Reflections on InPress

Late in 2007 Melbourne street press publication In Press published its 1000th edition. Its a weekly publication. You do the maths. This was important to me for two reasons. Firstly because I was the publisher for the first nine years of the publications existence.  Secondly it was important because the current editor asked me to write a piece about the publications origins. This is what he got from me……

In Press – that was nine years of my life I’ll never get back.

How can I distil nine years of owning and operating InPress into a couple of thousand words and even attempt to do justice to the hazy, distant and yet strangely immediate set of memories I have of that time? I feel like I’m living in an episode of Cold Case.

InPress was an intrepid undertaking that I never dreamt would have lasted 1000 editions. I think I was around 25 or 26 when I started InPress  from a shared shop front office in Clarendon St, South Melbourne – an office where it was published for the entire nine years of my custodianship of the title. In retrospect I was quite young to launch such a speculative business but at the time it seemed a logical step.

InPress began, as so many good (and some very bad) ideas do, as a drunken conversation in a nightclub. I was working in music publishing and as a sideline was plying a modest trade as a freelance music writer for The Age and music publications of the day like RAM and Smash Hits. I was also the first, and initially only, feature writer for Melbourne’s first street press publication Beat.

Beat was almost a year old and struggling for life. Its publisher Rob Furst was yet to realise that he was actually on to something potentially lucrative and was juggling Beat with other business interests in fashion and club promotions. He had installed a young Melbourne Uni arts student Rowena Webber as his second or maybe third editor in that first year. I think it was before the Superannuation Guarantee legislation had kicked in. Rob actually gave Rowena the job when she walked in off the street looking for work experience and then he handed her the keys and promptly left for an overseas trip. While he was away the wheels fell off the jalopy several times and Rowena turned to me for advice. Out of a sense of respect for Rob’s enterprise in starting the business I did what I could to right the ship and to mix a metaphor.

The fact that Rowena was very attractive and single only had a little bit to do with my willingness to pitch in at her time of need. OK, it had a lot to do with it.

Remarkably a brief and decidedly clumsy affair ensued and even more remarkably when that relationship inevitably faltered a strong friendship emerged. In truth there was a few months of rather messy confusion between the two styles of relationship but, hey, this was the era when Razor was open on Friday nights and we all know that that venue confused a lot of relationships.

On one night out at The Metro, I drunkenly declared to Rowena that her considerable talents were wasted working for Rob and she drunkenly declared that she could create a much better street press publication if she was freed from the budget constraints that Rob imposed. Apparently Rob was tight with a dollar. Who would have guessed? Our solution was that we would start our own magazine in opposition to Beat.

Have another drink.

Somehow it still seemed like a good idea in the morning.

A couple of months of secret planning led to the formation of a company, Red Rocks Publications (named after the Colorado natural ampitheatre where many a great concert was held). The name was intended to show that we were in the media business not the music business, such were our noble intentions.  InPress was started with one second hand computer, a leased bromide camera and furniture salvaged from thrift stores. Oh, and a $20000 unsecured overdraft.  There were rumours at the time that the business was secretly funded by concert promoter Paul Dainty or a well known Queensland businessman who I had worked with in a mercifully brief prior career as a lawyer. Neither rumour was true. Unfortunately.

We initially had one employee, but what an employee he was! A young bloke named Michael Parisi was our first advertising salesman. Of course history now records Michael as one of Australia’s leading A&R gurus and one of the most influential figures in the Australian music business. But he wasn’t always that way and I have the photos that prove it.

Rowena left Beat on a Thursday and on the following Wednesday the first edition of InPress arrived on the streets- all 24 pages of it. Apparently Rob was not thrilled.  Our first edition actually featured on national television when Molly Meldrum held up the magazine in the Melodrama segment of Hey Hey. It didn’t matter that the front cover mis-spelt the names of the subjects of all three feature stories.  It also didn’t matter that Richard Wilkins was on the front cover although I wont even attempt to explain the convoluted logic that lead to that quirk of history.

Despite theses dubious beginnings it seemed we had struck a chord, found a niche and woken a sleeping giant.. From our second week both InPress and Beat began to grow rapidly. Our arrival stung Rob into action and the street press war had begun. Every potential advertiser in the Melbourne inner city was soon targeted and over the next few months both titles doubled in size, then tripled. By starting Inpress, Rowena and I had inadvertently started not just a publication but a whole industry. Rob Furst should be very grateful. I’m not sure he was all that ecstatic at the time.

Before long I found I was spending more time at the InPress office than at the office of the music publishing company I was being paid to work for and inevitably I found myself in the InPress bunker full time. I spent the next eight years there. People have received shorter sentences for serious crimes.

Soon the mainstream media started to take notice of the so called ‘street press phenomenon’ and The Age wrote a long feature in the Saturday magazine where Rob and I traded claims and accusations about dodgy circulation figures and editorial integrity.

For years Rob and I were cast as arch enemies on the streets of Melbourne but the fact is I think we both realised that the existence of the other was the stimulus that we needed to keep going in what was genuinely a difficult business. We actually got on reasonably well when we crossed paths – usually at 3am in the back office of some nightclub. Street press was an intense business and we obviously both felt it was necessary to visit our best customers establishments and keep our nose to the grindstone.

The next few years are actually a bit of a blur – InPress came out fifty-one and sometimes fifty-two weeks a year and this was in the era prior to desktop publishing, email and digital cameras. Mobile phones were still the size of housebricks, and Andrew Mast and Jeff Jenkins were street press writers. A guy named Fred Negro was doing a comic strip called Pub. Ask your parents Virginia, it was a very long time ago.

There’s so much I remember about the early days of InPress – the ridiculous deadlines, the constant financial pressure, the free tickets and CD’s and guest lists, the advertisers who didn’t pay and the amazing interviews I got to do with bands and artists whose music I loved.

But probably the thing I am most proud of is the extraordinary list of people that passed through the doors of InPress and who went one to make their mark in the Australian media and entertainment worlds. Apart from Michael Parisi I’m able to take some pride in the achievements of the likes of Frank Varrasso, Tim Janes and David Vodicka in the music business and  Myf Warhurst, Jeff Jenkins, Leigh Paatch, Fiona Scott Norman, Chris Johnson, Peter Bain Hogg and Rahni Sadler in the media. Then there’s people like James Young, Stuart Gibson, James Hewison and Karyn Lovegrove in the broader business and arts world. Karyn wrote an art galleries column in the first few editions of InPress and now owns one of Los Angeles coolest art galleries herself. And that list is just the tip of the iceberg, there are so many others who probably have just as big a right to be mentioned but the play-off music has started. I’m thinking of big personalities like Jason Evans, Darren Fishman and Runjan Wiiay who in their own ways have contributed to the fabric of Melbourne.  Most of these fine folks were going to make their mark anyway and I’m certainly not to blame for their success but I’d like to think that their time at InPress provided some of the manure that feed their fungi.

Rowena and I sold InPress in the late 90’s. By then Rowena had her first child and was completely over the weekly grind. I had discovered a young singer-songwriter busking on Acland St and had secured her a record deal in New York. I was wondering how I was going to manage that commute when along came a Western Australian with a cheque book.

I occasionally pick up InPress today and its clear to me its found itself in good hands. That makes me happy. Technology has improved the quality of the artwork and design. There’s probably a lot less stress and physical injury involved in putting the pages together now that scalpels are no longer used and there’s probably less typos due to spell check and the absence of handwritten copy. But a lot of things stay the same. I’m writing this on a tight deadline for one. I was reading the live reviews page  the other day and was struck by the passion and intensity of the writer as she urgently dissected the performance of some band I’d never heard of in a venue that I’d never been to. She was writing like her subject matter actually mattered.

It does matter.

In Melbourne InPress matters and every writer submitting their first live review might end up as the next Michael Parisi or Myf Warhurst. Hopefully that wont deter them too much. And even if they don’t reach the heights of the best of the InPress alumni there is something important about getting the opportunity to have your work actually printed and distributed – even in the era of blogging and user generated content. That isn’t why InPress exists but it’s a very healthy by-product.

For those who like happy endings you will be pleased to know that Rowena and I have ended up in a happy and loving relationship – to our great relief this relationship is not with each other. I got a Christmas card today from her and her husband and family and she is doing really well. I’m the godfather to her second child and we still get on famously. That is probably as big a miracle as InPress lasting 1000 editions. My congratulations to all concerned with both events.