By Robert Lewis, Associate Editor

Putting this magazine together every month is one of the biggest challenges I've ever faced. I think I can speak for the others on-staff when I say that none of this is ever easy and, anymore, most of it's not a whole load of laughs along the way. Sometimes, as deadlines loom and nothing is going right, we think it would be easier to throw up our hands and walk away than to apply any more effort to what looks like a dieing cause. But somehow, month after month, we redouble our efforts and end up with an issue we can all be proud of.

So yeah, sometimes we're late, but did you consider the following?

• Mary Ellen Gustafson, our editor-in-chief edits everything. There are no copy assistants, proofreaders or assistant editors. Just her, working wacky hours into the morning -- day after day.
• Donn Jehs handles almost all the record labels and PR firms we deal with single-handedly. No secretary, no assistant -- just Donn, pounding the phones and cranking out some seriously huge phone bills.
• I hand-code every page that goes into this 'zine. Remember, the content is completely recycled every month as we install a new issue. That's well over 100 HTML pages per month.
• Our writers often get last-minute CD's to review, have to face rigid deadlines and all too often get screwed out of shows and interviews they're supposed to cover because of SNAFU's at the will-call window.
• NONE OF US HAVE EVER RECEIVED A DIME FOR ANY OF THIS! That's right. We started from scratch, in a corner of Mary Ellen's personal web space. From there we've grown month-to-month to where we are now -- one of the biggest independent music review zines on the Web. But still we haven't received any commercial backing. Yes, maybe we haven't worked as hard as we could have to gain sponsorship and become a going concern, but can we really be damned for being obsessed with giving our readers our very best?

This month we were dealing with the normal run of the mill problems until, on January 8, I received the news that my father had died suddenly and unexpectedly. I had to drive from my home in Upstate New York to Northwestern Iowa for a funeral I was neither physically nor emotionally prepared to deal with.

So here we are. As I write this the month is halfway over with and the January issue of AMZ is still only about halfway 'up'. This was supposed to be a banner month for us, but instead it has turned into a nightmare. I'm not really trying to overwhelm you, the reader, with excuses, only atempting to give you some perspective on how things work around here. There isn't a back-office staff of designers or editors at AMZ, it's just Mary Ellen, Donn and I. So I ask you to accept my apologies for an issue late and somewhat slipshod, but I ask you also to understand that we do a lot with what we have.

And if you know anybody who would like to sponsor a really RADICAL online music review 'zine, please have them get in touch with me! :-)

R.