Hey, there. I'm the guy who edits and maintains most of this little e-zine we like to call Space City Rock. and I'm here to ask for help (kinda).

We here at SCR are valiant and brave and all that, but sadly, there just aren't enough of us. The past several years have seen some of our most prolific writers slip off to the sidelines, and in a lot of cases there hasn't been anybody to pick up the slack. That's why we need help.

We need writers. Badly. We need people who can write and, more importantly, know something about music, particularly of the indie variety (although if you're not into the stuff KTRU plays, that's not a deal-breaker by any means). The one thing that unites all of our writers -- who are scattered all the way from Boston to New Zealand, by the way -- is a love for music and a constant need to hear more of it. We're looking for more people like that to step in and write for us.

What You Get:
Unfortunately, we're a charity case. We pride ourselves on never having charged for anything, but that lack of inward cashflow also means that we can't pay our writers. Which sucks, we know, and hopefully it will change one of these days. On the positive side, writing for SCR means you get to keep the CDs you review, and hey, there's also the opportunity to interview musicians and artists you admire. We're very open to what you can write about -- as long as it's not a discussion of the genius of Mariah Carey and her relevance to the modern music scene, just ask and we'll probably be fine with it.

What We Need:
Reviewers:
First and foremost, we need people willing to sit down and write intelligibly about music they may or may not like and may or may not have ever heard before. We get a ton of CDs floating through our P.O. Box, with more "big" indie releases coming at us all the time, and to keep 'em coming we need to be able to get stuff reviewed reliably and (relatively) quickly.

Shows List Help:
Although we've had a few people help out in days past with updating the SCR Shows List, the job generally falls to Yours Truly. Which is okay most of the time, but my life would be a lot easier if there were other folks regularly updating the list, too. Plus, I do happen to leave town occasionally and can't always get online from the road. Anybody who can help with adding shows would be much appreciated.

Help Updating Houston Pages:
As many of you have probably noticed, large parts of this site have fallen into disrepair, often with info up that's several years old. It's gotten damn difficult to keep the "Houston" side (the Bands, Labels, Venues, and Zines pages) current, and that's bad. For one thing, I know that there are a ton of great bands out there now that I've never had a chance to hear, and it's not very fair that, because of my homebody-ness, the "Bands Worth Seeing" are mostly dead and gone. This job would mostly involve writing about bands that you happen to think are good (with one caveat: please don't do this just to plug your own band, okay?), adding or removing links from the "Other Houston Bands" list, adding or removing links from the main "Houston" page, updating the Venues page and adding whatever details you can about the various clubs & bars, and maybe cleaning out and updating the list of now-mostly-defunct zines.

A Real-Live Advertising Manager:
For a long time, we didn't bother trying to sell ads. We got a few for the print 'zine, back in the day, but we just shrugged and figured, "eh, the online stuff's too hard; screw it..." These days, though, I'd dearly love to make Space City Rock a viable enterprise, as well as build enough dough to do fun things like sponsor a table at Westfest or take our hardworking writers (the Houstonians, anyway) out for a beer. So we desperately need somebody to sell ads. I just can't do it, and most of our current crop of writers are slammed just with the writing side of things.

I should note, by the way, that if we get somebody in who can sell banner ads & such on the site, they'll get a commission on each sale. We figure that's only fair, since sales is a crappy task to begin with...

At any rate, that's my gloomy sales pitch. Any takers? If you'd like to write for us or help out in some other way (whether listed above or not), just send us an e-mail at "gaijin" at "spacecityrock dot com" -- sorry, trying to dodge the spambots -- and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Oh, and location doesn't necessarily matter; like I said, we're based all over, despite being a Houston e-zine at heart... Thanks!

Jeremy L. Hart
Editor/Co-Publisher/Whatever Guy
Space City Rock Magazine