Editorial #19

The first Paste office was one big room on the fourth floor of a five-story building in downtown Decatur, Ga.—enough space for three desks, a couple couches, a cheap portable stereo and an ever-mounting pile of CDs. We were next door to a law firm, so every time we turned the volume up to a level almost suitable for critiquing an album, angry attorneys would beat on the other side of the wall. When we moved in, we had no printer, no distributor and no way to pay ourselves. During that first deadline rush, I’d routinely work through the night, stepping outside in the early morning to the song of the same mockingbird in the same tree. The office was Paste World Domination headquarters for five issues. But before Nick Purdy, Tim Porter and I could invite anyone else to the party, we needed to find a new office.

The Howard Avenue space was perfect. Except that as soon as anyone stood up, their chair would roll across the severely sloped wood floors. And, if you were on an important phone call, you could count on pausing the conversation at least once as a passing train blared its horn or a fire engine from the station around the corner sped into action, sirens full-blast. So it was close to perfect. There were high ceilings and a waist-level door right next to my desk that led out to the roof, where we could write or take phone calls. The hall was regulation size for late-night broom hockey, and that roof held the perfect vantage to watch Dirtyman™ almost single-handedly demolish the condemned building next door in the most haphazard way imaginable, nearly killing himself in the process. If you needed inspiration, you could just head downstairs, where Randy—our very own Kramer—ran a frame shop. The devoted Deadhead always had a tale from some concert where, “The real show was in the crowd, man. You were the show.” Over the course of a dozen issues in the building, we saw a quadrupling of the magazine’s circulation, a swelling of the staff from three to 13, and the birth of the Paste Sampler DVD, PasteRadio.com, the Paste Recommends retail program and Paste Picks on CNN Headline News. Soon, CDs overflowed every borrowed postal bin, every room filled up with boxes of magazines and giant rolls of bubble wrap, and interns sat on the couch of our only meeting room, working on laptops.

It was time for a new home.

And so here we sit in our new digs at East Decatur Station, a live/work/retail complex with a pub, a coffee shop and a counter-service Italian joint with amazing crab ravioli. We have enough room that Nick no longer bothers to take off his wheels after rollerblading to work. We have a studio to record interviews and acoustic performances for our new weekly Podcast. We have a CD library, a lounge and a high-tech conference room for real music meetings. The space—with its freestanding angled walls and high tin ceiling (Jim James, you gotta drop by for a visit… the natural reverb is killer)—couldn’t look any less like the college apartment our Howard building had become. It suddenly feels like our little magazine is all grown up.

We celebrated by throwing the Paste Rock ’n’ Reel, our first music and film festival (p. 36) with Low, Buddy Miller, Mark Olson & Victoria Williams, Mindy Smith, Erin McKeown, Over the Rhine, Howe Gelb, Cary Brothers, Denison Witmer and 23 others, including a couple recent discoveries for us—Modern Skirts and Anathallo. We screened more than 60 short films and two features, hosted a presentation from the creators of HomeStarRunner.com, presented a play by our friends at PushPush Theater and displayed a photo exhibit from India’s Kids With Cameras project.

And now we have our 19th issue—the first put together at our new College Avenue headquarters. In this issue, you’ll find another first—The Paste Arthouse Powerhouse 100 (p. 91), our annual list of actors and filmmakers who contribute most to the cinema we love, as well as the business types who support their art. Also: Fiona Apple graciously lets Chi Tung inside her fragile world (p. 68); Bud Scoppa catches up with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, who appeared on our 11th cover (p. 64); and, as Christmas approaches, celebrated author Barry Hannah shares his unique perspective on the Bible’s “Maddening Protagonist” (p. 86).

Now if we could just put the magazine together and still get home before midnight…