Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Feb 16, 2014 19:05:33 GMT -6
From:
www.freewebs.com/tnjournal/interviews.htm
tom trapazoid's History of The Nostalgia Journal
interview with Gordon Bailey
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Tom: Why did you call it 'The Nostalgia Journal?'
Gordon: I don't really know how the name came about. I seem to recall though that Larry Herndon was insistent we call it that. I don't think any of the rest of us were too crazy about it. I know I wasn't. But he was hung up on the word 'nostalgia.' Larry placed great importance on that.
Larry had the idea that the wider we cast our net, the better our chances would be. Even though our focus would be comic books and movie memorabilia, he envisioned an adzine where anything nostalgia-related could be sold or written about. He didn't want us to be limited. Which was probably a good idea at the time.
T: So give us an idea of how it all started, the early days.
G: I guess it was in March of 1974 that several of us got together at a convention in Dallas. It was me, Larry, Joe Bob Williams, and two comic book dealers, Buck Walton and Larry Bigman. I don't know if Don Maris was in at that point, but it wasn't long after that. Mark Lamberti came in much later.
We all had one thing in common- we couldn't stand Alan Light. And we resented the hell out of the fact he had basically muscled in on the RBCC and the adzine market, and everyone else had just given up without a fight. You know, like Hitler knocking off all those little countries at the beginning of World War II. So we decided we were going to do something about it.
We had a meeting in someone's room and that's how TNJ was born. We were to each put up $200 to bankroll the thing, start selling ads and we figured we'd break even in no time. Of course, nothing is ever that simple and it was a bitch getting the paper started. We were always broke and running behind. It was really just me and Larry at first. We did the first three issues pretty much on our own. Everyone else was tied up with real jobs.
T: What kind of reception did you get at first?
G: Well, aside from the money problems, it was great. We got a lot of support. Letters poured in from people saying, "Thank God there's an alternative to The Buyer's Guide." I really think we started it just in the nick of time, before Light got a stranglehold on the market. If we had started just a little bit later, he probably would have intimidated all the advertisers into not placing ads with us. As it was, he tried to anyway.
T: I gather he wasn't happy about it.
G: No, not at all. I mean, it was war from day one. He sent us an ad to run in the first issue of TNJ for The Buyer's Guide. Well we knew how he worked. So we sent HIM an ad for The Nostalgia Journal. And we just said, hey, we'll run your ad if you run ours. We got a letter from him saying to return his ad and check. A sign of things to come!
T: What were some of the other big hassles? Like the lawsuits.
G: The other big conflict, aside from Light, was with this guy from Houston named Stan Blair. I have to admit, we never saw this one coming. He ran something called the National Central Bureau, which he passed off as a quasi-law enforcement agency. I think he started it to hunt down crooked comic book dealers. There's a mission statement for you. Anyway, he reported a few to the postal authorities and kind of made a name for himself. But it went to his head... he thought he was J. Edgar Hoover! So one day, we got one of his notices in the mail... I think he called them 'alerts' and he asked if we'd publish it. This was just as the first issue of TNJ was going to press and it just so happened we had a quarter-page to fill, so we said sure, why not? No big deal. Then we started getting letters from him wanting us to join his organization. We said, eh, no thanks... didn't give it a lot of thought. We had other things to worry about. Then he started sending us these letters, threatening us with some kind of legal action if we didn't join. And we were like, what the F? Who the hell is this guy, trying to tell us what to do? And all of his letters were written in this pseudo-legalese, attorney kind of jargon that he thought made him sound like a government official or something. Well, we had a good lawyer and we turned this stuff over to him. He let Blair have it with both barrels. It was great. And we did end up taking him to court, winning, and putting the idiot out of business. I sometimes think that was The Nostalgia Journal's single greatest accomplishment, even though it wasn't something we set out to do.
T: And Light got dragged into that?
G: Yeah. He had to come down to Texas for a court appearance. That was great too.
T: Okay, well let's not jump too far ahead here. What was the comic fandom scene like at the time?
G: Oh it was great. I'm biased, of course, because that was my time, when I was collecting and dealing and publishing fanzines and going to conventions. It was all pretty heady stuff for an 18-year-old. Parties, a lot of parties. We used to live for the conventions, in fact, that was our other business, aside from publishing TNJ- putting on conventions. We'd run into the same great people all the time- John Wooley, the Harper Brothers, Bart and Jan Bush, Bruce Hershenson, Russ Cochran, Tony Anello... I could go on and on. It was like one big ongoing party, with gaps in between till the next convention. A moveable feast.
Those were crazy, fun days.
T: And Wooley wrote for TNJ, didn't he?
G: Yeah, sure did. Well I know he wrote at least one convention review. Mark Lamberti had a column he wrote. I had a couple. And then just the one-off articles we'd write too. John and I worked together years later on a fanzine I published called Movies Then and Now.
T: Joe Bob Williams is listed as editor starting with the fourth issue of TNJ.
G: Yeah, it's funny in retrospect. Larry and I did the first three issues over the summer of '74 and things were finally starting to get into a kind of routine. But I had to start college in September, at North Texas State. There was no way I could do both, go to school and be editor. I was really worried because by this point I loved doing TNJ and I was afraid everything would fall apart without me. But Larry didn't seem worried at all, and I couldn't figure out why. What I didn't know at the time was that Joe Bob was at a point then where he felt he could edit the paper in addition to his regular job. For all I know, he and Larry might have pushed me out the way anyway! But it turned out to be a lucky set of circumstances all around. I went off to college and Joe Bob took over and we never missed a beat. I was still around, helping out with the mailing and writing articles and so forth. Everybody did everything. I think Mark Lamberti came aboard somewhere around this time. And really for the rest of the paper's history, that's how it was- Larry Herndon, Joe Bob Williams, Mark Lamberti, and me. From that point on, we were like a four-headed monster.
T: So the rest of '74 was fairly uneventful?
G: Yeah, I guess if you could describe any one period as uneventful, that was it. Like I said, we had gotten into a routine and things were going relatively smoothly. We never made any money from the paper, but we were breaking even. Then, with TNJ #8, things got kind of wild. We had been publishing, I think 32 pages every issue. Something like that. One section. Out of the blue, we took in enough ads for #8 for 52 pages. I don't think anything in particular triggered it, other than we were finally starting to really catch on. Then it seemed all hell broke loose.
T: This was when Light offered to buy TNJ...
G: He did. First off, we were all pretty excited about the size of the issue. I think we had all kind of resigned ourselves to publishing 32 pages every issue forever. And now it looked like the thing was really going to take off. We were as surprised as anyone. Then before we could even get the copies mailed out, Joe Bob was in a car wreck and broke his leg. Well that really put us in a bind. At that point, I was helping out as I could but I was at NTSU thirty miles away. Larry of course was limited in what he could do in a physical sense anyway. And Mark had a regular job... he was kind of in and out. And not only was this issue the biggest in page count, our circulation was up to almost 8000 copies. That's a hell of a lot of copies to mail by hand, believe me. We had to affix the labels, bundle the copies, sort them by zip code, bag them, and haul them to the post office. It was a bitch to do every issue, even with three or four of us doing it. And this issue, I had to do it almost by myself, with hardly any help. It took me a couple of weeks, labeling, bundling, bagging, and I don't know how many you know what trips to the post office, which was in Lewisville. I thought I'd never get done. All in all, we fell almost a month behind schedule and it just killed the momentum and we never really recovered from that. The next issue was 40 pages which was still pretty good, but after that we went back to square one. 32 pages every issue till the end.
The deal with Light was going on at the same time. He and Larry had started corresponding back and forth about him buying TNJ. I guess he figured if he couldn't drive us out of business, he'd buy us off. When I found out about it, I was pretty angry, but Larry said he was just stringing him along to see how far it would go. See, Larry could be very machiavellian about things, even with friends. I loved the guy like a brother but looking back, it's obvious he really WAS interested in selling the paper. And everything kind of came into play at the same time... the success we were having, then falling behind, and Light's offer. Ultimately, he offered us $12,000. We each had to agree not to start another adzine for five years... something like that. We would have gotten a couple of grand apiece. Doesn't sound like much now, but at the time, paying twelve grand for a fanzine was unheard of, and two grand each was a lot of money to us! Light even called me a couple of times and offered me the editor's job if we sold to him. I remember it was like one of those cartoons, where you have a little devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. I did consider it, briefly. But as I said, I was very young and idealistic... I figured whatever credibility I had with people would be shot if I took Light up on it. Then Larry told me everyone else... him, Joe Bob, Mark, Don Maris... wanted to sell. Well I went ballistic. I told them they were all traitors, basically. Something like that. I don't remember the exact words I used. I gave them a speech, about the reasons we started the paper and how we shouldn't let people down, and so on. Well, I don't know if that changed their minds, but something did. It's hard to remember everything now. But I do remember a conversation with Joe Bob at his house after it was decided NOT to sell to Light after all, and he was very sheepish about the whole thing, which was unusual for him!
T: So did things then go back to how they'd been?
G: Pretty much. Except for another big change. Somewhere during this same time, it was decided to start charging for subscriptions. Not much... a dollar for a year's subscription. We figured it would be a good way to raise some money. TNJ of course had been free up to that point. We thought since we were charging so little, most people would pay to subscribe, more than half anyway. We got another rude awakening there. In a way, it didn't matter as far as circulation went... we kept mailing out free copies to keep the figure up. I think what we did was mail most people every third or fourth issue, instead of every one.
T: Was there any thought given to just stopping publication?
G: Not at that point, no. We had it down now, once we got back on schedule, and the whole operation was running fairly smoothly. Maybe we kind of gave up on TNJ ever being a big moneymaker, but it was worth publishing just to promote our conventions, which were very profitable. You couldn't beat having a mailing list of several thousand people to which you could send convention info and advertising every month. That was reason enough really to continue.
In fact, we briefly decided to publish every two weeks. I don't know what the hell we were thinking. That lasted all of about two issues! I mean, it was all we could do to get the thing out once a month.
T: So now we're into late '75.
G: Yeah we were puttering along. I quit college around this time. Joe Bob, Mark, and I decided to take turns editing TNJ. It was a good arrangement, because we all enjoyed doing that. The putting together of the paper was the fun part, and writing articles. The only thing we really hated was the mailing. So we started doing the rotating-editor deal around #15 or #16. Then Joe Bob had some personal problems and had to drop out for a while, so it was just me and Mark. But we didn't mind. Mark was writing a column called 'The Picture Show' I think, which was really good. And I was writing different stuff. That was a fun period.
T: Did the 'war' with Light ever lighten up?
G: Oh it came and went but never really went away. He kept hassling us. We weren't really cutting into his business but I'm sure we annoyed the hell out of him. There were all sorts of little dirty tricks. Somebody tried to change our post office box address and of course we suspected him or one of his minions. Things like that. The lawsuit was resolved and we were both supposed to print a statement. We did... we put it in an editorial right on the third page. I think he printed his in the middle of the classifieds. What a dick.
T: So how did it come to an end?
G: I think it was mainly due to the conventions coming to an end. The last couple we put on weren't successful. So that kind of killed the last reason to keep publishing. And we were all tired. Mark got a new job and had no time to devote to TNJ. I think Joe Bob was about to get divorced. Larry had lost interest. I was broke and looking to move back to Fort Worth to get a job.
Around this time, I got to know Gary Groth. He was publishing a music fan adzine called 'Sounds Fine' and we were swapping ads back and forth and occasionally talking on the phone. I mentioned that I didn't know how much longer we were going to publish TNJ and he expressed an interest in taking it over. I think we were all glad he did, because as burned out as we were, we wanted to see it continue. Which it did, in ways we never imagined! The idea that it's still going today, albeit in a verly different version, blows my mind sometimes.
T: Any final thoughts?
G: Just some random ones... you know, the four of us weren't really close friends. We were all friends with Larry. He was the center of it all. But Mark, Joe Bob, and I were never big buds. We didn't hang out together, socially. We each had our own lives and our own friends... even at the conventions. About the only thing we had in common was the Nostalgia Journal. And I was a lot younger than them, so that had something to do with it.
But it was a great experience for me, definitely one I'll never forget. Those two or three years are ones I go back and think about often. It was a lot of fun and pretty crazy at times... you know, just a lot of life happening to everyone and I'm glad I was a part of it.
www.freewebs.com/tnjournal/interviews.htm
tom trapazoid's History of The Nostalgia Journal
interview with Gordon Bailey
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Tom: Why did you call it 'The Nostalgia Journal?'
Gordon: I don't really know how the name came about. I seem to recall though that Larry Herndon was insistent we call it that. I don't think any of the rest of us were too crazy about it. I know I wasn't. But he was hung up on the word 'nostalgia.' Larry placed great importance on that.
Larry had the idea that the wider we cast our net, the better our chances would be. Even though our focus would be comic books and movie memorabilia, he envisioned an adzine where anything nostalgia-related could be sold or written about. He didn't want us to be limited. Which was probably a good idea at the time.
T: So give us an idea of how it all started, the early days.
G: I guess it was in March of 1974 that several of us got together at a convention in Dallas. It was me, Larry, Joe Bob Williams, and two comic book dealers, Buck Walton and Larry Bigman. I don't know if Don Maris was in at that point, but it wasn't long after that. Mark Lamberti came in much later.
We all had one thing in common- we couldn't stand Alan Light. And we resented the hell out of the fact he had basically muscled in on the RBCC and the adzine market, and everyone else had just given up without a fight. You know, like Hitler knocking off all those little countries at the beginning of World War II. So we decided we were going to do something about it.
We had a meeting in someone's room and that's how TNJ was born. We were to each put up $200 to bankroll the thing, start selling ads and we figured we'd break even in no time. Of course, nothing is ever that simple and it was a bitch getting the paper started. We were always broke and running behind. It was really just me and Larry at first. We did the first three issues pretty much on our own. Everyone else was tied up with real jobs.
T: What kind of reception did you get at first?
G: Well, aside from the money problems, it was great. We got a lot of support. Letters poured in from people saying, "Thank God there's an alternative to The Buyer's Guide." I really think we started it just in the nick of time, before Light got a stranglehold on the market. If we had started just a little bit later, he probably would have intimidated all the advertisers into not placing ads with us. As it was, he tried to anyway.
T: I gather he wasn't happy about it.
G: No, not at all. I mean, it was war from day one. He sent us an ad to run in the first issue of TNJ for The Buyer's Guide. Well we knew how he worked. So we sent HIM an ad for The Nostalgia Journal. And we just said, hey, we'll run your ad if you run ours. We got a letter from him saying to return his ad and check. A sign of things to come!
T: What were some of the other big hassles? Like the lawsuits.
G: The other big conflict, aside from Light, was with this guy from Houston named Stan Blair. I have to admit, we never saw this one coming. He ran something called the National Central Bureau, which he passed off as a quasi-law enforcement agency. I think he started it to hunt down crooked comic book dealers. There's a mission statement for you. Anyway, he reported a few to the postal authorities and kind of made a name for himself. But it went to his head... he thought he was J. Edgar Hoover! So one day, we got one of his notices in the mail... I think he called them 'alerts' and he asked if we'd publish it. This was just as the first issue of TNJ was going to press and it just so happened we had a quarter-page to fill, so we said sure, why not? No big deal. Then we started getting letters from him wanting us to join his organization. We said, eh, no thanks... didn't give it a lot of thought. We had other things to worry about. Then he started sending us these letters, threatening us with some kind of legal action if we didn't join. And we were like, what the F? Who the hell is this guy, trying to tell us what to do? And all of his letters were written in this pseudo-legalese, attorney kind of jargon that he thought made him sound like a government official or something. Well, we had a good lawyer and we turned this stuff over to him. He let Blair have it with both barrels. It was great. And we did end up taking him to court, winning, and putting the idiot out of business. I sometimes think that was The Nostalgia Journal's single greatest accomplishment, even though it wasn't something we set out to do.
T: And Light got dragged into that?
G: Yeah. He had to come down to Texas for a court appearance. That was great too.
T: Okay, well let's not jump too far ahead here. What was the comic fandom scene like at the time?
G: Oh it was great. I'm biased, of course, because that was my time, when I was collecting and dealing and publishing fanzines and going to conventions. It was all pretty heady stuff for an 18-year-old. Parties, a lot of parties. We used to live for the conventions, in fact, that was our other business, aside from publishing TNJ- putting on conventions. We'd run into the same great people all the time- John Wooley, the Harper Brothers, Bart and Jan Bush, Bruce Hershenson, Russ Cochran, Tony Anello... I could go on and on. It was like one big ongoing party, with gaps in between till the next convention. A moveable feast.
Those were crazy, fun days.
T: And Wooley wrote for TNJ, didn't he?
G: Yeah, sure did. Well I know he wrote at least one convention review. Mark Lamberti had a column he wrote. I had a couple. And then just the one-off articles we'd write too. John and I worked together years later on a fanzine I published called Movies Then and Now.
T: Joe Bob Williams is listed as editor starting with the fourth issue of TNJ.
G: Yeah, it's funny in retrospect. Larry and I did the first three issues over the summer of '74 and things were finally starting to get into a kind of routine. But I had to start college in September, at North Texas State. There was no way I could do both, go to school and be editor. I was really worried because by this point I loved doing TNJ and I was afraid everything would fall apart without me. But Larry didn't seem worried at all, and I couldn't figure out why. What I didn't know at the time was that Joe Bob was at a point then where he felt he could edit the paper in addition to his regular job. For all I know, he and Larry might have pushed me out the way anyway! But it turned out to be a lucky set of circumstances all around. I went off to college and Joe Bob took over and we never missed a beat. I was still around, helping out with the mailing and writing articles and so forth. Everybody did everything. I think Mark Lamberti came aboard somewhere around this time. And really for the rest of the paper's history, that's how it was- Larry Herndon, Joe Bob Williams, Mark Lamberti, and me. From that point on, we were like a four-headed monster.
T: So the rest of '74 was fairly uneventful?
G: Yeah, I guess if you could describe any one period as uneventful, that was it. Like I said, we had gotten into a routine and things were going relatively smoothly. We never made any money from the paper, but we were breaking even. Then, with TNJ #8, things got kind of wild. We had been publishing, I think 32 pages every issue. Something like that. One section. Out of the blue, we took in enough ads for #8 for 52 pages. I don't think anything in particular triggered it, other than we were finally starting to really catch on. Then it seemed all hell broke loose.
T: This was when Light offered to buy TNJ...
G: He did. First off, we were all pretty excited about the size of the issue. I think we had all kind of resigned ourselves to publishing 32 pages every issue forever. And now it looked like the thing was really going to take off. We were as surprised as anyone. Then before we could even get the copies mailed out, Joe Bob was in a car wreck and broke his leg. Well that really put us in a bind. At that point, I was helping out as I could but I was at NTSU thirty miles away. Larry of course was limited in what he could do in a physical sense anyway. And Mark had a regular job... he was kind of in and out. And not only was this issue the biggest in page count, our circulation was up to almost 8000 copies. That's a hell of a lot of copies to mail by hand, believe me. We had to affix the labels, bundle the copies, sort them by zip code, bag them, and haul them to the post office. It was a bitch to do every issue, even with three or four of us doing it. And this issue, I had to do it almost by myself, with hardly any help. It took me a couple of weeks, labeling, bundling, bagging, and I don't know how many you know what trips to the post office, which was in Lewisville. I thought I'd never get done. All in all, we fell almost a month behind schedule and it just killed the momentum and we never really recovered from that. The next issue was 40 pages which was still pretty good, but after that we went back to square one. 32 pages every issue till the end.
The deal with Light was going on at the same time. He and Larry had started corresponding back and forth about him buying TNJ. I guess he figured if he couldn't drive us out of business, he'd buy us off. When I found out about it, I was pretty angry, but Larry said he was just stringing him along to see how far it would go. See, Larry could be very machiavellian about things, even with friends. I loved the guy like a brother but looking back, it's obvious he really WAS interested in selling the paper. And everything kind of came into play at the same time... the success we were having, then falling behind, and Light's offer. Ultimately, he offered us $12,000. We each had to agree not to start another adzine for five years... something like that. We would have gotten a couple of grand apiece. Doesn't sound like much now, but at the time, paying twelve grand for a fanzine was unheard of, and two grand each was a lot of money to us! Light even called me a couple of times and offered me the editor's job if we sold to him. I remember it was like one of those cartoons, where you have a little devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. I did consider it, briefly. But as I said, I was very young and idealistic... I figured whatever credibility I had with people would be shot if I took Light up on it. Then Larry told me everyone else... him, Joe Bob, Mark, Don Maris... wanted to sell. Well I went ballistic. I told them they were all traitors, basically. Something like that. I don't remember the exact words I used. I gave them a speech, about the reasons we started the paper and how we shouldn't let people down, and so on. Well, I don't know if that changed their minds, but something did. It's hard to remember everything now. But I do remember a conversation with Joe Bob at his house after it was decided NOT to sell to Light after all, and he was very sheepish about the whole thing, which was unusual for him!
T: So did things then go back to how they'd been?
G: Pretty much. Except for another big change. Somewhere during this same time, it was decided to start charging for subscriptions. Not much... a dollar for a year's subscription. We figured it would be a good way to raise some money. TNJ of course had been free up to that point. We thought since we were charging so little, most people would pay to subscribe, more than half anyway. We got another rude awakening there. In a way, it didn't matter as far as circulation went... we kept mailing out free copies to keep the figure up. I think what we did was mail most people every third or fourth issue, instead of every one.
T: Was there any thought given to just stopping publication?
G: Not at that point, no. We had it down now, once we got back on schedule, and the whole operation was running fairly smoothly. Maybe we kind of gave up on TNJ ever being a big moneymaker, but it was worth publishing just to promote our conventions, which were very profitable. You couldn't beat having a mailing list of several thousand people to which you could send convention info and advertising every month. That was reason enough really to continue.
In fact, we briefly decided to publish every two weeks. I don't know what the hell we were thinking. That lasted all of about two issues! I mean, it was all we could do to get the thing out once a month.
T: So now we're into late '75.
G: Yeah we were puttering along. I quit college around this time. Joe Bob, Mark, and I decided to take turns editing TNJ. It was a good arrangement, because we all enjoyed doing that. The putting together of the paper was the fun part, and writing articles. The only thing we really hated was the mailing. So we started doing the rotating-editor deal around #15 or #16. Then Joe Bob had some personal problems and had to drop out for a while, so it was just me and Mark. But we didn't mind. Mark was writing a column called 'The Picture Show' I think, which was really good. And I was writing different stuff. That was a fun period.
T: Did the 'war' with Light ever lighten up?
G: Oh it came and went but never really went away. He kept hassling us. We weren't really cutting into his business but I'm sure we annoyed the hell out of him. There were all sorts of little dirty tricks. Somebody tried to change our post office box address and of course we suspected him or one of his minions. Things like that. The lawsuit was resolved and we were both supposed to print a statement. We did... we put it in an editorial right on the third page. I think he printed his in the middle of the classifieds. What a dick.
T: So how did it come to an end?
G: I think it was mainly due to the conventions coming to an end. The last couple we put on weren't successful. So that kind of killed the last reason to keep publishing. And we were all tired. Mark got a new job and had no time to devote to TNJ. I think Joe Bob was about to get divorced. Larry had lost interest. I was broke and looking to move back to Fort Worth to get a job.
Around this time, I got to know Gary Groth. He was publishing a music fan adzine called 'Sounds Fine' and we were swapping ads back and forth and occasionally talking on the phone. I mentioned that I didn't know how much longer we were going to publish TNJ and he expressed an interest in taking it over. I think we were all glad he did, because as burned out as we were, we wanted to see it continue. Which it did, in ways we never imagined! The idea that it's still going today, albeit in a verly different version, blows my mind sometimes.
T: Any final thoughts?
G: Just some random ones... you know, the four of us weren't really close friends. We were all friends with Larry. He was the center of it all. But Mark, Joe Bob, and I were never big buds. We didn't hang out together, socially. We each had our own lives and our own friends... even at the conventions. About the only thing we had in common was the Nostalgia Journal. And I was a lot younger than them, so that had something to do with it.
But it was a great experience for me, definitely one I'll never forget. Those two or three years are ones I go back and think about often. It was a lot of fun and pretty crazy at times... you know, just a lot of life happening to everyone and I'm glad I was a part of it.