Treblezine: Underrated Blog-a-Thon Late Entry

At this point, I’ve not only abandoned my blog for nearly three months, I’ve also missed the deadline for my friend Jamie’s “Underrated Blog-a-Thon.” But, I was so intrigued by the idea, I just couldn’t resist. At first, I could not choose my subject. I write about music on a regular basis, having already championed many underrated albums. Almost every book I truly love could be considered underrated, and I couldn’t decide on any one film. So, I thought I’d try to look elsewhere. Maybe I could write about an underrated baseball player. But, other than giving some stats, a personal anecdote or two, and merely saying they’re underrated, I had nothing. But then it came to me.

In the brainstorming process of all things ‘underrated,’ I tried to recall the things I truly regret not having reached a wider audience. In doing so, I realized there was only one subject I could choose. Treblezine. Self serving? Sure. A little egomaniacal? Maybe, but not really. I realize that a lot of you may have no idea what I’m talking about, so I’ll start with a little background history.

Over five years ago, the fall of 2003 to be slightly more precise, my youngest brother, Jeff, called me. He was in San Diego and I had just moved to Seattle. Jeff had just graduated from San Diego State, where he was the entertainment editor for the Daily Aztec newspaper, and now out of school, wanted to embark on a new endeavor. On the phone, he asked me if I wanted to start an online music magazine. There was no hesitation. I was in. I, myself, had been looking for a writing outlet, and was still obsessed by new music. There was no way I could say no. But what began that fall has been a journey I wouldn’t trade for anything.

We seemingly knew exactly what we wanted for Treblezine from the very beginning. (Let me just insert here that Jeff is the true talent behind Treble. It was his brainchild. He is the managing editor. He writes the lion’s share of the reviews. He organizes the submissions for review, the writing assignments and practically everything else. There are a few things I can point to as mine, namely specific columns and features I created, but for the most part, when I say ‘we’ when talking about Treble, I’m mostly talking about Jeff. I thought you ought to know. I should also at this point give many many thanks to Matt, yet another Terich brother, who designed the site and made it so darn pretty and user friendly.)

We knew we wanted the standard format of posting daily reviews. We knew it wasn’t a blog, like this one, but instead an actual commercial magazine to be taken seriously in critical circles and in the marketplace. In fact, you may be surprised to know that Jeff’s original concept was to eventually turn the webzine into a print magazine. We knew we wanted to do regular features and columns, items that would keep loyal readers coming back. Those have certainly changed along the way, some have stayed, and we’ve introduced some that have since become favorites, but the concept was solid from the beginning. To me, and I think I speak for Jeff as well, the most important aspects of Treblezine were the writing and the lack of number ratings.

There is no denying that Pitchfork is the grandfather of all indie music webzines. But, I think the biggest reason for their early success is not necessarily that they were the best, it’s that they were the first. The same can be said for a lot of internet enterprises such as Amazon and eBay. The resulting pressures of staying on top, with the addition of sudden income with which to fund the process, tend to fuel further progress. And thus, Pitchfork has produced some amazing writers over the years. The shame of it all is that thousands upon thousands of Pitchfork’s ‘loyal readers’ do quick hit and runs on the album reviews, merely looking at the number rating and then abruptly leaving. Jeff and I found that absurd. First of all, number ratings are completely arbitrary. (And I must say at this point that I’ve already addressed this concept in a review for Tetuzi Akiyama’s Pre-Existence, which was subsequently used for Treble’s “About” page.) So, I won’t go into the absurdity of comparing a Jay-Z album with, say, a Nick Cave album, which inadvertently happens when you give each a specific number rating. Anyway, the other idea behind the lack of number rating was that we wanted to avoid the hit and run. We wanted people to actually read what we had spent a good deal of time writing. After all, when you’re trying to find more about a particular album of interest, would you rather read or hear an in-depth analysis, including comparisons, impressions, and personal anecdotes, or would you rather simply see that it was given a 7.2?

I’m selfishly calling Treble ‘underrated’ because of our traffic in relation to other sites of this ilk. A lot of this is our own fault. None of us are marketing geniuses. We don’t know how better to reach indie music fans. We’ve made tremendous strides over the five plus years of Treble’s existence. In fact, we’ve had readers all over the world. We’ve had strong growth in readership. We’ve also found a great deal of our wonderful writers by simply existing. Jeff and I put a lot into Treblezine. (Emphasis on the Jeff). We put our hearts and souls into it. We make no money from Treble. Sure, we have great partnerships with Insound, iTunes and we at last have some advertisers, but I’d venture to say that the income from said sources doesn’t even cover the costs of site hosting and the postage it takes to mail CD’s to our writers all over the world. We’d love it if more people read it, for sure. We’d really love to make a living doing this. However, regardless of our numbers, and regardless of a lack of profit, we continue to create Treble. Why? Because we have a passion for music that cannot be contained. Music fuels us. And I’d like to think that it shows in our writing.

After five years, you’d think that maybe we’d become jaded about the music industry. There is certainly an element of that in our lives. But I won’t turn this into a diatribe on the industry. I’ll simply say that music has overwhelming capacity to astonish. No matter how many derivative albums we might hear in succession, there is always a brilliant light at the end of the tunnel, and that light is so overwhelming, we don’t even care if it’s a train. Case in point, the new Decemberists album.

But, to get back on track, this is a plea. If you love music, or have a friend who loves music, we simply ask that you tell them about our site. We’re quite proud of it. We feel that the past five years have only made it better. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what we could do with it if we could work on it full time. Ah, perchance to dream.