AUGUST 14, 2005
Atlanta Journal Constitution - Arts & Books

Men of good taste
Mag's founders dig up best in music, film

Back in college, the founders of Paste magazine surely couldn't have imagined 9-to-5 ever being this much fun.

Sipping free liquor before noon, brought in by a 3 Vodka representative who wants to discuss advertising and potential sponsorships.

Opening boxes of complimentary CDs every day.

Gorging on chips, queso, and a seemingly endless supply of fish tacos during two-hour lunches.

But don't be misled--these are working lunches.

Some names are tossed: India Arie. Lizz Wright. Fiona Apple.

"Yeaah," says assistant editor Steve LaBae. "With [Apple's] album that's not coming out floating around, that would be unexpected."

"And with her being out of the spotlight," Jackson adds, "and most of all, good."

These are men who take their roles as taste-makers seriously.

Think of Paste magazine as a dream come true for that high school classmate who used to make mixtapes for his friends. In fact, partners Jackson, Nick Purdy and Joe Kirk were those guys, spreading mixtapes around their high schools in Dunwoody, Norcross and Naples, Fla. Their fourth partner, Tim Porter, says he was more of a tape and CD loaner at his high school in Jackson.

Seven years ago, Purdy, Jackson and a friend created pastemusic.com, an online retailer of indie music. In July 2002, Jackson, Purdy and Porter, a classmate of Jackson's at UGA, launched Paste magazine as a quarterly with 600 subscribers, most of them Web site customers. (Kirk, who had been mastering the magazine's free CD samplers, was brought in as a partner shortly afterward.) By October 2003, Paste had grown so much that it became a bimonthly.

And with the release of its August/September issue, Paste got even bigger, more than doubling its print run to 225,000 thanks to a recent buy-out of the rock music magazine Tracks.

But its founders' influence extends beyond its subscriber base. Every Tuesday at 1:54 p.m., either Jackson or Purdy -- the two main faces of the magazine and friends since they met at a Presbyterian church youth group 18 years ago -- share their interests with the hundreds of thousands tuned in to "CNN Headline News."

And 37 independent record stores in 24 states feature Paste Recommends listening stations programmed by the magazine's 19-member staff.

Those listening stations present certain challenges, though, which have the staff at the lunch meeting concerned.

"So what are we going to do when our reviewer gives one-and-a-half stars to something on the Paste Recommends station, or the sampler?" LaBate asks.

(The CDs for the stations and the songs for the samplers are chosen before staff and freelance critics review albums.)

"Everything is not always going to line up," Purdy answers. "Waht we have to do with the sampler is fill it with the 22 songs we love. And if there are one or two things in editorial that conflict with that, hey, we can still stand by the fact that the 22 songs on the sampler we love!"

Their passion is getting them noticed.

In June, the Chicago Tribune named Paste one of the 50 best magazines, placing it at No. 21 -- six places ahead of the British magazine Mojo, which Paste aspires to emulate.

What differentiates Paste from the No. 1 magazine on the Tribune's list, music magazine Blender, as well as mainstays such as Rolling Stone and Spin, is that you can pretty much bet that no matter how much pop superstar Britney Spears agrees to bare, she will never be on its cover.

"We live and die by our tagline -- 'Signs of Life in Music, Film and Sulture,'" explains Purdy, far and away the most matter-of-fact of the generally easygoing foursome.

The staff added "film" to the tagline when its December/January 2004 issue hit stands with director Wes Anderson ("Rushmore," "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou") on the cover.

"Film has always been a component of the magazine," Purdy says. "We've increased our emphasis on it in the last year. But in the future the magazine, ultimately, will be seen as an entertainment magazine."

It is Paste's mission, says Kirk, to help people find art that has value and to help encourage its development.

"Paste finds the edgy, really provacative, forward-thinking, progressive musicians," says Lindsey Pearl of Press Here Publicity, which clients (danceable rock band Franz Ferdinand, beloved indie wordsmith Bright Eyes) have been given major feature treatment in Paste. "I think as music diversifies more and more, it's important to have publications that really do honor the music itself and are not paying attention to politics, fashion and culture."

Dave Siff, a bassist in a couple of local bands and the "Headline News" executive producer who brought the Paste guys to CNN, says the looks and content of the magazine caught his eye.

"I was told by somebody, like 'Hey, check out this local music magazine.' And I'm thinking to myself, Stomp and Stammer. Not that there's anything wrong with Stomp and Stammer. But I just throught, like [Stomp], it was gonna be paper, thin, that kind of thing. And the first time I got my hands on Paste I was literally blown away. Mouth agape."

Porter came up with the name Paste when some of the partners were sitting around one day trying to come up with a good metaphor for connection.

"We really feel music is not inert," Purdy says. "It has emotional, spiritual, inspiring-type power over people. It's not something that's just food that goes in your body and out. It affects you. So that's why we're toying around with the idea of a connection. Paste is a metaphor for connection."

With that kind of purpose and focus from its start, it's no wonder they're taking some abuse from their readers for giving the ever-writhing pop star Shakira a positive, full-page review. Or -- gasp! -- actually liking mainstream favorite Coldplay's latest CD, "X & Y."

After all, the Tribune deemed Paste "hip without sacrificing credibility on the altar of corporately deemed 'cool.'"

Pardon Kirk as he snickers a bit.

"We're often seen as having a bias toward artists nobody ever heard of before, but that's mostly because other people aren't paying attention to artists nobody's heard of," he says with a laugh. "And yeah, we probably are more likely to help people discover the next little thing, but we kind of really don't care. If it's good, it's good. You can't please everybody."

If there has been one consistent knock against Paste, it's that it hasn't seemed to have found many "signs of life" in the work blacks, Latinos and other people of color are creating.

Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, of the hip-hop band the Roots, is the only black person to have a Paste cover. "And I can see where that could be perceived as a plus and a minus," Thompson says.

Purdy doesn't dodge the issue.

"Abosolutely we could and should be stronger there," he says. "And slowly and surely, we are putting our money where our mouth is. We're working on a big feature on [black Atlanta signer-somgwriter] India Arie. The whole neo-soul thing seems to be a place where folds in our audience -- who, let's just say, don't listen to a lot of music made by black people -- can start."

The Paste guys know tastes can be changed.

After all, Purdy admits that the mixtapes they made back in high school included songs in like DeBarge's "Rhythm of the Night."

Little chance of such dopey pop seeing daylight on a future Paste sampler.