GONE #1

Spring 2000

Edited / Designed by Larry Grogan

Written by Larry Grogan and Bill Luther

For Jenny

Contact us at LGThelonious@mailcity.com

Incognito, 1985

Evil Eye, 1994

Gone, 1997

This is the first "cyber" issue of Gone, a zine that has previously seen the light of day (on paper) twice since 1996. Having to learn Front Page for work finally spurred me on to do something on the internet.

I've been doing zines of one kind or another for more than fifteen years. I was inspired by the Garage Punk revival to do the first issue of Incognito in 1984. Incognito went on for 12 issues into 1987, and then revived briefly for one more in 1991. All of these were done with the old manual cut and paste method (which was easy because I was working in newspaper production at the time). During this time I also did some writing (mostly on alternative rock) for local papers, as well as other peoples zines/

In 1992 I bought my first computer, an Apple Macintosh Performa 200, one of the smallest Macs. It has a 9" diagonal black and white screen, 12MB ram and less than 100mb on the hard drive. It was on this that I did the first 15 or so issues of my next zine, Evil Eye. In EE I indulged my penchant for politics as well as covering a much wider range of music. In addition to garage and psychedelia there was a good deal of folk, jazz and world music. Somewhere around 1995 I got my next MAC, a Performa 6100. Not the top of the line but I finally had a color screen, a colossal 32MB ram and a CD ROM drive. I did the rest of the issues of Evil Eye on this, ending with issue #19 in early 1996.

It was later that year that I decided the time was right to do a jazz zine, and Gone was born. In the first two issues there were articles on Thelonious Monk, Clifford Brown, Anita O'Day, Bob Dorough as well as Beat and Jazz related writers like Richard Farina and Bill Crow. I started to work on a third issue in late 1997, but it never saw the light of day. Since then I met and fell in love with a wonderful woman, read a lot of books, bought a lot more music (up to 1500+ CD's at last count) and wrote for some other people. On the internet I contributed to the e-zines All About Jazz and Jazz Review, and in print I contributed entries to the Music Hound Jazz Album Guide (available at your local book store). The thought of doing something on the internet had been suggested to me many times by many people, but only the necessity of learning HTML for my job finally made me do it.

What you see here is the result. While I certainly can't claim to be presenting anything cutting edge in the way of web technology (this is and will probably continue to be a site free of Java applets, sound files and animation) but hopefully the reader will find some interesting ideas and stories. The driving force for me behind writing about music has always been to turn other people on to cool new sounds. Hopefully, the internet version of Gone will continue that tradition.

This issue includes a cover story on the great Wardell Gray (originally planned for the third issue of Gone), a piece by my long-time friend and collaborator Bill Luther on UK Instrumental kitsch of the 60's and 70's, the story of great lost jazz singer Cliff 'Ukelele Ike' Edwards, a list of  great vibes records of the 60's. There is also an obit of Dial Records founder and author Ross Russell, as well as a record reviews section that will be updated as the new music rolls in. So read on, and enjoy. Use the e-mail link above to let me know what you think.

- Larry