those who left had never even met the earlier editor-in-chief. In fact, after a long-departed Kessler fired off an I-told-you-so to Shea regarding the latest exodus, the publisher blamed Kessler for the departures. Clearly, the blame game is an art form at Entrepreneur. Somehow, though, even as Kessler accurately pointed out that Cosper doesn’t really begin to do the job of editor-in-chief, Shea and his family, which owns the publication, continued to back her. In fact, during those lean times in May and June, Cosper had the magazine freelance edited, ostensibly at considerable expense. She even called a freelance copy editor Kessler hired to find out how the editorial process works; she had lost her staff and was clueless about how the magazine she edits is actually put together. She lucked out, though, because the mag’s assignments were on cruise control based on work that Kessler had done months ago, including a slate of upcoming cover stories (Tony Hawk by Pulitzer finalist Gary Cohn and Russell Simmons by Inc. contributor and former New York Times editor Josh Dean). None the wiser, she continued to badmouth Kessler.

On June 26, Cosper and I had a final, contentious, closed-door meeting in her office. As comments to the FishbowlNY post rolled in that morning, she was obviously angry. During the meeting, she seemed to become more and more agitated. I never backed down (another no-no at a place that hires the young and inexperienced and is used to bullying its employees). I told her ever since Kessler left she's been gunning for me. She blew up. "Kessler! Kessler!" she yelled. "I know you’ve been IMing Kessler," she said, clutching a pile of printouts. Stop IMing Mike Kessler, she said. I was aghast. Not only was I prohibited from communicating with a former editor I was previously required to answer to, often via IM, but the company was spying on my private IMs. I told her that I was amazed that this company couldn’t make it a priority to subscribe to Lexis-Nexis research services but has the resources to spy on employees.

I had become the problem. I was asked to explain why I had been speaking ill of an incoming editor -- an editor as it turns out once again, who is saving the day as we speak. Cosper said she heard I had said she is not qualified. This was not the case, I explained. All I had done was corrected Cosper’s repeated reference to her as a former Los Angeles Times Magazine managing editor, which is not true. I said she’s a former Times features editor, not a former Times magazine managing editor, and that an ex-boss of mine who had worked at the Times, including as a top editor at the paper’s magazine, vouched for her. The facts often get lost with Cosper, and I doubt my version of events was related to the new editor. If anything, the false notion that I badmouthed the incoming editor might have worked in Cosper’s favor, as she clearly wouldn’t want a repeat of Kessler. What, two qualified journalists, working together? Lord knows what would happen. We might have even put out a good magazine. At that last meeting, I told Cosper that we had spent more time talking about rumors and innuendo than we have about story ideas and doing good journalism. Strangely, she agreed.

That June day I began to pack my things in anticipation of what was to come. The last straw, I believe, was an IM I sent to a coworker Friday noting the promotion of an employee whose abilities no one at the magazine – apparently not even Cosper – respects. (I once described him as “a monkey with a keyboard” to Cosper’s face, and she did not refute it). In the IM, I stated that I had asked for a promotion in writing. I wondered, I continued, how the company would justify in court promoting him, an under-qualified white man, over me, a journalist of color with 20 years of often top-line experience. Shortly after 4 p.m. Friday I was called upstairs, given some paperwork to sign (I refused to sign one document) and told to pack up. An executive kept eyes on me the whole time I grabbed my belongings, but I was fast: I had already prepared. I suspect they’ve saved other IMs for ammunition. I think that reflects more on them than I: This says volumes about a company’s priorities. It can’t put out a cleanly edited, well-designed magazine for a readership it clearly peddles to advertisers as high-end, but it can spy on its employees.

In those last two contentious months, when barely anyone was left in the office to run the magazine (see my photos), Cosper went on vacation once, and spent the better part of two additional weeks out of town. It doesn’t seem like responsible editor-in-chief behavior, especially as the new second-in-command was left holding the bag that contained last-minute editing and assigning. But, as has been made clear here, Cosper’s no ordinary editor-in-chief. In fact, she goes out on sales calls with the publisher. She helps to sell ads! She sets up editorial packages that advertisers can frame their pitches around. In fact, when I mentioned the idea of covering Fisker Automotive for the final time, she said we can’t do it: Porsche was sponsoring the standing feature I was pitching to. The Germans, she said, might not like it. Later I learned that Cosper was actually shilling for an even more "intrusive" ad campaign by the sportscar maker. When other editors noted that the ads could cross the line with editorial and make the mag ineligible for National Magazine Awards, she said she'd rather earn the ad money than get an award.

And herein lies the bottom line. Entrepreneur’s owners don’t like journalism. The publication’s record of having a revolving door, of hiring malleable, inexperienced newcomers (except when its editor-in-chief obviously doesn’t know who she’s hiring), of making the place hostile for the diverse and outspoken, and of continually putting out a mediocre product, shows that it’s not at all about journalism. In a staff meeting earlier in the year, the publisher himself swatted down my suggestion that the company website become a daily news portal for entrepreneurs – the better for those startup owners to keep coming back as their businesses developed and they no longer needed our basic, how-to content. He said that Entrepreneur’s bread-and-butter is “take-away” stories for the startup hopeful. In other words, the magazine’s staple includes those five-ways-to-start-a-business pieces that appeal only to those ignorant enough to believe that a staff of inexperienced journalists could tell them how to start and run a business. In encouraging more feature-like profiles of successful business owners (like the recent cover Q&A I did with Patron’s John Paul DeJoria), I later joked to fellow staffers that if I knew the five easiest businesses to start in a recession, would I be here? (I was told, after penning cover stories about the surfing and mixed martial arts industries, that we were doing too many pop culture stories and that we needed to return to the “take-away”).

Selling readers and advertisers the notion that Entrepreneur’s staff editors and writers know the ins and outs of starting and maintaining a business is almost fraudulent. Some of the company’s employees and leaders haven’t even graduated from college. One web editor can barely write a sentence (“He's turned himself into a living, breathing, kick-flipping commodity--one that's become so wildly successful that it's hard for some to tell where [Ryan] Sheckler the skater ends and Sheckler the brand begins--and vice versa,” he once wrote). And here’s the thing: While the mag aims at those ignorant enough to believe that these “take-away” stories give them something that they can’t get in Fast Company, it fails to retain those educated, successful business-owning readers by giving them savvy, in-depth journalism, in my opinion. But which of those two audiences do you think those big-name advertisers (UPS, Porsche, American Express) crave: Cletus the Slack-Jawed Business Hopeful? Or the woman with a hi-tech startup and 30 employees? Do you think there’s anything in Entrepreneur or Entrepreneur.com she doesn’t already know (or know better)?

So, essentially, Entrepreneur is hostile to journalism because it costs money and requires tolerance of diverse, smart, and educated people. At the same time, there’s a sleight of hand: Entrepreneur’s owners crave those advertisers that crave educated, savvy and demanding readers. How they connect the dots between dumbed-down “take-away” stories for people who haven’t the slightest notion of business, and a moneyed advertising base keen on the educated and affluent, is pure salesmanship.

Having a saleswoman with the title of editor-in-chief fits perfectly. A fox is watching over the henhouse, and Entrepreneur’s owners are comfortable with that. As long as they own the place, they will forever refuse to hire a real journalist as an editor-in-chief. Who would go on sales calls? Who would help sandwich editorial with ad packages? Who would be there to validate their utterly non-journalistic view that publishing “take-away” stories is the way to go? Who would nod in agreement that what the magazine – which still uses clip art and which, until last year, was physically cut-and-pasted for layout – really needs is more five-ways-to-do-a-business stories? Entrepreneur exists in the Shea family’s likeness.

That’s fine. I’m going to surprise you here: I own a magazine, I run it my way -- and I could really care less what you think. This is America. I’m 100 percent with that. America! But what’s hard to swallow is the constant bullshit: that I was fired because I wasn’t carrying out duties; that the magazine is improving and hiring better and better journalists; that it’s owners are comfortable with real journalists instead of some of the utter tards it entrusts as content managers; that it's serving up the kind of smart, successful readers its advertisers crave. Those are lies. The owners have every right to have a mediocre magazine. But say it loud and proud: We don’t like quality content or the uppity people who make it. It’s not our thing. There almost seems to be perverse pleasure in the way the owners jerk around journalists, constantly hiring and firing their way through bad press and worse content. But to think they can burn through good people like Kessler and I (and I suspect there will be more) without blow-back is a pipe dream. For Cosper to think that she can come from a small media market and pull the wool over people's eyes in the second largest media market in the nation is pure fantasy. She's in the big leagues, but she's small-town all the way. I'll be doing what I do long after she's gone.

Hopefully that will be soon. Managers inside Entrepreneur have admitted to me that the magazine loses money, and that the website, along with other ventures such as licensing the Entrepreneur name to publishers in other countries, and printing how-to books, apparently make money. Cosper once told me I should get with her program because Entrepreneur would be “the last business mag standing.” Like everything she’s said, I found it quite hard to believe.

Return of the Collective - 3/16/2006

As e-music suffers a slump, DJ collaborations are on the rise

By Dennis Romero

The idea of the postmodern DJ star was generated as much from resonant pairings and collectives as it was from self-promoters. By the time DJ Keoki had helped coin the term "superstar DJ" in the mid-'90s, Louie Vega and Kenny Dope, Sasha and John Digweed, San Francisco's Hardkiss crew, the Wicked DJs, and Funky Tekno Tribe were already playing records side-by-side for thousands of fans at a time. Making and performing music, after all, has always been a sharing experience.

Just as rappers spun off from hip-hop DJs in the '80s, the increasing popularity of a new subculture in the late '90s had house and techno jocks coming into their own singular stardom. Sasha and Digweed played separately, members of Hardkiss went their own ways, and DJ Dan broke out of the Funky Tekno Tribe to become "America's favorite DJ," as URB magazine put it. But 9/11, ecstasy burnout, and a wartime economy put the brakes on the scene's growth; today, raves have all but ceased, clubgoing throngs have thinned out, and e-music labels and distributors (the latest being Studio Distribution) have been going under.

Jocks are starting to team up again, realizing that, commercially and creatively, two (or more) is better than one. DJ Dan, for example, recently paired with trance star Christopher Lawrence for a national DJ tour. Progressive-house queen Sandra Collins recently joined forces with VJ king Vello Virkhaus to collaborate on music and video in a club-performance series they've titled "Interference." (Their next "Interference" event is scheduled for March 24 at Crobar in Miami, during that city's dance music conferences.) As Collins explains, she can spin audio and video on Pioneer DVX DVD decks while Virkhaus adds layers of images on top, including live-camera shots of her handiwork on the video turntables.

"It has been our goal to incorporate ideas from past art movements and bring the static images to life in a remixed way," Collins says. "We have also been experimenting with color and mood, in relation to the audience experience."

Focusing on audio explorations, DJs known as the Scumfrog, D:Fuse, and Skribble recently formed a disc-spinning supergroup called DJs Are Alive! (Myspace.com/djsarealive). The act was born last summer while the three waited for roadies to work out production kinks at the World Party festival in Dallas. As the trio downed shots of tequila and dreamed of a better way to perform dance music, they agreed that DJing had become pretty predictable.

"The myth of the skill that a DJ has is gone, because everyone in the audience has their own set of turntables," says the Scumfrog, a.k.a. Jesse Houk. "Mixing two records is to DJing today what playing a heavy-metal lick on your guitar was in the '80s."

Backstage at the Texas event, the combination of liquid courage and sound-system problems that ate into their time slots inspired the DJs to combine their shortened sets into one mishmash, and DJs Are Alive! was ... aliiiive!

"We're like, 'You know what, instead of doing 45 minutes each, let's go out on stage and jam together, with Skribble and D:Fuse doing live drums and me doing live vocals,'" says Houk. "It was so much fun, it lingered in our heads, and we decided to do something more serious."

The troupe now has vocalist Kristin W. and techno producer Static Revenger in the mix and has turned out its first single, the bombastic, loopy house number "Gimme Some Love." The quintet, which will perform March 21 at Miami club Mansion, is hoping to record some sets for a live album.

"It's really nice to be a part of a collective where not everything rests on your own shoulders, and you get to share things with your peers," says Houk. "It gets lonely out there as a DJ, doing everything by yourself."

Indeed, says Australian progressive-house spinner Phil K., who's been collaborating with countryman and producer Luke Chable for the last five years. However, they've only recently turned their home-studio sessions into something more than a 12-inch single: Their first full-length CD, Because We Can, is ready for a May 2 release via the Global Underground label. (The pair will wield laptops and turntables for an April 10 Monday Social performance at Nacional in Hollywood.) The album is an e-music opus complete with ambient interludes, string-fueled crescendos, and rock-steady breakbeats. Chable can play keyboards, and they have six computers between them for sequencing and making beats. The only rule is that all the music has to be made with both DJs in the room. None of this trading rough tracks via e-mail stuff.

"Technically," says Phil K., "I can make a record, but it's very sterile for me to be in a room by myself with this machine. For me, it's all about cracking jokes and having people around."

Music Is the MANTRA - 3/16/2006

Om Records' Chris Smith looks back on a decade's worth of future sounds

By Dennis Romero

Chris Smith likes to tell the story about the first days of Om, perhaps the West Coast's most influential dance-music label. The year was 1995. The place: San Francisco's Lower Haight. The business plan: none. The office was a small flat. People predicted the company wouldn't make it past year one. And, well, the naysayers should have been right. Partner Steve Gray opted out after that first year, citing stress. And Om hobbled along, barely, until its first sneaker success, 1997's Mushroom Jazz, an unusual compilation of down-tempo grooves mixed by up-tempo DJ Mark Farina.

"As a new label, nobody knew who we were, we had poor distribution, we didn't have money to promote, and we didn't know what we were doing," says cofounder Smith, 35. "It took us a while to figure it out."

But figure it out they did. Nowadays Om, wrapping up its 10th anniversary and looking forward to another decade of "future music," is a paradox of success. It's had great penetration with its anti-superstar-DJ music policy, serving as a reliable alternative to dance cheese - trance, Euro-jocks, and big-room elitism. And yet Om sells more records than most of the nation's top dance labels. At a time when DJ shops, distributors, and fellow labels are shutting their doors, in fact, 2005 was Om's best year, says Smith.

"We've been quick to embrace iTunes - we were one of the first 20 labels to sign up," he says. "We're doing a lot of download sales, selling CDs online, licensing music. We're doing a lot of business. And we're still selling a ton of CDs. We're selling more vinyl that we've ever sold. We have our market."

And, despite being an alternative to DJ worship, the label has certainly churned out its own mix-CD stars: Colette, who spun records on the red carpet before the recent Academy Awards ceremony; Mark Farina, now a staple of lounge-worthy down-tempo; and Kaskade, a house-lite crossover star in the making.

"Kaskade is a perfect example of an Om artist," Smith says. "He was my production assistant. We took that and grew that into what it is now. I think most of the music we put out has broad appeal. We're not just putting out tacky, banging stuff."

Indeed, Om is a rare dance label that's as well-known on dance floors as in office cubicles. Its soulful down-tempo (Om Lounge 10) and lullaby vocal house compilations (Om: Miami 2006, out Tuesday) often feel like digital smooth jazz, but have just enough bite and swing to move a crowd. Most of its artists stay around for the long term and often develop into icons - folks such as Los Angeles deep-house mainstay Marques Wyatt, Chicago house producers Iz & Diz, and indie hip-hop DJ J Boogie.

The original idea for the label was to tap into the West Coast's underground energy by signing leftfield hip-hop acts, acid-jazz artists, and deep-house heroes. Smith - a product of Mammoth, California - had spent 1991 and 1992 in Los Angeles, soaking up the city's rave heyday, taking in Doc Martin at warehouse parties. The next year he moved to San Francisco to study multimedia arts at the local state college.

"I just fell in love with the place," he says of the Bay Area. "The energy was amazing. The club scene that was going on was completely off the hook."

Soon, the idea of tapping that energy, and pairing it with burgeoning multimedia technology, stuck in Smith's head. Om's first release was an underground hip-hop compilation called Groove Active. It featured a CD-ROM of graffiti-art pictures and video clips. It was, of course, ahead of its time, and it wasn't until Mushroom Jazz two years later that Om's ball got really got rolling. "Mushroom Jazz" was a Monday-night party with Chicago-bred DJ Mark Farina at the decks. Smith was a fan and signed Farina to a deal. When the CD came out, sales were slow-but-steady, until one of the tracks Farina had chosen, Blue Boy's "Remember Me," became a hit in the U.K. and an underground anthem in the United States. Today, the funky, groovy Mushroom Jazz series is five volumes deep, and each vinyl version is eagerly sought by DJs (and the label is reissuing LPs to keep up with demand).

"We didn't really have any kind of concept of why it would be popular, but I felt like the music was great, and it was marketable," Smith says. "It happened slowly."

In the mid-'90s, Smith started traveling to Chicago to sign up its overlooked house-music legends. While the rest of the dance world was looking to Europe for The Next Big Thing, Om was tapping the well where it all started, signing up folks like Colette (who eventually moved to Los Angeles), DJ Sneak, Derrick Carter, Iz & Diz, and off-the-wall, underrated house-music band the Greenskeepers. While Colette, Kaskade, and West Coast house hunk Miguel Migs kept the music smooth and easy, Sneak, Derrick Carter, and Iz & Diz kept it real - and banging.

Still, if any labels are responsible for the smooth-dance phenomenon known as West Coast house, Om might as well stand up. Smith signed producer Jay Denes to compile a title called Naked Music NYC. It featured artists such as Migs and heavenly vocalist Lisa Shaw. The 2000 release launched a new sound for the left coast - ironically, since Denes was from New York - and preceded the launch of Denes's own iconic label, Naked Music. Om tapped into the sound too, unleashing its own Migs tracks and putting left coasters Andy Caldwell and Kaskade on the smooth-house map. Sure, easy-listening e-music grates on some critics' nerves. But there's no shame in Smith's game. When asked if he would mind crossing over to pop radio and the charts, he has a quick answer: "I pray for it. I hope for it all the time. We're not sitting here saying we want to stay underground."

Like we said, Om is a paradox, born of underground party culture, reaching for jazzy musicianship, and looking to stay relevant not just as a West Coast cultural institution, but as a business. Case in point: The label this year is spinning off an imprint, Om Hip-Hop, with indie-minded rap acts such as Strange Fruit Project, Colossus, and J Boogie working on new releases.

Could Om's success be duplicated, by some young dreamer, in 2006?

"I would say stay away, unless you had a really intense passion to do it and are willing to go to bat every day," Smith says. "It's 10 times harder today than it was 10 years ago. You really have to have some stamina. Most people who are attracted to the music business don't typically have that kind of sensibility." It may be a creative business, he points out, but you still have to do business. "I guess I always had that in me. I also enjoy making spreadsheets and dealing with budgets. I know how to do it, and it's rewarding to get the job done."

Moving Toward Unity - 3/30/2006

MIT professor connects house and hip-hop

By Dennis Romero

While thousands of clubgoers around the world were packing their bags for the house-fueled Miami heat of last week's dance-music conferences, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology theater arts and dance professor was staging a groundbreaking piece in cold New England. Miami's DJ-worshipping events have drawn hip-hop kings such as Diddy and celebrity queens such as Paris Hilton, despite house music's failure to really penetrate the charts. But MIT associate professor Thomas DeFrantz's show could radically change how house music is perceived and performed.

DeFrantz's "House Music Project" was intended to provoke thought about the black, gay roots of post-disco house music and the way the genre has been cast aside in American popular culture (only to be called off the bench now and then by Madonna, Madison Avenue, and Miami). But, on the road to an avant-garde performance, DeFrantz came across an ingenious way to communicate e-music. Software customized for the piece by MIT graduates Eto Oro and James Tolbert allows the professor to take center stage as a club dancer, controlling and cross-fading music samples and tracks via his body movement. Sensors on each wrist and ankle, along with two on his back, help send wireless signals to a computer that contains electronic music tracks.

"Through the piece I can adjust volume, tempo, forward or backward play, frequency, highs, lows," says DeFrantz, an expert in African American dance history. "I'm like a human equalizer. The point is to physicalize what house is."

He intended in part to critique the mainstream forces that have pushed house music underground while giving its close cousin hip-hop a ride to the top. But "unintentionally" is often how media evolves, and, in this case, the possible uses for the body sensors are intriguing. Videogames such as Dance Dance Revolution already rely on up-tempo dance music to fuel a step-mimicking program. Adding creative body movement could be, well, revolutionary. The sensors could also be used to make original music, control video, and even DJ via body moves. "That wasn't really my inspiration, but the commercial possibilities are huge," the professor acknowledges.

DeFrantz's five-movement show takes place in and around a house he had built and placed on stage at MIT's Kresge Little Theater in Cambridge. A DJ helps him keep the beat. A couple of hip-hop-oriented breakdancers work opposite more fluid house dancers, and the music becomes cacophonous when DeFrantz cross-fades the two genres.

"There's a basic story about disco and funk giving birth to hip-hop and house," he says, "even though the two new genres eye each other warily - hip-hop being excessively masculine and perhaps even rockist, and house being more feminine and welcoming and nurturing and a gay space if you will."

At the dawn of the '80s, the raw, beat-heavy sound of house provided voice and shelter to the repressed, and after-hours house scenes sometimes resembled boisterous gospel churches - hooting, hollering, and foot-stomping included. When house was mixed with the drug ecstasy on the Spanish isle of Ibiza in the mid-'80s, it became the soundtrack to raves and clubbing, and it continues to thrive in the global underground.

DeFrantz likes to contrast this development with hip-hop's. Rappers in the '70s and even '80s often adopted a feminized, tight-pants-and-sequined-suit-wearing stance familiar to disco and house fans, but the rap game grew homophobic, angry, and even sometimes loathingly gangster as it came to dominate much of mainstream music's non-black fan base.

"House was originally conceived as a place for queer folks to get together," DeFrantz says. "That's a lot of why it got shoved aside. Hip-hop fit with the times better. Black America needed a certain aggressiveness to understand itself under President Reagan. House is inclusive and spiritual, and it connects the people through movement. It might be back again."

In fact, one point of his show, which he hopes to take on a nationwide tour, "is that hip-hop and house have to figure out how to communicate," he says.

"At the end of the piece," he adds, "we invite the hip-hop and house dancers to groove together."