AAJ @ 30

Everyone's Personal Genius, Jeff Fitzgerald, waxes poetic at everyone's expense...

My colleague, Jeff Fitzgerald, author of the “Genius Guide to Jazz” column at All About Jazz, provides a history of the magazine from its Wild West Days in 1995 through to this very moment. This should get you started before navigating over to AAJ for the rest.

“You already know the story. Back in 1990 in some quaint American backwater called Philadelphia somewhere in the Quaker-infested wilds of Pennsylvania, young Michael Ricci dreamt combining art and technology to create a uniquely American art form and transmit it electronically to every corner of the world except those places where they eat rotting shark meat because dude, seriously.

After five years of constant experimentation, at one point even involving a banjo and a KitchenAid mixer connected to a HAM radio, Ricci came to the conclusion that the answer was contained in evolution rather than innovation. Jazz and the Internet had already been invented and were just awaiting the inevitable, like that time when I wanted to invent a hand-held self-contained pizza except they already had Hot Pockets.

All About Jazz was born (birth weight 9 MB 6 KB) in 1995, the same year the Atlanta Braves won the World Series for the first time since 1957, and the expansion Carolina Panthers entered the NFL. This will become important later, so set a timer for 2001 in case I forget. Ricci assembled some of the most learned and respected voices in Jazz and posed to them the challenge of helping him find a bunch of geeks willing to be damned by the faint praise of Internet fame and would work for leftover Halloween candy…”

Click here to continue.