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MIKE SHEA:

Depression sucks.
It’s one thing if you just sink into it fast and then snap out of it. But when it hits you over a three year period, that just sucks. You’re supposed to enjoy what you do, right? Okay, so I get to be my own boss, work with great people, listen to music all day and not have to wear a suit or deal with corporate rules. Sounds like a total dream job, right? Not if you’re having to discuss Kid Rock or the over-commercialization of music, and being forced to chase the lowest common denominator just to get people to advertise or carry you in their stores.

This was the first year my fire started to burn out. The music industry was starting to collapse into an “all about the money/stockholder value” mentality, and friends of ours who worked at the major labels were grumbling about the industry not being as fun as it used to be. That’s what media consolidation does, gang.

As companies grow, owners sometimes go through a routine of “chasing the rabbit.” Some rabbits lead you into a wide-open field, where you end up running around aimlessly on a quest whose point you eventually forget; others lead you down a hole it’ll take you forever to get out of, and in some cases, you never do. In 1999, AP had run into the field—we had lost our way.
I was starting to think that if things didn’t get better/easier/more tolerable by the end of the following year, it would be time just to shut it down and move on, even though I had no idea what I would do or where I would go.

127: KORN/ARTIST OF THE YEAR
I spent 48 hours on the road with Korn’s Family Values Tour, and all I got was the most surreal experience of my career with AP. There were defiled groupies, mountains of fried chicken, penises against bus windows, rivers of alcohol, forests of weed and, of course, the infamous dildo. I’d like to thank that piece of latex­ (or at least the devil on my shoulder that told me to write about what someone in Limp Bizkit’s crew did with it) for getting me banned from writing about any band on this tour again. [AB]

128: ROB ZOMBIE
The first of two pre-Columbine cover shots featuring celebrities with handguns. Okay, this was more of a stylized shot, and it was really Rob Zombie’s model girlfriend holding the space gun on the cover, but still. Those days seem so innocent now… [AB]

129: MARILYN MANSON
If you remember the movie Manson is paying homage to on this cover, I will send you a box of CDs (editorial@altpress.com). [JP]

This issue, featuring Manson brandishing a revolver and the tagline “Marilyn Unloads On…” was off newsstands March 30, 1999. Twenty-one days later, Columbine happened—coincidence? [AB]

130: ORGY
The nü-metal Duran Duran. Introducing your career with a cover tune, an industri-metal version of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” is rarely a recipe for longevity. [RC]
I remember the band and their management (the same as Korn’s) being furious that only singer Jay Gordon was on the cover. Later, they decided they didn’t need to be in our “Most Anticipated” issue. To this day, I don’t know if it was revenge, or if they were being too cool for school. Whatever. I still like them more than Duran Duran. [JP]

With issue 127 as an exclusive exception, boys in make-up was an art-department fave for our covers, and still is now—did you see the My Chemical Romance cover last month? Case in point. [CB]

131: INSANE CLOWN POSSE
In a way, ICP were punk. Very DIY, very supportive of their fans and their scene. We at AP were into these guys because they represented everything the music business was not anymore. And we kept supporting them, and kept supporting them, and on and on. [MS]

132: RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
I have no idea what’s in this issue; I still can’t get past the cover, where someone (the editors say it’s the art department; those guys say it’s us) misspelled “Anniversary” below the magazine’s logo. [AB]

This cover shoot just reinforced my “being over it” mood; here was a band that we had supported for years, and what we heard back from the photographer was that they couldn’t have cared less about being on our cover. Alternative rock had sold out, and it sucked. [MS]

133: KID ROCK
This was officially our first all-nude cover; as far as we were concerned, for cover shots, the only thing cooler than dudes in make-up was naked people—even if it was Mr. Rock. [CB]

I’m not sure whether it was the Kid Rock cover or the features on Smash Mouth, Coal Chamber and Twizted inside, but this is the month where I realized I was no longer able to relate to the AP I once knew and loved. It wasn’t anyone’s fault—we were just trying to stay afloat, and I was planning to stay at AP, come what may (Where else could I write about U.S. Maple and Captain Beefheart the same month Kid Rock’s on the cover?), but I was about to find a life-changing call from an executive recruiter on my home answering machine. [AB]

134: NINE INCH NAILS
Rob Cherry pulled out all the stops to make this exclusive cover story the definitive NIN feature, and—given the huge back-story, the cast of characters behind The Fragile, and the number of definitive NIN pieces AP had already run—that was no small feat. [AB]

With a huge cover story that contained 5,000 words and something like four sidebars, this issue should have been sold as a program at the merch booth during NIN’s world tour. [JP]

135: TORI AMOS
The artists on the AP Readers Chart this month included ICP, Limp Bizkit, Static-X and Kid Rock. After hours, my alcohol intake expands significantly. [JP]

AP was sometimes a home to those artists that had diehard fan bases but that music magazines either didn’t “get” or overlooked for the current hot thing on the charts. Tori was one of them. Her fans were not at all the typical AP reader, but we supported her; her fans bought our magazine to say thanks—even if it was for only that issue. [MS]

136: CHRIS CORNELL
This would be my last issue at AP for three years. Turning in my resignation to Mike, and having too much respect for him and AP to admit my heart wasn’t in it anymore, was painful. They threw me the best going-away party anyone will ever give; I only wish I’d stayed around long enough that night to watch a shitfaced Christian Webb swim across the Cuyahoga River. [AB]

I knew this issue wasn’t going to sell well when I went to Chris’ solo show and some Soundgarden devotees in the back kept screaming, “You suck!” [MS]

137: BUSH
Wanna see a grown man cry? Demand that Mike Shea makes me write about Gavin Rossdale’s impending solo album. [JP]

A low point for us, no doubt. Pun intended.
[MS]

138: NO DOUBT/25 ANTICIPATED ALBUMS OF 2000
C’mon, where else were people going to find out about the new discs by Busta Rhymes, Rah Digga and No Doubt? Even I was prone to grumbling, “Alternative to what?” [JP]