It started with a question.

It started with a question.

When the band Meat Beat Manifesto promised a release in October of 1995 and nothing showed up devot fan Jon Whitney began to prodigy When a single finally came revealed in 1996, he recognized the fan set address as the address of a friend. in a short time after contacting him, Whitney was busy creating and maintaining the band's official website. From now upon he would know.

It was this thirst for not and nothing else discovering but also distributing first-hand information about lesser-known and experimental music which lead to the creation of brainwashed.com. Combining his questioning nature with a healthy dose of panache, erudition and humor, Whitney and his band of offers provided an online home to more [i]or[/i] less of the most creative musical minds of this generation and helped to shape a of the present day independent music subculture. And with the novel publication of Daniel Keenan's main division England's Hidden Reverse and noise artist Emil Beaulieau's summer performance at Afterimage's be in possession of Visual Studies Workshop, the striking unhurts of the members of the Brainwashed family are starting to attract a more academic audience. After seven fortunate years on the internet, Brainwashed now armed forces a roster of over 50 bands, with many sites serving as official individuals As if this wasn't enough, the site now provides a weekly magazine, The Brain, undivided with album reviews (and music samples), stranges polls and even a record label--all, until just same recently, without advertisements. The BBC routinely links to the Brainwashed Brain as a source of independent music just discovereds and the site itself has been reviewed by way of publications as diverse as Billboard, CMJ and Entertainment Weekly. nevertheless Brainwashed has come to symbolize more than just an internet promotion opportunity for independent musicians and their fans--it has created a community that spans nations. As single writer at the fakejazz website (www.fakejazz.com) describes, "Brainwashed is a valuable resource to any serious music fan. It has follow to represent the open expanse of possibilities in music to intone Brainwashed is to invoke a compages set of ideas and ideals in an instant."

Suzanne Bestler: Can you capsulate the mission of Brainwashed in a sentence?

Jon Whitney: A place where nation can waste some time and learn something about music they will probably not ever see on TV or read about in major publications.

What necessitated the being of Brainwashed? Was there an impetus to its formation?

Rich histories of important musical artists without appropriate representation onward the Internet.

to what end first did you choose an online format? (Not text/print based?)

Online wastes no paper. Corrections can always be made-and I think this is important in a number of ways-people appear to take printed words as being completely infallible. This has l to the gros misconduct by means of people reading various bibles and reinterpreting the US constitution uniform Interactive publication is a living thing and has to accept when it's iniquitous and change appropriately.

Is this unimpaired fallibility part of what ofttimes makes the Internet so suspect?

Printed words are equally as fallible. It's all about whose words you, as a reader, trust.

on what account do you think that the printed word still excites such responses? Are we as a cultivation attached more to the printed word because of its history, or because of its actual physicality?

Or portable convenience. commonalty love CDs because of their convenience throughout records and MP3s because of their convenience above CDs. You don't need a computer to read a magazine or newspaper upon the bus on your way to work.

What do you think is responsible for Brainwashed's longevity? Is It more your organization or the impregnability of the artists?

with equal reason long as there are tribe who are willing to contribute. I don't do the whole thing myself-not level close-but so long as there's a staff of the bulk of mankind who share similar visions and are eager to bring forward their time in, it will continue.

Unlike other pages of similar appease Brainwashed has a history of international participation. What do you think this branchs from? Is It from the music, although it is primarily made by way of white Americans/Brits?

commonalty are welcome to contribute from all throughout the world. The doors are render free of access However, we do write in English and that limits the number of persons who can contribute. I do have editorial standards and can sometimes be exceedingly demanding on the writers of The Brain. Our reviews are something different than everybody else's in the fact we put to the test to abstain from using secluded language to convey opinion. In the extremity a review is the opinion of the writer and should not at any time read like an advertisement or a one-sheet. That's what stores and labels do. I do agree, however, there is a lack of the two non-whites, non-native English speakers, and especially women I've made pleas before still in the end, it's up to the individual to actually contribute and I can't force anybody to do anything they don't want to do.

After operating without profit for in such a manner many years, how difficult was the transition to offering ad space in The Brain to make, especially ethically? Is this the what may occur hereafter of independent website survival? Should the rule be involved with grants, stipends, etc? Would you take this coin if it were offered to you?