Odd Job
The Demo King speaks out.
You write some songs.
Maybe even get a band together. You get out the old tape recorder
and lay down some tracks. No one's ever going to hear them but your
buddies, your little sister and that cool guy at work, right?
Maybe in your galaxy. But step into another universe, where all musicians get heard, if not
praised. A place where the act of addressing an envelope guarantees you a review. A
universe ruled by one man: Jim Santo.
Santo is the architect, builder and sole proprietor of Demo Universe, an expansive Web site
that gives exposure to that indie-est of indie music: the demo. Want to see your name in . .
. pixels? Get an impartial critique of your latest labor of musical love? Maybe you just want
to know that someone out there has inserted your tape into the machine and pressed "play."
Send it to Jim; he'll listen to it. He listens to everything. Santo reviews all the self-released
music he receives from budding musicians and posts it for the rest of the world to check out
and discover.
Or at least, he did. And he will again. It's just a matter of time.
What Was
In 1989, Jim Santo was a seemingly innocuous music lover reviewing the scene for one of
NYC's umpteen local rags. A chance meeting with Alternative Press
editor Joe Banks
netted him a regular slot as a demo reviewer. In a move guaranteed to get any potential
employer's attention, Santo offered to "work for nothing until you want to pay me."
And so they said, "Let there be Demorandum." Fast forward to 1994. Demorandum was
dwindling. Santo had room only to spotlight 10 or 12 demos a month, a frustrating choice
for a guy who believes that "everybody deserves some kind of exposure." Like many
people with great ideas and limited resources, he turned to his computer for guidance.
He initially nurtured the idea as a BBS on Sonicnet,
but in the fall of 1994, he discovered
the Wide World of the Web. His friend Tony Darc from the band Borgia Popes
helped him develop ideas and get Internet access, and the Web incarnation of Demo
Universe was born in the spring of 1995.
Over the next year, Santo reviewed about 800 demos from all over the country. He
intended to take off the summer of ‘96 and resume reviewing in the fall. But Banks offered
to include a new, expanded
Demo Universeon the Web site that Alternative Press was
developing. Santo shut down his column and stopped updating the site to concentrate on a
prototype.
What Is
He's still waiting.
"AP's plans for the site have gone badly astray," Santo says. Problems with money
sabatoged negotiations with the first Web developer. AP
moved on to another, but those
talks are also apparently in trouble, according to Santo.
Now
Demo Universehas been down for almost a year, and Santo is starting to consider his
options. His old format was becoming too unwieldy, and he's unwilling to go back to it. He
wants to incorporate a slew of new features into the site -- searchable databases, a j-card
gallery, a DIY chat room and streaming audio -- that the old site couldn't accomodate.
"It's been sort of frustrating to be out of the loop for the last year," Santo says. "The site is
in a state of limbo."
The windows of the old
Demo Universesite have been boarded up and plastered with a
"This Universe Is Closed!" banner. Santo provides a brief rundown of the state of the site
and promises to "See you in the next Universe." The question is logistics; have you ever
tried to relocate an entire galaxy?
What Shall Be
While Santo is frustrated with Demo Universe's unexpectedly lengthy hiatus, his sense of
purpose for the site has never weakened. "No one else does this and someone really needs
to," he says. "There are not a lot of good reasons to make demos." Most labels don't listen
to unsolicited material, demos get no radio airplay and few magazines will touch them.
"Unsigned, unknown, self-released music is not a mainstream thing," he acknowledges.
One reason for that lack of appeal is the cassette itself -- which Santo estimates is the
format of 75% of the demos he receives. "Cassettes are the worst medium for recording
sound; their dynamic range is very restricted," he says, mostly because many musicians
simply don't know the basics of recording. Bad quality, he contends, is usually a problem
with "equalization skills, or the lack thereof." Shrugging off glitches as "lo-fi," a move so
popular with the indie crowd, is a cop-out by acts who decide not to try their best, he says.
Making a good demo is a question of mind over matter: if you don't mind, it don't matter.
The best musicians find ways to overcome those flaws, Santo says. "East River Pipe uses
an 8-track and a cheap drum machine, but it sounds beautiful. I'd rather call [it] low-tech
than lo-fi," he says. "Shelley Blake in Baltimore records on a phone answering machine. It
doesn't sound great, but it's so good that it transcends the limitations of the recording
technique."
Santo maintains that demos are useful from an artistic standpoint: they're a cheap and easy
method of self-expression. Which is why he continues to review all material he receives,
with an eye to making it all available when the site goes back online. "Whenever it
reappears, it's going to be quite an impressive archive," he promises.
Why would anyone do this to themselves? After all, there's a reason the vast majority of
musicians never get signed. Santo acknowledges that, of every 100 demos he receives, he
would play only 10 for someone else, and there might only be one or two that are
exceptional.
And he doesn't believe, like some music fans, that all self-expression is on the same level.
"There's a school of thought that says all artistic endeavors are valid. That's just decadent,"
he says. "Some are better than others and deserve to be supported. Most are simply the
product of lazy people indulging themselves."
Demo Universe seems to operate on the philosophy that exposure allows independent
music fans to determine for themselves what is interesting, innovative, and just plain crap.
It's the sunshine theory -- bring everything out into the light, and the bad stuff will just dry up
and blow away.
And Santo says
Demo Universeis often its own reward. "I sometimes get letters from
musicians who say that they were questioning [whether to give up music], but that they have
decided to continue to pursue their dream,” he says. “You can't put a price on that. Their
friends won't tell them what's wrong with what they're doing, and some of them take my
suggestions to heart. They learn to be self-critical."
Besides, Santo says, you just can't tell what might be in the mailbox. "I never know when
I'm going to hear something that's going to knock me on my ass," he says. So he continues
to give these truly independent musicians as much exposure as he can, both to the public
and to his own critical ear.
Lindy Powell
powell@citizen.org
