Making Up Music 5
by Your Diva, Robin Pastorio-Newman

Jim Testa, publisher of Jersey Beat Magazine and the Jersey Beat website, shows ALTROK silly and serious sides of living the music life as a closet musician, mostly as a writer, and often as a fan. Jim knows everyone, and as he says, the good old days are right now.

ALTROK: Jim Testa, evidence of your presence is all around us, like teenyboppers crowding a life-size Britney Spears doll. You've published Jersey Beat Magazine since 1982. What made you toss yourself headlong into the glamorous zine world? Didn't anyone chuck you a life raft?

Jim Testa: I started a fanzine for two reasons. One, there was all this great music going on in NJ and nobody else was writing about it. Secondly, I wanted to be a writer, and nobody else wanted to publish me. The solution seemed simple at the time. Who knew I'd still be doing this 20 years later?

ALTROK: So you're a guitar player in a music critic's body. Rumor has it you're even a pretty decent guitarist. Did you give up playing on purpose, or just get tangled in other things for a while? Lots of musicians decide somewhere along the line that playing in a band is for kids, then regret quitting later when they realize music is for life. Like the foxtrot. What brought you back to the stage?

JT: I was never more (and am STILL no more) than a hack rhythm guitarist - four chords per song is about my limit, and no sharps or flats, please. My one attempt at being in a band ended in 1986 and I never considered joining or starting another band, but I always played guitar in my bedroom - mostly covers, but I wrote a few songs too. Sometimes I would inflict them on friends at parties. In May of 2000, I got dragged on stage at the W.E. Festival in North Carolina and got the bug again.
Once I got home, I started playing out - more for my friends than anything else - and slowly but surely, I got serious about it.
(Actually, Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan made the transition from rock critic to rocker the same way - playing in a cover band in his basement at parties until he and Georgia worked up the nerve to start a "real" band.)

ALTROK: Jim, along the way, you've devoted much of your life to playing music, reviewing live music, critiquing albums. Did you give up anything to do it? Have you missed out or made out? Tastes great or less filling?

JT: I certainly don't have any regrets. Most of my friends from college make more money than I do; most of them don't like their jobs, either, and they don't have anything else in their lives. At least I have a hobby - check that, a lifestyle - that's fulfilling and rewarding. I haven't changed the world, but I've changed how some people perceive the world by what I've written. Hopefully I've introduced a lot of them to music that they wouldn't have heard otherwise. That's a nice legacy. And then there are all the people who have come through my life because of Jersey Beat. Almost all of my close friends today are people I met through the zine. Some of them are amazing people, people I would never have gotten to know if I wasn't so immersed in music. And here's a nice bonus: There are very few musicians of my generation whose music I love that I haven't had the chance to meet. I've interviewed a lot of them, and a few of them have even become my friends. How many people can say that?

ALTROK: Got thoughts on the current state of radio? Mine are unprintable, so let's talk about yours. Who are you listening to these days? We're both huge Prosolar Mechanics fans. What do you think of that ceiling New Brunswick bands hit, somewhere around Canal Street, and before they get into New York clubs?

JT: There are two things I listen to on the radio: Imus In The Morning and Yankees games. The radio market here has always been an abomination, and it's probably worse now than it's ever been, since 99% of it (like all radio around the country) is being controlled by a handful of mega-corporations who don't know the difference between O-Town and Aretha Franklin, and don't care what they're playing, as long as they're making money.

People always ask me about "the good old days," but I think we're living in a golden age right now. There are more great bands in New Jersey than at anytime that I can remember. As to the perennial question, "what am I listening to," the answer to that, alas, is whatever I'm reviewing at the moment. Between the fanzine and my weekly newspaper column, I don't have a lot of time to just "listen" to stuff; I'm always playing CD's that I'm going to be writing about. Happily, that includes some good stuff. The new Plug Spark Sanjay CD is amazing. Aviso' Hara's latest is great. Matt Emmich (of Awake Asleep/Ben Trovato) fame has a solo EP coming out (under the name Val Emmich) that's just beautiful. I'm trying to write something now about Little T and One Track Mike; since I don't usually write about hip hop, it's more of a challenge to write something intelligent about what they're doing, other than I think they're funny and charming and catchy. Maybe they will be the first band that breaks out of New Brunswick into the mainstream; they're already on TRL, and that's pretty amazing all by itself. The only doubts I have aren't about the band members or their talent, but whether anyone at Atlantic Records will have the brains to figure out how to turn all that video play into sustained record sales (and eventually a career.) We don't need another One Hit Wonder, there are enough of those out there already.

ALTROK: You're obviously unafraid of trying new things. I've just taken up stretching and bending into unbelievable balancing positions for fun - some new thing called "yoga." What's next for you?

JT: I'm in the middle of recording some of my songs and I'm probably going to release a CD-EP by the end of the year. That's something I've never done - and since I haven't even been in a studio since the Eighties, all the new digital technology has been mind-blowing. You can listen to CD's all the time and never even begin to think about what goes into making them sound the way they do. Recording my own CD has been a real education and I'm loving every second of it.

ALTROK: What's it like being on the other side of the question mark for once?

JT: People think that when you do interviews, all you do is ask questions. I don't believe that. A good interview is a conversation. If there's one thing that makes interviews in Jersey Beat a little better than the competition, that's it.

But I actually like being interviewed. One thing about publishing your own magazine for 20 years, you tend to get a little opinionated.

ALTROK: Regular, menthol or Lifesavers?

JT: To get serious for a second, there are few things in this world I detest more than cigarettes. Someone in my family is dying of lung cancer and I have to live every day with the tragic consequences of the damn things. If you want to do something that will make me happy, quit smoking.

ALTROK: Say something funny, Jim.

JT: "Something funny, Jim."

ALTROK: Odd. Bryan Bruden said something quite similar...

©2001 Robin Pastorio-Newman