POP MUSIC : Second Issue of Magazine Gains Respect on S.D. Scene

The second issue of San Diego Music Magazine hit the streets last week, and publisher-editor Steve Saint is more confident than ever that the free monthly publication--something of a house organ for the San Diego pop-music community--will be around for a long, long time.

Ad sales are up considerably over last month, totaling 3 1/2 pages as opposed to less than two in the inaugural March issue, Saint said. And, perhaps more significant, he added, the magazine is rapidly catching on with its target audience.

“I just came from a record store where one of your typically hip record-store workers had totally ignored the March issue,” Saint said. “When I handed him the new issue, he said, ‘Oh, yeah, I read the last one, and it was really good--I know a lot of bands, and I’m going to tell them to send you stuff.’ ”

“He was really nice to me, whereas before, he had been totally standoffish. I think people are starting to realize that we’re going to be here every month, that the magazine is going to be some kind of a permanent fixture.”

For a city to maintain a vibrant original-music scene, Saint said, it’s essential to have a magazine devoted to covering that scene--through features on aspiring hometown heroes, reviews of local club shows and records, and updates on major-label signings of San Diego bands.

“I’ve been in San Francisco and Los Angeles and Chicago and New York, and everyone says there’s a music scene in those cities, but there’s no music scene in San Diego,” Saint said.

“The fact is, there is a music scene in San Diego, but, until now, there hasn’t been a magazine to focus attention on it--as there is everywhere else.

“It’s our goal to change all that. We’ve got quite a scene down here, and we just want to put it down on black and white and get it out in front of everybody.”

Saint said his decision to launch a monthly music magazine resulted from his work with Musicians Who Care, a San Diego association of do-good musicians.

“After working with Musicians Who Care for a year, I found that we were taking on more and more of an advocacy role for our bands,” Saint said. “We went from trying to get musicians to help the community to trying to get musicians to help themselves.

“So it just seemed to us that we were the natural people to do a magazine covering the local music scene. Besides, I’m a journalist by trade. I’ve been putting out newsletters since junior high school, and I’ve written for Music Connection, the Reader, even Time.”

Expansion plans for San Diego Music Magazine include increasing the number of pages from the current 12, upping the press run from 1,000 to 5,000 or more, and possibly changing the format from broad sheet to tabloid, Saint said.

‘We’re going to keep this format for a while, because we started with it and we feel we should be consistent for a few months,” Saint said. “We’re using recycled paper, so no trees are being cut down to do this, and we want to make sure that if we do go to another format, we can maintain this type of standard.

“So for now, the only changes we’re looking at are to be bigger. We’re shooting for a 16-page edition in May, and for the June issue, our big goal is to have an article on every aspect of the San Diego music scene by genre: who are the bands, who’s in the studio, where are the clubs, what’s getting played on radio, in regard to not just rock ‘n’ roll and new wave, but reggae, country, rap, and rhythm-and-blues.

“And of course, that largely has to do with getting more advertiser support. We don’t have a large infusion of capital; we are not a big-corporation publisher. We are musicians doing this for musicians, so it’s kind of a family thing.”

LINER NOTES: The third annual San Diego Folk Heritage benefit concert will be held Saturday night at the Del Mar Shores Auditorium. Once again, various board members and volunteers of the nonprofit organization, which since January of 1988 has been producing local concerts by touring folk acts from around the world, will take to the stage themselves to raise money to help subsidize future productions. Among them: Jo Ann and Larry Sinclair, singing traditional and topical folk tunes; Ronni Russell and Jim Hayes, squaring off on the hammer dulcimer; and Dave Allen, Christopher Cunningham, and Barbara and Bruce Reid (he’s the current board chairman), performing together as an old-time fiddle, banjo, and guitar combo . . . .

Tickets go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. for Tracy Chapman’s May 28 concert at San Diego State University’s Open Air Theater, and April 30 at 10 a.m. for Elayne Boosler’s May 25 appearance at the California Theater downtown . . . .

Best concert bets for the coming week: Hot Tuna with Peter Kaukonen, Thursday at the Bacchanal in Kearny Mesa; Eric Burdon with Robby Krieger and the Walking Wounded, Thursday at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach; Garth Brooks with Holly Dunn, Friday at the Bacchanal; the Screamin’ Sirens, Friday at the Casbah in Middletown; Curtis Mayfield with Sharkskin, Friday at the Belly Up; the Temptations with the Four Tops, Saturday at the Starlight Bowl in Balboa Park; Karla Bonoff, Saturday at the Bacchanal; Bonnie Bramlett, Sunday at the Bacchanal; Nils Lofgren, Sunday at the Belly Up; Keiko Matsui, Sunday at the Culbertson Winery in Temecula, and O.J. Ekemode, Tuesday at the Belly Up.