JOIN THE UNITED WORLD UNDERGROUND NOW!

       Into 2001, the adventure continues, onward and upward, and a bit widthways too. The next phase of the M&E project starts here. Over the past few years of M&E, we’ve been pumping out various questionnaires to people involved in the underground network in one way or another; zine writers, radioshow presenters, tape and record label folks, mailorder distributors, bands etc etc. For some unknown reason, we’ve never sent one to our supporters, but don’t take that as a sign of us not caring, it’s just that most of you are never shy about offering your views anyway! J Well, the aim of all these questionnaires was to gather information (no shit!) to help us form a better idea of what the general concept of the underground was, what people would ideally like it to be, what our bands hoped to achieve from it, all that kind of stuff. Been quite an eye-opening experience.

       It seems that my own vision of an ideal underground wasn’t far from the general view, only maybe a little more ambitious. I’ve been told many times over the years that you can’t do this and you can’t do that and it just won’t work etc, and by some established underground luminaries as well. But me, I’ve been bought up to believe there is no such word as “can’t”. Stupid really, it’s in the dictionary, but I digress. Truth is, we’ve already done most of the things we were told weren’t possible in the underground. Sure, it’s been hard work, but I think it has been more than worthwhile. We’ve made some wonderful friends out of doing this. We’ve learnt that there are a lot of like-minded people out there. Most importantly, every component we need for a completely independent underground system already exists. All we have to do is to continue to work towards unification.

       For lovers of decent music, the underground is vital. If it didn’t exist, they’d be stuck with whatever the half a dozen multi-nationals who run the world wanted to inflict on their eardrums. Painful thought, huh? But don’t worry, we’ve no intention of letting that happen. Aside from the original aim of the project (e.g. to provide supporters with a very wide choice of all sorts of underground styles, on a good quality medium, but at affordable prices so they can take risks on unknown quantities), we’ve tried to make the underground far more accessible for supporters. The Distro Direct system being just one example, coming as a result of people moaning about the pain of having to pay in different currencies to different sources etc. And it was a pain. But now they can order CDs from 14 countries with one payment and in their own currency, et voila. We listen, we learn.

       Over recent years, we’ve also been concentrating on providing more for our bands. Helping connect them with kind of people who can assist them with their various quests. Fortunately, what is good for our supporters is, by and large, good for our bands too. Like if we make it affordable for them to check a band’s music out, the more chance they will check it out. If we make it easier for them to buy a band’s CDs, the more chance they will buy them. But it doesn’t stop there, it’s not enough that just we do it, we have to continue to persuade others to join The Cause, and thus the mission goes on. We aim to continue helping our bands towards their ambitions, helping our supporters find some interesting stuff to listen to, helping put like-minded folks in touch with eachother and encouraging other undergrounders to pool resources and work together for the universal good.

       The need now is for unity and for everyone who wants to become part of a United World Underground movement to step forward and do it. We need more reach, we need more clout, and the way to get that is to have the backing of more people. Oh, as well as the obvious; more money, groan. We’ve always managed to do quite a lot on rather limited resources, but we could do so much more if we had a few extra pennies in the coffers. So, what we want to do is encourage people to join the UWU and get fully involved. For those of you that already have subscriptions, it won’t really be that different. For those that don’t, here’s your chance to find out what you’ve been missing out on!

UWU MEMBERSHIP – ONLY £10.00 PER YEAR

You get all the latest goodies and info sent to your mailbox (and inbox if you have access to a computer)! Your annual membership fee will get you this lot (and maybe some surprises too!)…

·          The UWU Newsletter – three copies a year (May, September & January), filled with the latest news, reviews, new releases, special offers, the M&E charts, all sorts.

·          The UWU Yearbook – the complete rundown on the global underground, with articles on the most active parts of the network, discover new music, new zines, new radioshows, new tape and seriously independent record labels, new mailorder distros, subterranean TV and lots more.

·         The UWU Audiozine – three copies a year (with the newsletter), 90 minute samplers of the latest M&E releases and distro items on our superb chrome cassettes.

That's all for this section, so you don't need a link to go anywhere else, just click on my pic on the sidebar to return to the home page. Sorted.