Option (music magazine)
Encyclopedia
Option was a music magazine based in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

.

History

Originally called OPtion, it, along with Sound Choice, were the dual successors to the earlier music magazine OP, published by John Foster and the Lost Music Network and known for its diverse scope and the role it played in providing publicity to DIY
DIY ethic
The DIY ethic refers to the ethic of self-sufficiency through completing tasks oneself as opposed to having others who are more experienced or able complete them for one's behalf. It promotes the idea that an ordinary person can learn to do more than he or she thought was possible...

 musicians in the midst of the cassette culture
Cassette culture
Cassette culture, or the cassette underground , refers to the practices surrounding amateur production and distribution of recorded music that emerged in the late 1970s via home-made audio cassettes...

. When Foster ended OP after only twenty-six issues, he held a conference, offering the magazine's resources to parties interested in carrying on; attendant journalist David Ciaffardini went on to start Sound Choice, while Scott Becker, alongside Richie Unterberger
Richie Unterberger
Richie Unterberger is a US author and journalist whose focus is popular music and travel writing.-Life and writing:Having worked as a DJ at WXPN in Philadelphia, he started reviewing records for Op magazine in 1983...

, founded Option. Whereas Sound Choice was described as a low-budget and "chaotic" publication in spirit, Option was characterized as a "profit making operation" right at the start, meant to compete with the newly founded Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...

.

The magazine began as a small press
Small press
Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...

 publication, described by the New Music Periodicals review of the Music Library Association
Music Library Association
The Music Library Association is the main professional organization for music libraries and librarians . It also serves corporations, institutions, students, composers, scholars and others whose work and interests lie in the music librarianship field...

 as "encompassing rock, jazz, classical, and electronic forms". The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

noted its dedication to coverage of indie music releases, with each issue containing "hundreds" of reviews: "not all rock by any means, but it's hard to imagine the existence of Option before punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...

." The magazine used 40-50 unpaid reviewers at a time, few of whom were professional critics.

One given issue's musicians profiled included "New Orleans's proto-jazz outfit the Dirty Dozen Brass Band
Dirty Dozen Brass Band
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band is a New Orleans, Louisiana, brass band. The ensemble was established in 1977 by Benny Jones together with members of the Tornado Brass Band...

 and bluesman Walter "Wolfman" Washington
Walter "Wolfman" Washington
Walter "Wolfman" Washington is an American singer and guitarist, based in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. While his roots are in blues music, he blends in the essence of funk and R&B to create his own unique sound....

; Indian pop-traditionalist Najma
Najma
Najma is a given name in Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia. Najma is the female version of the name and Najm is male version of the name. Najm is also Pleiades in Arabic, Persian and Urdu languages....

; vanguard composer and pianist Cecil Taylor
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and...

; Yugoslavia's ideological rockers, Laibach
Laibach (band)
Laibach is a Slovenian avant-garde music group associated with industrial, martial, and neo-classical musical styles. Laibach formed June 1, 1980 in Trbovlje, Slovenia . Laibach represents the music wing of the Neue Slowenische Kunst art collective, of which it was a founding member in 1984...

; Texas R&B veteran Doug Sahm
Doug Sahm
Douglas Wayne Sahm , was an American musician from Texas. Born in San Antonio, Texas, he was a child prodigy in country music, but became a significant figure in blues rock and other genres. Today Sahm is considered one of the most important figures in what is identified as Tejano music...

; Brit dance funkateers Wolfgang Press". According to Becker, the editors conscientiously debated as to whether cover subjects such as Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...

 and Siouxsie and the Banshees were "too well known".

By the late 1980s, Option had built up a reputation for its coverage of alternative and underground music scenes, regardless of genre or nationality. The San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

called it "the top all-round music mag in the States today" in terms of "covering music from anywhere but the mainstream", and The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

called it the "best" for "a broader spectrum of contemporary music". In 1989, the magazine had subscribers in 26 countries outside the United States. The advertising section was largely dedicated to small record labels; in 1997, Becker stated that advertising remained affordable to such companies due to the magazine keeping to a small circulation (27000 at the time).

1995 saw a graphical re-design of the magazine, focused mainly on improving readability. The logo typeface was changed to Frutiger
Frutiger
Frutiger is a series of typefaces named after its designer, Adrian Frutiger. Initially available as a sans serif, it was later expanded to include ornamental and serif typefaces.-Distinctive characteristics:Characteristics of this typeface are:...

, interior text was limited to Garamond
Garamond
Garamond is the name given to a group of old-style serif typefaces named after the punch-cutter Claude Garamond . Most of the Garamond faces are more closely related to the work of a later punch-cutter, Jean Jannon...

 and Triplex from the more eclectic mixture used previously, and the subtitle became instead Music Culture. These changes took place in the 10th anniversary issue (March/April 1995). On the elimination of the "alternatives" tag, Becker commented, in that issue's editorial and elsewhere, that "alternative" had been reduced to a "marketing platform" in culture and the media, becoming "watered down": "The sense that 'alternative' means 'other' - or 'all' - music is lost."

In July 1998, Becker announced that Option would go on hiatus, in order to consider the issues of finances and online competition; however, the July/August issue proved to be its last. The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

later attributed the end of the magazine to a mid-1990s jump in the price of paper, which the size of the publication could not accommodate for.

On March 1, 2010, '90s-era Option editor Mark Kemp
Mark Kemp
Mark Kemp is an American music journalist and author. A graduate of East Carolina University, he has served as music editor of Rolling Stone and vice president of music editorial for MTV Networks...

 – with support and encouragement from Becker – assembled a new Option team rounded out by media director Herman Marin and his brother, art director Juan Miguel Marin. The web-only publication soft-launched in December with a Kemp-penned review of the Girl Talk
Girl Talk
Girl Talk may refer to:* Girl Talk , American music producer and mashup artist Gregg Gillis* Girl Talk , a British female duo of the 1980s* Girl Talk * Girl Talk...

 album All Day and his report from Morocco's Fez Festival of World Sacred Music. The new Option used earlier name writers such as Neil Strauss
Neil Strauss
Neil Darrow Strauss , also known by the pen names Style and Chris Powles, is an American and Kittitian author, journalist and ghostwriter...

, Stanley Booth
Stanley Booth
Stanley Booth is an American music journalist. Booth has written extensively about important music figures, including Keith Richards, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, James Brown, Elvis Presley, Gram Parsons, B.B. King, and Al Green...

 and Karen Schomer as well as younger newcomers, and included interactive sections inviting users to participate in the musical and cultural dialog. After three homepage "cover" stories – Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo, sometimes abbreviated as YLT, is an American alternative rock band formed in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1984. Since 1992, the lineup has consisted of Ira Kaplan , Georgia Hubley , and James McNew .Despite achieving limited mainstream success, Yo La Tengo has been called "the quintessential...

, Girl Talk and Steve Earle
Steve Earle
Stephen Fain "Steve" Earle is an American singer-songwriter known for his rock and Texas Country as well as his political views. He is also a producer, author, a political activist, and an actor, and has written and directed a play....

 – it, too, went on hiatus when Kemp returned as editor in chief of Creative Loafing
Creative Loafing
CL Inc. is the Tampa, Florida-based publisher of three city newsweeklies and their associated websites. Each of the papers focuses on local news, politics, arts and entertainment, and restaurants...

 Charlotte in September 2011.

Covers

Early issues of Option were numbered alphabetically: as the twenty-six issues of OP were numbered A-Z, Option was published starting from issue #A2 (A-Squared). Issue #S2 (S-Squared) (March/April 1988) ended this system, and subsequent issues were numbered from #20 onwards. The pro-active rationale at the time, as OPtion was approaching the end of the squared alphabet, was to eliminate repeating the original OP alphabet yet again, and thus avoid cubed letters. In addition, just as OP used the letter of each issue as a theme, selecting musicians and topics named beginning with that issue's letter, early lettered issues of Option also carried on this practice. Very early covers emphasized the connection to OP magazine by capitalizing the first two letters of OPtion.

Artists who have appeared multiple times on the cover of Option include Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...

, on #E2 (E-Squared) (November/December 1985) and #37 (March/April 1991); Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...

, on #G2 (G-Squared) (March/April 1986) and #79 (March/April 1998); and Meat Puppets
Meat Puppets
The Meat Puppets are an American rock band formed in January 1980, in Phoenix, Arizona. The group's original lineup was Curt Kirkwood , his brother Cris Kirkwood , and Derrick Bostrom . The Kirkwood brothers met Bostrom while attending Brophy Prep High School in Phoenix...

, on #R2 (R-Squared) (January/February 1988) and #64 (September/October 1995). Issue #64 also featured a non-music headline banner, covering the death of Cesar Rene Arce
Cesar Rene Arce
Cesar Rene Arce was shot to death in Los Angeles in 1995 at age 18. Arce was writing graffiti under the Hollywood Freeway with a friend, David Hillo, 20, when they were confronted by William Masters, a former U.S. Marine allegedly acting as vigilante. Although details of the confrontation are in...

.

The cover of the final issue, #81, featured Elliott Smith
Elliott Smith
Steven Paul "Elliott" Smith was an American singer-songwriter and musician. Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and resided for a significant portion of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he first gained popularity...

.

Subscription incentives

In the mid-1990s, Option included various record label sampler CDs with subscriptions. These included Particle Theory: A Compendium of Lightspeed Incursions and Semiotic Weapons From Warner/Reprise (Reprise Records
Reprise Records
Reprise Records is an American record label, founded in 1960 by Frank Sinatra. It is owned by Warner Music Group, and operated through Warner Bros. Records.-Beginnings:...

, 1993) and No Balls (4AD
4AD
4AD is a British independent record label that was started in 1979 by Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent, funded by Beggars Banquet Records, and is still active today...

, 1995).

Staff

Scott Becker was Option's Owner and Publisher for its entire history from the mid 80s until 1998. He created a world class, innovative, music magazine that quickly became a distinguished icon within both the counter-culture and mainstream rock music worlds. Unlike most other publishers, Becker saw his magazine as a complex organism, a work of graphic art, music, thought, and underground mass communication for the 'true' indy music scene. Shunning personal publicity, he gradually became more and more involved in his own personal and spiritual evolution, resisting the growing effects of the internet upon the music magazine business. Becker finally pulled the plug on Option in 1998 as the alternative publishing and indy music markets both began to falter drastically, no longer being the truly independent scenes they were when he first started the magazine in the 80s. Following Option's closure, he has since become a full-time artist.

Richie Unterberger served as Editor from 1985 to mid-1991, and subsequently became a major contributor to Allmusic.

Mark Kemp
Mark Kemp
Mark Kemp is an American music journalist and author. A graduate of East Carolina University, he has served as music editor of Rolling Stone and vice president of music editorial for MTV Networks...

 succeeded Unterberger as Editor from 1991 onwards, until being hired by Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

as an Editor in 1996. His successor, Jason Fine, was also hired by Rolling Stone a year later, and remains there to date.

Steve Appleford followed Jason Fine for most of 1997. Becker then edited the final two issues of the magazine himself with the assistance of Senior Editor Erik Pedersen.

Kristin Bell was Option's Art Director from its inception as a xeroxed sheet in the late '80s through its coming of age in the mid 90s, creating the incredible style, avant-garde layouts, photography and edgy feel that the magazine became famed for. While at Option she was at the very forefront of the then industry-wide shift away from manual compositing to Apple based digital layouts, her groundbreaking digital compositing playing a great role in the magazine's fresh look, growth and success. Prior to Option, she served as Art Director of Los Angeles based Rock Magazine in the mid 80s. After leaving Option in 1995, she subsequently became Co-Producer of Lee Lew-Lee's multi-award winning documentary on the '60s US Civil Rights Movement, "All Power to the People", which was broadcast in 24 nations, as one of the few globally watched and acclaimed documentaries on the subject. She now serves as Consultant to SFDM, INC., a high performance super-computing company, specializing in rich media, 3D modeling, HDTV and 3D film rendering, as well as 'petaflop scale' scientific R&D and HPC.

Barbara 'Bix' Jordan served as Option's Assistant Editor from the late '80s until early '90s.

UHF

In January 1995, Sonic Options Network launched UHF (Ultra High Frequency), an alternative fashion magazine, after including it in Option itself as a supplement for two issues, starting in June 1994. The magazine targeted ages ranging from teens to 20s, focusing on concerns such as affordability; early issues were distributed at Urban Outfitters
Urban Outfitters
Urban Outfitters, Inc. is a publicly traded American company that owns and operates five retail brands: Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Free People, Terrain, and BHLDN....

 outlets. Later, in 1997, Becker characterized the launch as a failure.

Option.FM

Option.FM was an electronic dance music
Electronic dance music
Electronic dance music is electronic music produced primarily for the purposes of use within a nightclub setting, or in an environment that is centered upon dance-based entertainment...

 compilation album
Compilation album
A compilation album is an album featuring tracks from one or more performers, often culled from a variety of sources The tracks are usually collected according to a common characteristic, such as popularity, genre, source or subject matter...

 released in conjunction with Moonshine Records
Moonshine Music
Moonshine Music was an electronic music record label founded by Steve Levy in Los Angeles in 1992, and later headquartered in West Hollywood, California. Moonshine released over 250 compilations albums, many of which were DJ mixed. Moonshine helped to launch the career of DJ Keoki and his side-kick...

 in 1998. Tracks were selected by Moonshine president Steve Levy and Becker, who wrote the liner notes to the album. A second volume, planned to be released within the year, never materialized.
  1. "Westway" – Dub Pistols
    Dub Pistols
    Dub Pistols are a London based dub music and big beat band, founded by ex-club promoter, Barry Ashworth, in 1996. The other members of the band were record producer and bassist Jason O'Bryan, Brooklyn producer and lyricist, T. K. Lawrence on vocals, Jap Slut guitarist John King, and turntablist DJ...

  2. "I Am the Freshmaka" – The Freshmaka
  3. "We All Want to Be Free" (Skull Valley dub) – Tranquility Bass
  4. "Why?" (DJ Vadim
    DJ Vadim
    DJ Vadim is a prolific DJ and producer, born in Leningrad, USSR , raised in London and currently residing in both New York and Berlin, whose music combines hip hop, soul, reggae and electronica...

     remix) – Gus Gus
    GusGus
    GusGus are a band from Reykjavík, Iceland. They were founded in 1995. Their discography consists of eight studio albums and one live record.- History :...

  5. "You Don't Get Me" (Urban Takeover
    Urban Takeover
    Urban Takeover is a drum and bass record label founded by DJs and recording artists Micky Finn and Aphrodite. The label is often associated with the Hip-Hop-influenced Jump-Up style of drum and bass which was popular in the mid 1990s...

     mix) – Espiritu
    Vanessa Quinones
    Vanessa Contenay-Quinones is a London-based singer-songwriter....

  6. "Frequency 019" – Snow
  7. "Children of Summer" – Color Filter
  8. "Ballet Mechanique" – DJ Spooky
    DJ Spooky
    Paul D. Miller , known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author...

     with Burro Banton
    Burro Banton
    Burro Banton is a dancehall reggae deejay popular in the mid-1980s and 1990s....

  9. "Banano's Bar" – Plastilina Mosh
    Plastilina Mosh
    Plastilina Mosh is a Mexican alternative rock group from Monterrey, México, part of the musical movement known as Avanzada Regia. Jonás González is the lead singer and guitar player. Alejandro Rosso is more involved with the creative process, providing most of the instrumentation and occasional...

  10. "Halfway Around the World" – Thievery Corporation
    Thievery Corporation
    Thievery Corporation is a Washington, D.C. based recording artist and DJ duo consisting of Rob Garza, Eric Hilton, and their supporting artists, including current drummer Jeff Franca...

  11. "Billy Club" (original) – Junkie XL
    Junkie XL
    Tom Holkenborg , better known as Junkie XL or JXL, is a Dutch musician. He uses the name JXL in cases where the term "Junkie" might cause offense. XL is for "Xpanding Limits"....

  12. "Madness" (DJ Dara
    DJ Dara
    DJ Dara is an Irish drum and bass DJ operating mainly in North America. He is a member in the D'n'B group known as the Planet of the Drums...

     remix) – Keoki
    DJ Keoki
    Superstar DJ Keoki is an Electronic music,among other genres DJ. Born in El Salvador and raised in Hawaii, Keoki reached 'Superstar' status shortly after moving to New York City.-Bio:...

  13. "Neon Ray" – Lunatic Calm
    Lunatic Calm
    Lunatic Calm were a UK-based electronic music group formed in 1996. Despite a wide-ranging sound palette, the group was best known for their high impact, industrial-tinged big beat compositions.-History:...

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