Rick’s Café, which published from January 2003 through January 2007, is resurfacing as an online magazine under the new name, Local Sounds Magazine. The new, all-local music publication has many of the writers from the original newspaper contributing. Local Sounds Magazine will post content in a manner similar to a magazine. New issues will be posted at regular intervals, insuring that the latest published content stays visible for an appropriate amount of time. News stories and live show reviews will be posted continuously. Readers can sign up to be notified when new content is posted. Readers can also submit live show reviews (with photos) and news items for addition to the site.
The Local Sounds Magazine site (http://www.localsoundsmagazine.com) will also be populated with the entire archive of Rick’s Café material. Those familiar with that content will recognize some of Local Sounds Magazine’s content: the popular “Blunt Force Trauma” column written by Blunt Rapture as well as “Wisconsin Music News” by Susan Masino and Rick Tvedt’s “Soul Food” column. New music reviews will also be added to the Rick’s Café archive of over 300 local music CD reviews.
Local Sounds Magazine is just one aspect of Local Sounds, LLC. Tvedt and Matt Jacoby have formed Local Sounds as a non-profit entity. Its purpose is to preserve and document Madison’s musical history. The Local Sounds site (http://www.localsounds.org) features a number of projects that are currently underway, including the Local Sounds Wiki. The wiki (a wiki is a user-fed database system popularized by Wikipedia) serves a variety of purposes, including an artist register that is similar to that of the former Rick’s Café Band Register. Users can provide detailed histories of themselves, their bands and their musical history. The wiki also serves as a comprehensive Madison-area discography which seeks to include a history of all of the recorded music in the Madison area. Users can provide track listings, members, artwork, engineers and producers, lyrics, stories about the completion of the recording, etc. – as much information as they wish. Other areas of the wiki include a venue register, a label register, a studio register, an artist services register, and more. All areas of the wiki allow connections to be made so that related content can be linked together.
Negotiations are underway to incorporate other aspects of Madison’s music community to make Local Sounds and Local Sounds Magazine a comprehensive one-stop resource for anything and everything concerning local music.
The first issue of Local Sounds Magazine is scheduled to be posted on June 10th. Users are encouraged to check out the site now (live shows and news items are already being posted) and sign up to be notified when the first issue is posted live.
