Glorious Noise founder, Jake Brown, is profiled on Detour and some shocking secrets are revealed. For instance, did you know:
• Jake Hates Phone Conversation – It’s true. We’ve been best friends for 20 years and I don’t even have his phone number.
• Jake Thinks He’s Lester Bangs – He’s told us all for years that the name, Glorious Noise, is a Lester Bangs reference but NOBODY can find those words uttered in any of Bangs’ work.
• Jake Still Reads Pitchfork – Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…what a poser!
• Jake TiVos Soap Operas – The Young & the Restless? Seriously? That’s just sad.
Read more of Jake’s shameful admissions and prepare your mocking posts. Now’s your time for revenge, Grounded5am…
Where are you based in real life?
Chicago
How did the site get its start? Its name?
Glorious Noise started out as a place to publish the hilarious rants about music and pop culture that my friends used to email to each other. When Vanity Fair published the first version of its Rock Snob’s Dictionary, written by Grand Royal’s Bob Mack, we all noticed that most of the references were things that we all talked about and listened to all the time. So we talked about starting a website.
I had recently discovered how simple it was to do a D/I/Y website when I built Grand Rapids Rocks, a site that documents the 1960s garage rock scene in West Michigan.
So we talked about starting a website that had the same vibe as the Rock Snob’s Dictionary and the email rants. Basically a place for me and my friends to shoot the shit about music. After all, our opinions were at least as good as anybody else writing about music on the internet at that time. There was this new publishing platform called “Blogger” which looked like it might simplify the process of collaborating with several people on the content of a website. We could do this.
So we had to think of a good name/domain for the site. We originally thought of rocksnobs.com, which was available at the time. But we realized that that seemed too negative. I was reading the Lester Bangs biography, Let It Blurt, and I thought I remembered a quote where Bangs described the best rock and roll as “glorious noise.” We all liked that phrase. (I’ve gone back and tried to find the phrase in Let It Blurt or any of Bangs’ original stuff, and I can’t find it anywhere! So I think I made it up out of my good evangelical upbringing and attributed it to Lester Bangs because he’s cooler than King David or whoever wrote Psalms.)
So GLONO originally went live in February 2001.
Does the nature of what you do make you hate the phone / human contact?
I’ve hated talking on the phone since before the first web browser was even invented. I don’t mind actual human contact, especially if alcohol is involved.
List your must-checks every morning (read: what’s in your RSS feed)…
Oh the usual: Billboard, Variety, MTV News, Punknews.org, NME, MSNBC, Reuters, Rolling Stone, Boing Boing, Techdirt, etc. After I check those big news feeds and come up with any newsy/linky/bloggy posts for the morning, I’ll check out other music zines to see what else is up: Chromewaves, Idolator, Pitchfork News, Lefsetz,…
Favorite blog/website besides your own…
Last Plane to Jakarta, although it’s updated far too infrequently. After the 2004 election, I was on a big Cute Overload kick — kittens and hamsters were the only things that could make me feel better about the world. But I got sick of that too. Lately, I’ve been into Offsprung, Daddy Types, and Babygadget…
Favorite record of all time…
Come on. You can’t ask a music guy that question. Here’s a few:
Beastie Boys – Paul’s Boutique
Beatles – White Album
Libertines – Up the Bracket
Mountain Goats – All Hail West Texas
Pixies – Surfer Rosa / Come On Pilgrim
Elliott Smith – Either/Or
Weezer – Pinkerton
Favorite movie of all time…
Dazed and Confused. I don’t really watch movies. There’s too much good reality TV on Bravo.
Favorite TV show of all time…
American Dreams. I’m still pissed it got cancelled.
Actor/actress/blogger you’d most like to hump…
Martha Stewart. She’s saucy.
Your guiltiest pleasure. The thing no one would believe you watch, read, or listen to…
I tivo “Young and the Restless” and watch it every day. But I mean, you know, it’s on five days a week all year around, so let’s see YOU try to come up with that much content! You’d think, though, that with all that practice the acting would improve. I mean, obviously Victor Newman is awesome, and so are Phyllis and Michael and a bunch of the other characters. But seriously: John Abbott? He was on that show for 30 years and he still couldn’t pull off a scene without making me embarrassed for him. I’m glad he’s dead, but I’ll admit I get a little excited when his ghost comes back to overdramatically hassle his son Jack every once in a while.
nice pic. wonder where you got that?
You caught him on the one day he combed his hair. When it’s messy it looks just like Son of Sam’s hairdo. I am waiting for the time when kids go to the barber and ask for the “Berkowitz”. Then I will say I know who started that shit.
Aw man. Why you gotta do me like that, Mookie? The Son of Sam was not an attractive fellow. At all. That’s mean!
In addition, I don’t think a comb has actually touched my head in what must be close to twenty years…
You don’t look like Son of Sam. You just have his haircut (or he has yours–I don’t have a dog in that fight).
There are mobs of people that have my haircut but are nowhere near as pretty in the face as me. That’s what sets me apart. Same with you. Only there is really only one other person with your haircut (when it’s messed up) and it happens to be Son of Sam. But still, you are much, much more attractive than him. No contest, really. You get my point.