In short
Paul Benney discusses the evolution of UK dance culture and independent music publishing, from co-founding Jockey Slut (Manchester early 1990s) and running the long-running club night Bugged Out to launching the print magazine Disco Pogo via crowdfunding, aiming to keep underground electronic music journalism alive in a post-search/social media era.
Guest backgrounds
Paul Benney is a creative founder behind Jockey Slut and Bugged Out. He later worked in artist/label and publishing (including a label with Leo Silverman and the magazine Dummy). He co-founded Disco Pogo with John Burgess.
Key claims
Weekly music papers once “set the agenda” for what people listened to; today streaming changes discovery. Print can still work if it’s community-rooted, pays contributors properly, and tells human stories beyond “faceless techno.” Media visibility is harder now as platforms shift and reach declines.
Notable examples
Jockey Slut started with DIY ads (Hacienda, Drybar), sold ~20,000 copies independently, and ended after a publisher deal collapsed. Bugged Out grew from Sankey’s Soap to Cream (Liverpool) with ~4,000 capacity; Daft Punk played Bugged Out’s 4th birthday (Thomas Bangalter joined, plus Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday”). Disco Pogo launched after a successful crowdfunding campaign (~£60k) and interviews include Orbital, Leftfield, and DJ Harvey.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Birth of Jockey Slut
0:36 to 1:39
Paul discusses the origins of Jockey Slut and its impact on dance music culture.
“Jockey Slut began in Manchester in the early 90s, born from a love of electronic music, a sense of humour and a scrappy DIY mindset.”
Navigating Modern Media Challenges
2:24 to 3:42
Discussion on the challenges and relevance of print media today.
“Oh, we've got a good one to start off the new season with.”
Growing Up with Music Magazines
3:42 to 4:50
Reflecting on the excitement of music magazines before the digital age.
“So you'd be listening to John Peel and waiting for Wednesday to come around so that you could pick up the weekly music papers.”
Changing Music Consumption Habits
4:50 to 6:04
How the advent of streaming services has altered music discovery.
Balancing New Music and Nostalgia
6:04 to 7:25
Paul talks about the balance between discovering new music and appreciating old favorites.
“Do you feel like you haven't fallen victim to that same trajectory?”
Sharing Music with the Next Generation
7:25 to 9:31
Discussion on introducing children to music and their own tastes.
“while at the same time trying to keep on top of new stuff.”
The Journey to Jockey Slut
9:31 to 14:00
Paul recounts his path from university to becoming a music journalist and co-founding Jockey Slut.
“And without going too much into your background, because we're focusing on what's happening now.”
The Birth of a Magazine
14:00 to 18:06
Learn how the speaker and their friend started a fanzine in Manchester's vibrant music scene.
“And like, okay, well, all right, that's not going to work.”
The Challenges of Print Media
18:06 to 22:34
Explore the unique challenges faced when producing a physical magazine before the digital era.
“but at the time, I don't remember hearing of anyone raising money using that phrase.”
Running Club Nights: Bugged Out!
22:34 to 27:26
Discover the evolution and excitement of running the legendary Bugged Out! club night.
“And that was in Beehive Mill as well at Sankey Soap, which was downstairs.”
Show all 24 chapters
Memorable Nights and Cultural Shifts
27:26 to 28:05
Reflect on memorable experiences and the changing landscape of clubbing and music culture.
“I think what there was, was there was all different kinds of people.”
Memories of Club Culture and Daft Punk
28:05 to 32:33
Discover nostalgic moments from rave culture and a special Daft Punk performance.
“I suppose when you've got a club and there's 4 ,000 people in it, you get all kinds of people, you know.”
Memories of Club Culture and Daft Punk
32:37 to 33:18
Discover nostalgic moments from rave culture and a special Daft Punk performance.
“It gives you direct access to 50 carefully created shades with a choice of weights and textures straight from their Lake District mill.”
The Rise and Fall of Jockey Slut
33:18 to 39:08
Explore the journey of Jockey Slut magazine from success to its eventual closure.
“another issue of the magazine, do another club night.”
Transitioning to New Ventures
39:08 to 42:01
Hear about the evolution of the speaker's career after Jockey Slut, including new projects.
“And selling print magazines felt like an odd thing to do.”
Launching the Tribute Book for Andrew Weatherill
42:01 to 43:52
Learn about the heartfelt tribute book for Andrew Weatherill and its impact.
“And he really cracked on with it and then showed me what he'd done.”
From Jockey Slut to Disco Pogo: Evolution of a Magazine
43:53 to 46:48
Explore the transition from the original magazine to the new publication Disco Pogo.
“So we did a crowdfunder because we thought, well, if the crowdfunder is successful, we know people want to pay for this new magazine.”
Authenticity and Age in Music Journalism
46:49 to 49:50
Discuss the importance of authenticity and age in covering electronic music stories.
Challenges and Successes in Publishing Disco Pogo
49:51 to 52:45
Hear about the financial challenges and successes in launching Disco Pogo magazine.
The Role of Independent Shops in Magazine Culture
52:46 to 56:00
Discover how independent shops contribute to the success of print media today.
“to people and you think, well, why are you doing that?”
The Community of Print Lovers
56:00 to 57:52
Learn about the vibrant community surrounding independent print magazines.
Social Media's Double-Edged Sword
57:52 to 59:38
Explore the challenges and benefits of social media for magazine promotion.
Navigating Change in Creative Industries
59:38 to 1:02:21
Understand how the creative industry is evolving and the challenges faced.
“Sometimes I quite like it because, you know, there's some good people on there, you know, and you see people that are, you know, looking for work and being honest about struggling a little bit.”
Passion Projects and Persistence
1:02:21 to 1:04:20
Discover the importance of passion and resilience in creative work.
“And to be fair, I did try and apply that thinking to Disco Pogo.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:06Katy Cowan:He's the man who co-founded one of the most iconic dance music magazines of all time and one of the UK's longest running club nights. And he's helping us kick off a brand new season of the Creative Boom podcast. In this episode, I chat with Paul Benney, the creative force behind Jockey Slut and Bugged Out, about his journey through decades of dance culture and why he's back in print with Disco Pogo, a magazine that carries the spirit of the underground into a new era. Paul shares how Jockey Slut began in Manchester in the early 90s, born from a love of electronic music, a sense of humour and a scrappy DIY mindset.
0:45Katy Cowan:It became a cult classic, capturing the energy of a scene that was exploding while giving a voice to artists before they went mainstream. Around the same time, Bugged Out became one of the UK's most influential club nights, known for its fearless programming and iconic parties. He launched Disco Pogo a few years ago with fellow co-founder John Burgess, answering a collective call for a new kind of music magazine, one rooted in community, quality and print. But with the media industry shifting yet again, and the decline of search and social making it harder for platforms to reach their audiences, we felt it was a timely conversation.
1:25Katy Cowan:What does it mean to run a print magazine today? How do you stay relevant, visible and sustainable? This episode takes a good look at the highs and lows of publishing, club culture and why, despite it all, Paul still believes in the power of independent media to bring people together.
1:48Katy Cowan:This season of the Creative Boom podcast is proudly sponsored by James Cropper, the last mill standing in Britain for premium coloured paper. Its new colour source range puts designers first, giving you direct access to 50 stunning shades in a range of weights and textures straight from the mill. Incredible colour, crafted in the Lake District and delivered straight to your door. Discover the paper that brings your ideas to life via paperandpackaging.jamescropper.com.
2:24Katy Cowan:Oh, we've got a good one to start off the new season with. I've been really looking forward to this. It's been possibly a couple of years in the making with a few sort of setbacks in between. Paul Benny of Disco Pogo, it is so lovely to have you on the show. It's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. And we're going to be chatting today about something that I personally am very passionate about. It's about the media, magazines and music and how you're basically navigating this new era that we're in where you know as well as I do, it's very challenging. Yeah, very challenging time for media, you know, online and print.
3:03I grew up where, you know, I grew up reading print magazines. So, yeah, it's nice to be working on a print magazine again now.
3:10Katy Cowan:Same. I used to collect them and I used to get such big stacks of magazines. I think lots of little girly magazines and music. MixMag was always in there as I got a bit older and NME. Yeah, I mean, the weekly music papers, that was my background. That was, you know, that was a very important period for me in my teenage years buying NME, Melody Maker. I used to buy Sounds as well. We had three weekly music papers and it was exciting, literally exciting when they came out on a Wednesday because it was the only way you could find out about music other than the radio. So you'd be listening to John Peel and waiting for Wednesday to come around so that you could pick up the weekly music papers.
3:52Or if you were in London, when I was occasionally visiting London, you could get them on a Tuesday. That was really exciting to get them a day early.
4:00Katy Cowan:All before the internet, all before social media. It was, you know, media was king, wasn't it really back then? You'd read, if you wanted to find out anything about what was going on in music, what gigs there were what records were coming out what gossip there was the only place that you could find it was in the weekly music papers and if you read a review in the NME and it was said that an album was a nine out of ten and it was a great record without hearing a note you went to the shop and you bought the record which just sounds crazy to the way that we compared to the way we operate nowadays you know you'd definitely get dressed up wouldn't you to curate your outfit make sure you look like you belong to that kind of crowd exactly all all part of it but i mean nowadays if you hear that something's good you go and listen to it don't you yes turn on spotify or another streaming service and you you check it out but um yeah or if you were to read a good review somewhere in a broadsheet newspaper for instance you would you're unlikely to go and buy the record you know a vinyl copy of the record for instance just off the back of that review you're going to go and listen to a bit of it and see whether that person is right or not but yeah we do you know what we tend to do you know we tend to do these days paul we go to festivals and in prep for the music festival this is this is how sad i've become um we'll sort of find a playlist on spotify and listen to it for the weeks leading up to the festival we did that for green man in august and we're like oh these sound good oh we'll definitely go and watch those oh let's make a note of that band we'll go and watch those on the friday night and that's that's how we how we do it it's so funny how times change but that's a great idea you know that's not a sad thing to do it's um you know that's one of the upsides of streaming services that you can you know you know you can be going to something and you can think right there's you know there's 20 bands here i've never heard of i'm gonna go and check them out so yeah there is an upside to it but there was a certain magic to buying a record off the back of a review that you might never have bought otherwise because the person writing the review had taste that you trusted and I found loads of great records that way do you think it's a sort of common thing for us kids we sort of have that real passionate focus on music and culture in our teenage years and then life happens you know we grow families and businesses and careers and we kind of get stuck in an era.
6:34Katy Cowan:Do you feel like you haven't fallen victim to that same trajectory? I feel like I haven't fallen victim to that, actually. But what I've become more comfortable with now is looking back a bit more. So I think for a long time, I was so anti what I was so determined not to fall into the trap that you just described. That I was just completely obsessed with new music. and the things that I really loved and I loved 20 years ago or 30 years ago, I was never listening to. And that's a bit of a shame. So now I've got a bit more comfortable with, you know, looking back. I'm still interested in new music and listen to new music every day.
7:16But I've realized that if it was a good album 20 or 30 years ago, it's probably still a good album now. So I'm a lot more comfortable with enjoying the things that I've grown up with while at the same time trying to keep on top of new stuff.
7:31Katy Cowan:I love that. Do you still buy the merch? Sometimes. I mostly buy the merch for my kids, though, because I'm off to Billie Eilish tomorrow. Oh, nice. At the O2 with my kids, and they'll definitely be wanting T-shirts. And we've just come back from Glastonbury. They've both got Charlie XCX T-shirts. So I suppose I'll occasionally buy merch. I was browsing the LCD Sound System merch at the gig that I went to of theirs at Brixton Academy. didn't end up buying anything but um so yeah occasionally but most of the merch purchases for my kids nowadays yeah do you so you haven't got that kind of uncomfortable big gap between yourself and your kids because you've gone a kind of similar level or are there things that you're introducing them to that they'd never heard of or vice versa well I mean they've got their own taste and um but um at Glastonbury you know they love they want they they went to see Charlie XCX I went to see Neil Young.
8:27I would have loved to have seen Charlie XCX, but I couldn't do both. And I thought, I'm never going to get a chance to see Neil Young ever again.
8:34Katy Cowan:No, exactly. Whereas there's going to be other opportunities to see Charlie XCX. But then another nice thing at Glastonbury is my youngest daughter, who's 13, she wanted to see Gracie Abrams. So we went to watch her and she was great. And there was another artist, Faye Webster, that my older daughter wanted to go and see. So I went to see that with her. And I have to admit, I'd never heard a great, I'd never knowingly heard a Gracie Abrams or a Faye Webster song ever before. So I saw them for the first, I heard them for the first time there and they were both great. They were both talented, independent, strong women.
9:14And all I thought of was that I was, you know, really proud of my daughter's tastes, basically.
9:21Katy Cowan:Yeah, well, she probably gets it from you, you know, and your partner. maybe and i have obviously gone through the process of um introducing them to loads of stuff you know like david bowie and talking heads and those things that are just incredible that you're like you've got to know about this when they both start getting interested in vinyl then um uh yeah of course we introduce them but but at the same time it's best to let them work it all out for themselves isn't it you know i don't really i don't really want them to just inherit my taste I'd rather them do what I did, which is get a bit of guidance from other people, but also just figure it out for themselves.
10:01Katy Cowan:Yeah, absolutely. And without going too much into your background, because we're focusing on what's happening now. But you were behind the print magazine Jockey Slut, which was very popular back in its day, which sadly came to an end. Well, yeah, I mean, I went to Manchester Polytechnic, which is now called Manchester Metropolitan University. Yeah. So I can now say I went to uni, but I didn't really. I went to poly. And I went there because I was obsessed with Manchester, Manchester music, the Smiths, Joy Division, New Order. What year was that? What year did you start? I went in 89. Ooh, golden age.
10:42Yeah, I was in Bletchley Milton Keynes. which which was a cultural desert yeah and all of a sudden I was in Manchester in 1989 and Manchester was happening and I'm reading about in these weekly music papers which are my absolute bible I'm reading that this is the place this is the best place on earth to be if you're into music I couldn't believe it so um you know I got into the Happy Mondays and the Stone roses and the inspiral carpets and the paris angels and um and then from there i went to the hacienda and found this whole other kind of music um house music and uh you know kind of didn't look back so i um i was determined to be a music journalist it was the only job i ever wanted to do i thought that you know that i thought that's what i'm gonna do that's the thing i want to do i I didn't, there wasn't a second and a third choice and was never going to be a musician.
11:44I didn't have any talent in that area. So yeah, obsessed with music, wanted to be a music journalist, wrote for the college magazine, which was called Pulp. And me and my now partner in Disco Pogo, we became joint music editors of the college magazine. For real. Kind of an embarrassing thing. It was a mix up. We'd both been promised the job. So we both turned up and we were like, oh, we better share it.
12:12Katy Cowan:Oh, that's cool. So that was quite a nice thing. And, you know, now 30 years, over 30 years later, we're still working together. So I wrote for the college magazine. My course finished. I went back to Milton Keynes. I worked for the Open University is local to us. I did an admin job there for a few months. I wrote to the NME and said, OK, I've finished college. Here's my clippings. Can I have a job? they actually wrote back and said uh no there's no jobs uh didn't mention my writing they didn't say it was good or bad they just said thanks to the letter there's no jobs i couldn't believe they replied i also thought oh my god what am i gonna do now oh i was gonna write for the nme that was my job that was your dream that was my dream and my and the second my my um yeah i like i said i didn't have a second choice i wasn't going to go and work for the open university for the rest of my life.
13:05Great institution, obviously, probably an amazing place to work as well. That's what I wanted to do. So I went back up to Manchester and said to John Burgess, who'd ended up running the college magazine for a year after he'd finished his course as a paid job, he had access to an A4, an Apple Mac computer with a black and white A4 screen. gosh um he had a foot they had a phone in the office as well wow and i just said haven't got a i didn't get the enemy gig oh so i think we you know um so we did we we we used to stay up and and be on the hacienda dance hall talking about ideas of things we could do together and we said well let's start our own magazine i can see you you know i can see you back then
13:55Katy Cowan:And in your face, I could see the kind of innocence, the naivety and the charm. And like, okay, well, all right, that's not going to work. So what next? Yeah, there was naivety, definitely. And there was a lot of energy. And I was 22, obsessed with music in this incredible place, you know, in Manchester, when, you know, like I said, the best place to be in the world, if you're into music at that particular time, even beyond 89, even in 92, it still was. And I thought, yeah, let's start our own magazine. So, you know, obviously a fanzine. And we got a little bit of money together. I seem to remember it was about 500 quid.
14:42Katy Cowan:Blimey, that's a lot. We maxed out our overdrafts. And I think we got a bit of help from the Prince's Trust at some point. But I'm sure it was hundreds of pounds, not any more than that. and um we I took photographs at the time so I took my camera and I I took you know I went out to clubs and took photos me and Jono were both journalists well we decided that we were journalists by that point so and we found a local printer and I wandered down to the hacienda and knocked on the door and said we're starting a magazine will you advertise and they said yes amazing A guy called Leroy who ran, he ran Drybar.
15:21So he said, yeah, I'll take one for Drybar and we'll take one for the Hacienda, which is an incredible thing, isn't it? Yeah, that's amazing. We're 22 years old. The magazine doesn't exist at this point and they're already committing to an advert. Things like that really gave us, you know, a lot of belief.
15:39Katy Cowan:Yeah. And we got the first issue together and then we'd go to the shops like eastern block and piccadilly records and other record shops around the northwest it was 99 pence a copy we'd drop the magazines off in each shop saying sale or return you know it's like if you don't sell them then it's not going to cost you anything and um even though the first issue you know i don't think it was an incredible piece of work or anything but it had a certain spirit and it connected with people and the only other things at the time if you're interested in dance music and you wanted to read about it was mix mag and dj yeah and as good as they were they were kind of a different thing we had this quite punky fanzine take on things resonated with people so that sold well so we thought we'll do another one brilliant go around the record shops collect all the money in cash obviously put all that money together and then pay and okay well the next issue we'll print a few more you know we did I think we did a thousand of the first issue is actually quite a lot when you think of it nowadays um yeah next issue we printed a few more copies and then we went through the whole thing again next issue we printed a few then there was a little bit of a tipping point about three or four issues in we'd done a cover feature with Andrew Weatherill and he'd taken his shirt off And I'd done this photo shoot with him showing all of his tattoos.
17:06Wow. And that got people in London interested in the magazine. And so what we would do is we'd sit in the Polytechnic office, use their phone and phone up all the London record shops and say, you know, can we send you 10 copies? And it kind of worked. We managed to get a load of copies down to London. We also got in trouble for the Polytechnic because back then, And phone calls actually cost money. And they got a huge bill. And we got in a bit of trouble. Jono got in a bit of trouble. But I think we worked it out with them. But yeah, the phone and their computer were incredible resources, you know, to us at that point.
17:52And then we bought our own computer. And it just carried on growing like that.
17:58Katy Cowan:Very clever, very simple, but very, very smart way of doing it. It was, I think it was probably the only way you could do it. I mean, you could raise money, but at the time, I don't remember hearing of anyone raising money using that phrase. I don't remember hearing of anyone getting investment for a creative project. There was no Kickstarter or crowdfunding or, you know, I remember talking to the bank and saying to the bank, you know hsbc or something can we have you know can we have a loan and i don't think that was successful to begin with so what we had to do was um it was all about um you know getting the money in from one issue putting it all into the next one no one working on the magazine at that point was getting paid but eventually we did turn it into a business and we had an office in beehive mill in ancoats in manchester know it well actually the funny thing is it was a huge office because the property was so cheap back then.
18:56So we were this little independent magazine with quite a big office. And we got to the point where there was me and Jono. We had our designer, Graham. We had someone selling ads. We also had a bookkeeper in the office because there was no QuickBooks. So the bookkeeper had to come to the office once a week and go through all the checks. And, you know.
19:19Katy Cowan:It's great. And the other thing was for content, for when people wrote for the magazine, they would write it at home on their typewriter or their Amstrad computer. And then we must have got to a point where people brought in discs. But quite often people were typing at home on a typewriter, coming to the office and then inputting it into the computer, you know, manually. And then we also had the occasional work experience person that would do typing for us. but um yeah it's funny looking back doing a print magazine it was quite a it was genuinely a physical thing from beginning to end you know no internet so you were just moving words around on discs or on bits of paper and and then when it came to actually when we'd finished the magazine and we had to take we had to take it to somewhere to get the films made yeah so we'd take the whole computer oh my goodness we'd carry that and we'd be like don't drop it oh my gosh that's the magazine gone we take that to the place that would output the four color film then you get a big stack of film and then we'd get a courier to take that film to the printer and I think maybe for for some people that haven't been through that to imagine that it's quite an odd thing isn't it because obviously we put a magazine together, you know, now, another print magazine, and the process is completely different and a bit easier, I have to say.
20:46Katy Cowan:Yeah, just a tad. I mean, yeah, there'll be people listening to this who were born, I mean, in a scary, like when people, when young people who are in their 20s tell me when they were born, now I'm like, oh, shit, I'm really old, aren't I? I look in the mirror and I'm like convincing myself I'm doing okay. But it's like, oh, my God. like my husband the other day said the last time you went to glastonbury was 18 years ago i was like what what 18 years ago i'm not old enough to have gone to glastonbury 18 years ago this is insane that happened to me recently when um i went to see massive attack um um and um i said i was saying to the person i was going to i think i saw them a few years ago you know and he went what around that tour when they did that thing and i went yeah that's the one he was like that's eight that was 18 years ago and i was like i thought that was like a three or four years ago it's mad isn't it when when did it or where does the time go these young people today they don't know how fast it's gonna speed it must be difficult if you're someone who it must be difficult to imagine pre-internet yeah if you've only ever known post-internet you know yes so to imagine no mobile phones and no internet, I do think that must be quite an odd thing to do.
22:05Katy Cowan:Yeah, like what did you do? How did you pass the time? So yeah, when I think back to how we would put together a magazine and how we'd work as well, like we worked really hard and I was in the office five days a week. I was running a club at the weekend. I'd be out Friday to Sunday, come back on a Sunday night and we'd be in the office every Monday morning. And I used to think, well, why didn't I take some time off? um but one of the reasons was is because you couldn't work from home no that's true actually you know we had three we had some desktop computers in the office no one had a laptop um there was no internet so you could have the day off or go to work there's no i'll just keep an eye on stuff from home i love that you casually sprinkle in there oh you know in the weekends i was running a club i mean bugged out well yeah bugged out i mean that's been going 30 years We're just celebrating our 30th year.
23:00And that was in Beehive Mill as well at Sankey Soap, which was downstairs.
23:05Katy Cowan:It was a great night. A very messy night, Paul. Yeah. We started the night because we were running this magazine. We got people at the Hacienda advertising in the magazine. And we had no ambition to run a club night. We, you know, it was enough for me to be running a magazine. I was like, I wanted to be a music journalist. I'm all of a sudden I'm a music journalist and I've got my own magazine and um but then Andrew Spiro and Rupert Campbell who were running Sankey's soap at Beehive Mill they they got in touch with us and said do you want to run your own club night we need someone to do the Fridays and we were there talking about that energy that we had back then I would I was a say yes person it was like you want to run your own club okay I don't know what that involves but yes of course um i know what it takes to go to a club night i don't know what it takes to run a club night you know do you just i suppose you just pick the djs and you make a flyer and then you tell all your mates to come and that's that that turns out that is what it that's what that is what it is or that's what it was then only ends up being one of the most popular long-running events of the you know dance world it it did end up being it did end up it started relatively quietly and then a bit like jockey slut we reached a bit of a tipping point we had to begin with it had been our friends and you know friends of friends and it had been going quite well but not sellouts and then we flew in richie horton and i don't know i can't remember how it happened but i think we were we would have been into his records find the phone number on the back of the record phone these people or fax them and then yeah they might put you in touch with an agent but sometimes they didn't have an agent book their flight pick them up from the airport and we had richie horton on and it was a complete sellout and all of a sudden we were like oh this is a club that's successful or could be successful it's certainly successful tonight yeah and then we started you know booking bigger names but at the same time we was we still did the same thing we'd records in eastern block if we like the record find the phone number and we we flew in you know most a lot of the people were for from chicago or detroit some of them more well known some of them not as well known people like green velvet who's very well known nowadays he became a bit of a regular and it was exciting we fly them in pick them up from the airport like i said i had a mini metro and um pick them up from the airport drop them off at the hotel and then we'd be working all week on the magazine like 10 till 6 or something in the office except around deadlines when we practically slept in the office but and then we'd nip home and then be back at sankey's for nine o 'clock when the club opened and my friend james holroyd was our resident he'd be warming up and um then we'd have the guest DJ on at midnight till two and yeah it sounds early but clubs finished at two then so but then after that we'd go back to my house or someone else's house after party after parties and then we'd be up for the rest of the weekend and then back in the office Monday morning oh couldn't do that now no not not not anymore god no no I got carried out of a toilet once by a bouncer at Sankey's.
26:35Oh really? Oh wow.
26:37Katy Cowan:It's all right somebody sneaked me back in I was all right. Okay good well I won't yeah don't ask why. I won't ask why and I won't share any of my incidents in Sankey's Soap I'm sure there were many because we were there yes we were there from we were there a few years until the club got into trouble there was gangs and you know ended up that leading to some financial trouble and the club closed and then cream in liverpool got in touch and said why don't you do a monthly with us and that held like 4 000 people instead of the thousand people that sank is held we used to get a coach there from uh stoke oh really we'd all organize it all of all of our college friends and we'd we'd rock up in tiny little bikini tops and tiny little little hot pants it's funny we've been looking at because we're putting together a book at the moment a 30th anniversary uh bugged out book and looking for photos of the time and there aren't as many photos as no one took photos you know no one had camera phones and um but yeah there were a lot a lot of people going to bugged out at nation in liverpool cream in liverpool all kind of gate crash it up we don't really remember it we were like was it like that but i suppose it could be it depended on the vibe like if it was an ltj bookham night which i used to like to go to It was a bit more kind of grungy and baggy genie.
27:56I think what there was, was there was all different kinds of people. But yes, there was definitely an element that you had these kind of ravers in that kind of gate with that gatecrasher look.
28:05Katy Cowan:Yeah. I suppose when you've got a club and there's 4 ,000 people in it, you get all kinds of people, you know. It was nice. It was like the way to socialise on a weekend, wasn't it, back then? We loved it. I mean, it was, that was another, you know, because we had three rooms at Nation in Liverpool, we could book a lot more DJs, even though it was only once a month. But we could book all different kinds of DJs, house DJs, techno DJs, drum and bass DJs, big beat DJs. And yeah, it was just, it was, it was, and it was a great compliment to the magazine, you know. So we would be saying, if we interview for the, if you do an interview for the magazine, we'll, we'll book you for the club and vice versa, you know.
28:44Katy Cowan:Sounds like a whirlwind, a perfect storm. And it all probably worked very well for many, many years, obviously, before things started to change. but before we come on to that what is your favorite memory from that time paul well there's a moment when i think it was our fourth birthday so it must have been 1998 i think and we're in we're doing cream in liverpool and we'd asked daft punk to play our birthday and um because i'd been the first person to interview them we'd had them in the magazine we had a good relationship with them and they said it wasn't quite the right time but wish us the best of luck and so we booked the rest of the night and you know distributed all the flyers and the posters and that kind of thing because that's how you promoted a club night there was no mailing list no internet just flyers and posters and then I think it was about a week before the event they got in Thomas got in touch from Daft Punk and said oh I do want to play actually and we were like wow okay that's great and we were like okay so it's just you is it and you're gonna and i think he was gonna do a little kind of uh live thing like a thomas banglater decks and effect thing um brilliant and uh and then they came back to us and said no no gee man wants to come as well it's a daft punk thing oh wow so so we were like okay that's amazing obviously and we agreed to it they got paid they would they just wanted us to pay for their euro star didn't want paying that's cute and um um but we're like well how do we let people know so we went round and um I think we got some people to do it actually but we got we had to get some stickers printed for the posters saying and Darth Punk are playing it was the only way that you could get the word out of it but I suppose what what you did have then was word of mouth yeah so because everyone doesn't assume that everyone knows everything as soon as you put on the poster that Darth Punk are playing you only you don't have to tell that many people you know and they're telling all their friends and their friends are telling their friends and um so anyway I remember being at that night Daft Punk are in the main room and I'm in front of my mine and Jono's club night we've accidentally become club promoters it's a complete sellout with 4 000 people or something Daft Punk put on Stevie Wonder's happy birthday and it was a bit of an emotional moment I know I it's um although there's lots of those years that I don't remember um that is one memory that always you know has stayed with me just standing there looking at the room uh Daft Punk playing this record for us yeah when people say what's my best moment that's that's always the one that comes to mind yeah I can see you getting emotional now i do actually feel a bit emotional which has taken me by surprise oh but the thing is you've obviously worked very hard i think you and i share that in common we're we're always trying to find the next thing to do to figure out the next steps and we never really give ourselves permission or time to just take a step back and say oh actually we've we've actually achieved quite a lot here this is really good so yeah get emotional i mean gosh lots to be proud about but I would never have I would never have um taken a moment to step back then I mean it was like what's next what's next yeah you know sell out club night magazine going well you know what's next and it was never about the money um no god no because the funny thing is now I think back to oh wow I wonder how many I wonder how much money a club selling 4 000 tickets was making because I didn't have a clue at the time.
32:24Katy Cowan:Yeah. But I also, it's quite a nice thing that I didn't really care.
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32:31Katy Cowan:This season of the Created Bean podcast is sponsored by James Cropper and its new colour source range is a game changer for designers. It gives you direct access to 50 carefully created shades with a choice of weights and textures straight from their Lake District mill. beautiful sustainable coloured paper made in britain by experts who live and breathe colour
32:58Katy Cowan:you like me in that you just got to a point where you realized you could pay the people who are working for you and that was just like ace and you were like yes got a nice little team here absolutely that if we could pay our staff our team members and we could we paid ourselves a little bit of money, enough to live on, and we could keep the business going. We could print another issue of the magazine, do another club night. That was everything. I never thought of, I really didn't think of anything beyond that, you know, not buying somewhere to live or going on holiday or, you know, we probably didn't really even spend that much money, you know, but it was definitely all about if those businesses could keep going, it was everything, you know which is kind of a good and a bad thing yeah yeah so so what was the reason jockey slut came to an end and it it was um you know a little bit beyond well it was completely beyond our control we'd um we'd uh in 99 we were pretty exhausted we were running the mag we were doing the things that i've just described the magazine and the club the magazine was doing well I remember selling 20 ,000 copies of the magazine completely independently.
34:13Katy Cowan:That's phenomenal. You know, that would have been a time when maybe MixMag was doing 50 ,000 copies. But, I mean, that was owned by EMAP. And they were long established. But we were doing everything in a very indie DIY way. But we were actually selling magazines. We were getting advertising. You know, people like Levi's would come to us and they'd do special advertising. and so we got some interest from a publisher in London they published a magazine called Sleaze Nation which was like a competitor to the face you know I think Dazed and Confused it was in that kind of world a style magazine and I got talking to someone out one night who came from this company and he said we'd be interested in you know doing you know buying your magazine and I suppose it it i was thinking you know we're exhausted we're um we're making money but all the all we do with the money is put it all into the next issue and it never felt like there was any breathing space and things were things were tight we were so uh determined just to print more copies and grow there was never any breathing space so it was bad management really but we were very inexperienced.
35:25And also the magazine was every two months. And we felt that was slow. It was like magazines were monthly. They were weekly or monthly or bimonthly. But because of cash flow, we could only do it every second month because we had to print the magazine, sell the advertising, then get in all the money from the advertising and some of the money in from the sales so that we could print the next one. So it couldn't be a monthly with us running it in that financial situation. And so we got interested in this deal with this publisher in London. And we wanted to, what we really wanted was investment, but they only wanted to do the deal if they would keep us on, but they wanted to buy the magazine, not invest in the magazine.
36:14and so uh for the good it was a good deal for us but also uh they were going to take the magazine monthly and they were going to ramp up the advertising sales and build a new team and and we were going to have to move to london it all felt like the right thing to do at the time but then and it was it worked quite well actually we moved to london got some new people involved it went monthly and it was pretty successful and um but the company that uh that also published sleaze nation they really they they bet big on sleaze nation and uh something happened i think uh they spent too much money i don't know the details you never do in these situations but all of a sudden uh uh everyone's told that the whole company's gone gone into administration and I don't know the details and I don't know the figures but I mean for everyone involved everyone felt at the time that Jockey Start was still doing pretty well but anyway it all came to an end and that was it was sad but certainly sad for the people that were working there but it didn't also didn't that we had the club which started this DJ agency we were just okay what's next yeah you know I think I didn't I also think to be really brutally honest I was so blasé and so uh I had this kind of ridiculous self-belief probably too much I was like I'll just start another thing that's as good as jockey slut I love that though that's that's why you've been successful I I suppose but I mean um it's um uh you know you I think it would have been good to realize that um uh it's not as easy as that and that jockey start was successful because of a time a place the youthful energy that we had people loved it and so the idea that something like that could come to an end and you could start something that would be just as good and just as accessible was you know incredibly naive really well you could call it naive or you could just call it well hey let's just try it anyway optimistic optimistic but I mean my experience tells me that I I was right it was very difficult to do that because I've I've done lots of things over the last 30 years and very few of those things have been as successful as or as meaningful or
38:45Katy Cowan:meant as much to people as jockey slut did so I now know from experience that it was definitely a bit of naivety at least you tried i've never been never uh never stopped trying so this is where we're up to with disco pogo so so yeah we'd um jockey slut came to an end in the early 2000s i went off and i wanted to i wanted to do things on the other side of the industry not the side that was the music journalist side of the industry you know the the side that was managing artists signing bands um that kind of thing i suppose i suppose at the time i thought it was the more kind of proactive side of things than the reactive side of things so setting the agenda by signing things rather than just writing about things that other people signed and um so i was i ran a label in partnership with someone called leo silverman who was the head of anr xl and he left xl set up a new label and then brought me in to help him and we had funding from EMI and that was a great experience although I realized how hard it was to run a successful record label oh yeah very very difficult even if you're given funding we started a publishing company as well and we signed an artist called Nao who's gone on to do very well um and and then the new magazine I started after jockey slut was called dummy which was a new print magazine and that was the one where i thought okay i'm going to start this new magazine it's immediately going to be really successful and it wasn't really it was really cool and i look back at those early print issues and um we did some really cool things that were quite i don't know it was different to jockey start i thought it was moving things on a bit but it wasn't as immediately successful as jockey slut unfortunately and um And then the world changed.
40:39Everything went online. And selling print magazines felt like an odd thing to do. And then Vice started printing a magazine that they gave away. Yeah. And then we tried that. And then we were like, well, that's not working. We're spending a fortune on printing these magazines. And what Vice had was huge amounts of advertising revenue. Whereas what we were doing is we didn't have anywhere near enough advertising revenue, but we were giving away this great product. yeah so then we went completely online and I've been doing that for a while and over the last few years that company has become dmy and it's I've turned it into an artist services company to try and find a way to adapt to the new world so it's an online magazine but we sign artists kind of combining a lot of the things that I've done up to now and yeah it was a really exciting idea I think and it's still an exciting business but when lockdown happened my partner in jockey slut and bugged out john burgess andrew weatherall who was a hero to us and a mentor and a friend passed away and jonah got in touch and said why don't we do something about andrew we've got all these old interviews with him and it's lockdown it'll be you know something you know we can something really creative that we can put our energy into.
42:01And he really cracked on with it and then showed me what he'd done. I was like, wow, we've got, this is a book. This is going to be a great book. So we did a jockey-stud tribute to Andrew Weatherill, and we decided that all the profits would go to Andrew's favorite charities. And we got in touch with Andrew's estate and talked to them about it. And they specified the charities that the money should go to. And it just really reconnected and um we sold 9 000 copies and raised about 60 000 pounds for charity wow and it got me and Jono working together again on a publication and it was a lot of fun very enjoyable and people started saying that we're buying the book okay so when's the magazine relaunching yeah and I was like it's not relaunching that's not happening it's like we did this book and it was great but not really going to launch a magazine called jockey slut i'm 50 you know the world's changed and people have oh yeah people have done different things with you know that you know that that phrase and um and um and then as time went on i think because we'd had so much we'd enjoyed the process of putting together this print publication we were like okay well what is it we can do next um that can't be it and we we thought well maybe we could do a magazine but it can be inspired by jockey slut but be a new magazine by new you know by people who are with different people to the one i was 30 years ago um and um the world's changed so the the content's going to be different and um and we thought okay but still very risky to do that and just all of a sudden hope that people buy it you know the the weatherall book was a unique thing we're not going to just do a magazine and then 9 000 people are going to buy it it's very unlikely that's going to happen it's expensive thing to do as well.
43:53So we did a crowdfunder because we thought, well, if the crowdfunder is successful, we know people want to pay for this new magazine.
44:01Katy Cowan:What a contrast between when you first started the first lot compared to now. I mean, I bet that was a revelation. It was. And it also shows our more measured approach, you know. But yes, there was this technology available to us, you know, a crowdfunding platform. And once we got the word out there about the crowdfunder, it was immediately very successful. And then I think it started off quite quickly and then stopped, which apparently always happens with crowdfunding campaigns. You get those early people that are like, we love what you do. Then you need to get to the next stage. So when we hit the quiet period, we started working it a bit because we started thinking, well, we want to do this now.
44:45And we got through that period. And then lots of people came in towards the end and I think we raised£60 ,000.
44:52Katy Cowan:Good grief. Did we write about you? We did, didn't we? I think so, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for the support. That's all right. I wasn't asking for it. I was just like, did we support you? I hope so. And we were like, okay, you know, obviously we were over the moon, but we were like, we've got to do this now. And we decided that it wasn't going to be called Jockey Slut, but one of our slogans for Jockey Slut, I think starting from issue two was Disco Pogo for Punks and Pumps. Yes. Disco Pogo. That's a great name. It's a great name. Not going to offend anyone. Totally sums up what we're about. It's got a link to Jockey Slut.
45:31It sounds modern and cool. Sounds like us.
45:34Katy Cowan:You're modern and cool, Paul. No, not that we're modern and cool. I meant they're two different things. Of course you are. Of course you are. Come on. It sounds modern and cool and it's a bit, it sounds like us. Two different things. Gotcha. And we thought, okay, we'll just do, you've got the internet nowadays, people don't buy monthly magazines so much even a quarterly I because we've both got other businesses that we work on yeah I thought let's start let's do a twice yearly really thick coffee table type magazine about electronic music with beautiful design great writing great photography pay everyone properly yeah from right from the beginning pay all the journalists properly pay the photographers properly pay the people that work on the magazine properly the only people to begin with that didn't get paid were me and Jono which was very similar to when we started 30 years ago um but that's fine that's what you do when you're trying to get a business off the ground um and I suppose yeah it immediately seemed to resonate with people and was immediately enjoyable and and Jim Butler is our editor and he was the deputy editor of Jockey Slut back in the day and Chris Jones is our designer who was the designer on Jockey Slut back in the day and his partner harry does production so it's a very small team and we've obviously got loads of journalists that we know lots of our friends are music journalists but also we've tried to find new people and young people and we thought the magazine some of the things that we we thought were very important was that it had to be very authentic it had to be it had to be a good reflection of us now at this time in our lives i didn't want to find myself trying to run a magazine that was for 20-somethings pretending to be that person that I was 30 years ago so can I run a magazine about electronic music where I'm comfortable we're comfortable with our age and we're covering people who are comfortable with their age and that's been really interesting because you know we've interviewed people like Orbital and Leftfield and you know loads of people DJ Harvey on the last issue these are people that have been around for a while yeah they've lived a bit and they're also people that are still very uh people our age are interested in them but young people are interested in these artists still as well and what we discovered quite quickly was the other thing was these people had stories to tell yes they'd lived yeah yeah so we would find ourselves proofreading the magazine i remember reading the interview with left field moved you know yeah because these were people that are talking about and it's how it sounds depressing but it's not depressing they were talking about lives well lived they were talking about coming through illness and coming out the other side suffering you know we've interviewed people that have come through depression and come out the other side we've interviewed people that have overdone it with drugs or alcohol and come out the other side and so most of the time i'm when i'm proofreading because obviously we i'm not writing the whole magazine i'm reading the whole thing before it goes to print and we'll find articles that we're messaging each other on slack and have you read this it's you know it's it's um it's quite a story um yeah so so yeah we so we we we cover those people that are um that will resonate with them that people our age will be interested in electronic music, but also young people are interested in these people.
49:09Plus, we also try and make sure we get some younger people in there as well, some newer names. But what you get, what the bonus of being comfortable with finding these older people to cover is the stories are brilliant. They're not talking about, they're not scratching around to try and find a reason why they made the album or called it this or looking for an anecdote. they don't need to scratch around you turn the mic on they tell you what they've been through in the last 30 years and it's um you know some of the some of the features i'm i'm i'm really proud that we published them and um and they're genuinely they're also the kind of things that you don't
49:50Katy Cowan:read anywhere else you know yeah brilliant you found a niche again and isn't the fifth isn't the fifth decade supposed to be our happiest well is that true is that is that i think i feel pretty happy good yeah you look it um but um it's the 40s that are a nightmare um i think you know when you get to this age you're um uh yeah you're uh to be doing something that i enjoy and and to produce to be working on a project that i am proud of the results and to be you know involved in electronic music in some way but without having to stay up all night and feel terrible on a monday morning and um and being healthy you know yeah you know you you know when you get a bit older you're grateful for these things whereas when I was in my 20s I took being healthy for granted whatever I did to myself I think we all did didn't we yeah I'm sure that yeah exactly so so yeah it you know when you're interviewing these people that have been in electronic music for a long long time and they're honest about what they've been through there's some incredibly moving you know features also it's you know there's lots that's about the music but like i've found with creative beam people are interested in the work but there's always going to be more interest in the person well i think it goes back to when i said i was obsessed with the nme and yes i'd be i'd be reading about what an album sounds like and and you know why it was a good album and reading an article an interview with a band and we you know you know but the music yeah the music was only one small part of it i mean it was one of the things when we started jockey stuff magazine we said we're going to write about the people you know there was this thing at the time that was um this phrase faceless techno bollocks and we were like it's just not true it's like why why did why are some publications saying that people that make music with guitars have interesting stories to tell and people that make techno aren't interesting and we thought we thought immediately thought it was ridiculous and i think we were right it was ridiculous you know people like apex twin who were covering covering in the early days yeah fascinating still fascinating you know hugely hugely so so but yes the the the reading about music is interesting but the reading about the people behind the music you know that's a big part of it yeah and you're clearly very passionate about it and I'm just wondering have you found it easier to make Disco Pogo viable financially these days or is it sort of an ongoing challenge are you planning to have an online presence as well I have to say it's going quite well which I you know sometimes hesitate to say things like that because yeah sometimes might jinx it but and you're being humble probably as well but I think we're you know publishing a print magazine I mean sometimes you might mention that to people and you think, well, why are you doing that?
52:52I mean, that's a crazy thing to do. But what I've discovered is that, you know, we investing in journalists, investing in photographers, creating a great product and selling it at a price where we can pay for the printing and make a profit. It's kind of working, you know, and sometimes it's, you know, you need to believe in the product enough to charge properly for it. You know, you'll read that in loads of business books won't you you know don't undervalue what you're doing and but yes it has been challenging and like I said we did that crowdfunding it sounds like a lot of money but we we we did we we used that money in the same way that we like I said in the early days of Jockey Talk we threw it all into the magazine printing a beautiful thing paying everyone properly and the first you know we're on issue seven we're working on issue eight and you know for a while it was not touch and go because there was no doubt that we were going to be carrying on and building this.
53:50But yeah, it was kind of hard to make it all add up. But what's really helped is we've started publishing these books. So we did a follow-up to the Andrew Wetherill book, slightly different format, hardback, Daft Punk split up. We thought, let's do a book about Daft Punk. And that's been really successful and sold really well. And we've now done a new one about Aphex Twin, and we're working on another one that's coming out in the autumn. And, you know, the magazine is, I think the magazine is doing pretty well, but, you know, the books are helping kind of fund everything really. But I'm still, you know, the magazine's growing all the time.
54:30We have a website, but it's behind a paywall.
54:33Katy Cowan:Right, interesting. And we're not, you know, we're, a lot, you know, half of the books that we sell we sell directly from our own online store literally 50 the other 50 go out to independent record shops independent bookshops we're not really interested in selling from amazon although because we supply some distributors i went on amazon this morning and it's there so it's a it's kind of something that you can't fight no um but um and we've built up some great you know relationships with distributors shops we've just shipped a load of books to a retailer in america called turntable lab who are you know big online they sell lots of vinyl and so and there's also this incredible network of magazine shops so you in manchester you've got unitom yes village books and rare magazines out in stockport rare mags we've been very supportive and and the reason i started learning about this network is we supply a distributor called mms they supply these shops but when you supply the distributor you don't really know whether the magazines are going but you find out where the magazines are going because they post about it on Instagram and tag you and and that's just a wonderful thing because I've realized that you know it's a big part of what we're doing these shops are a very important part of what we're doing back in the jockey slut day our dream was to be in WH Smiths you know whereas now we do have some magazines going into WH Smiths but I mean really what's the most important part of our our setup is these passionate people that run these independent magazine shops and it's like a it's like a scene of people that are into print I went into village books I remember and talked to them when I was up in Manchester and he he was saying that you know it's people into print it's as many cool young people in their 20s as older people that love print because they've always love print yeah you know it's a very vibrant thing rare mags like you mentioned they you know they're they've been very supportive unit on we did a big shop window display in unit with unit on they're also very supportive but also the other thing is it's not just in the uk we get tagged on these beautiful little magazine stroke coffee shops all over europe your little face lighting up telling me this and and i i uh i love it you know we thought we follow them because like i said it feels like that's they're a part a quite important part of what we're doing it's this this network of magazine shops run by passionate people it sometimes feels like we can't get back the magic of the 90s but actually i think when you look at you know the journey you've been on and where you're at now you've still got a lot of that magic happening it's just it's just that the vehicles have changed i totally agree it's a different kind of magic so yeah you know this you know these um yeah you just got you know you have to look for the magic elsewhere don't you you know we're not trying to we're not trying to recreate recreate the the amazing things that happened in the 90s we're like what is that what's the you know I love your word magic it's like what's the new magic yeah and one of the things is um uh you know also people that post and tag us on instagram are people buying the magazine I love that as well they get the magazine through the post they've ordered it from our shop they're really happy with it they they like it enough that they post on instagram we we see who the people are that are buying these magazines and so yeah social media it's um it drives us all mad sometimes i wish it didn't exist sometimes i wish i didn't have a phone sometimes i wish i could be like those people who's that famous film director you know doesn't have a phone god i don't know you might be thinking of bill mary nolan oh with Christopher Nolan and Bill Murray apparently you can only get in touch with Bill Murray um through a fax machine which I quite like I sometimes I'm like being on you know staring at my phone all the time I mean it's sometimes I'm like what are you doing this is a nightmare or or having to post onto Instagram to sell you know your business yeah which we do we post on Disco Pogue you know we're taking it seriously we're trying to grow our following anyway my point is that all of this stuff can sometimes feel awful and stressful and and there's lots of bad things about social media so many bad things which i won't even go into but there's some good things as well that's my point yeah i'll be able to see who's buying the magazine see what shops are stocking the magazine and not just because someone sent me a list of them but someone's tagged us and then i go and look at the shop and it's in lisbon or amsterdam or and and i'm like this shop's beautiful and then i'll send them a message going on you know it's a beautiful shop and thanks for stocking the mag that's when social media is a wonderful thing it's a community sounds like you've been very much you've loved being very much part of that community these last three decades yeah absolutely and and and just in these last few years uh the community of music journalists that quite often are treated really badly and feel like their their um you know their industry is is in a difficult place and um just being able to employ good people and pay them fairly to do incredible work you know sometimes i get features back from these people and i used to write i used to write a lot of the stuff from jockey slut but i love it when i'm reading these features thinking you know you're 10 times better than i ever was um and so we have some really brilliant journalism and it does feel like a community photographers journalists editors designers magazine shops you know and all the people who buy the magazine and the community of course the readers who are also really passionate it does feel like a community it's um yeah it's a you know quite a joyful thing yeah well there's one thing that certain things are always going to change and we're going through a massive massive disruption at the moment across the great of industries um lots of people getting in touch with me messaging saying that it's been the worst time they've ever experienced from working for themselves in 20 years i i guess people listening to this who are suffering from what's happening will be inspired because you have clearly pivoted and you've just figured out what's what's next and tried different things so it's it's kind of like we need to sort of get our heads out the sand a little bit and just say okay well things aren't going to go back to the way they were it would be lovely if they were as glorious as print was in the 90s but that's not going to happen so how can we how can we survive the next 20 years doing something we love i mean you know absolutely what you've what you've said is, you know, I feel for people that are, you know, I've been, as you are, I'm on LinkedIn sometimes nowadays.
1:01:36Actually, sometimes I hate it. Sometimes I quite like it because, you know, there's some good people on there, you know, and you see people that are, you know, looking for work and being honest about struggling a little bit. And I think it is a tough time to be in music or the creative industries in general or be a music journalist or a journalist of any kind and um I certainly haven't got all the answers but and that's but I do feel very grateful that we've done something that we're passionate about only because we're passionate about it and it seems to be working but I don't take that lightly it was no of course I've learned from mistakes that I've made in the past.
1:02:22And to be fair, I did try and apply that thinking to Disco Pogo. So I shouldn't say that it's all by complete accident, because that's been disingenuous. I did say that the magazine has to be, people have to buy it. We're not giving away content for free. We're going to pay people properly. We're going to be ambitious that the content's got to be brilliantly written. So we're going to get good journalists. We're not going to we're not going to try and you know employ people cheaply leading to an inferior product so so yes we have applied that thinking and so um yeah like i said i'm certainly not going to say that i've got all the answers but what we did was yeah learned i learned from my mistakes and then we did something we were passionate about and we put our heart and soul into it and we're still learning and so far it's going it's going well but I mean I yeah I'm I'm grateful that it's going well so far and I don't take it lightly that it is and it could all change
1:03:27Katy Cowan:oh yeah but I feel like you've got the tools to cope if if that does happen hopefully and we are still um we're not getting carried away we're we're still it's still a passion project we're growing very organically we're trying not to overstretch ourselves I think in the past maybe I you know I've always liked doing lots of different things and trying to remain focused on just making the things that we're doing good and better rather than trying to you know ending up spreading ourselves too thin. Sounds like you've had an amazing adventure so far Paul I look forward to seeing what's coming next.
1:04:05Yeah it's all an event all an adventure it's not over yet.
1:04:08Katy Cowan:No No, got to keep going. And yeah, when you work for yourself, when you run your own businesses, you've just got to keep going, haven't you? That's a good bit of advice, isn't it? Keep going. Yeah, don't give up. Don't give up, keep going. Thanks ever so much for joining us on the Creative Bean Podcast, Paul. This has been fantastic. Thanks, Katie.
1:04:31Katy Cowan:That's it for this episode. And what a way to kick off the new season. Chatting to Paul was a reminder that no matter how much the industry changes, the still huge value in doing things your own way. From jockey slut to disco pogo, he stayed true to his taste, trusted his gut and built things that stand the test of time. Not because they chase trends, but because they care about people and culture. In a world where search is dying and social media feels like shouting into the void, it's encouraging to know there's still room for slow, thoughtful, beautifully made work. And maybe that's the future.
1:05:05Katy Cowan:Smaller, stronger communities, deeper connections and just doing it for the love of it thank you so much for listening we'll be back with paul on thursday for the spark our bonus episode where we get to know our guests a little better until then thanks again to james cropper for sponsoring this season of the creative boom podcast remember its color source range gives designers direct access to 50 beautiful shades and a choice of textures, all crafted in the Lake District and delivered straight to your door. Explore the collection and bring your next project to life at paperandpackaging.jamescropper.com.
From the publisher
Kicking off the new season of The Creative Boom Podcast, host Katy Cowan sits down with Paul Benney – co-founder of the cult dance magazine Jockey Slut, the legendary club night Bugged Out! and, today, the beautifully crafted biannual Disco Pogo.
Paul looks back at the golden days of music magazines and club culture in the '90s, sharing stories of launching a fanzine on a shoestring, running sell-out nights that booked Daft Punk, and building a magazine that captured the spirit of electronic music.
He also talks candidly about burnout, the collapse of Jockey Slut, and what it took to start again. With Disco Pogo, Paul has found a way to honour the past while creating something fresh for today – a print magazine rooted in authenticity, community, and the stories behind the music. This is a conversation about resilience, reinvention and keeping the magic alive in a changing industry.
