Some standard questions about us.
Welcome to our magazine and shop. On this page, we will introduce some pointers about what we do, note the team, and answer the general questions. After that, we hope you enjoy the reading material and find something of interest in the shop.
Question: Why Rock the Joint? Well…the name comes from an old song by Bill Haley and the Comets. It fuses the desire to rock the house today with the nostalgia of yesterday. And that’s us. We love the music heritage but embrace today.
Question: What is the purpose of the magazine? Do we need another music magazine at all?
There is, I hope, always a desire to read up on great music. We wrote it because we love it, and we hope you all enjoy reading it. We are not looking to take another magazine’s readership away, we want to add some more news and information for those hungry fans! We do love those classic bands, but music has to move forward, rock is not dead, it is evolving all the time. Check out the crowd at Download and then tell me it’s dead. The magazine will broadly cover rock, melodic punk, jazz and country – so a broad umbrella. If we like it! We do have a world music edge that we are proud of, and we cover the Independent scene getting behind new acts.
Question: Is the magazine free?
Absolutely free content. We hope that having read the articles you will look at the shop as buying one of exclusive range of mugs, cushions etc you are directly supporting what we do in the magazine. If you do that it gives a thank you to us for working hard and also means we can improve the magazine, give better prizes in the quiz and devote more time to getting this good for you. We are also an Amazon affiliate so we are expanding the shop side of things a bit with them too.
Question: What will I find in the magazine? We will have feature articles on classic bands and albums, as well as articles on new bands, interviews and debates. When we love a new band we will do what we can to give new music a push. There will also be a resident poet with some kick ass poems and a few selective album reviews. We don’t want to just dump a load of mediocre albums (give them top reviews to not offend!!) on our readers. Thus, we look to select one or two that we love and say, check this out! We will have occasional live reports and sometimes recommend a podcast or book.
Question: Are you UK based?
Yes. But we are interested in more than the UK scene alone. We also love the current LA punk scene for example.
Questions on the Shop.
Question: And what is the theme of the shop?
The shop will, hopefully, where we make a few bucks to support our poor writers! We have a theme of mixing fantasy with rock, as seen in the Logo. But there will be trolls with their drums, witches on the mic and demons on the bass! We sell T-Shirts, cushions, mugs and a range of expanding merchandise that will grow over time. Everything is exclusive to us and distinctive.
We will also try and develop some T Shirts for children.
Other random questions.
Question: Can I contact you? Write to you?
Of course, great to hear from you. Any email will see Benny (probably) answer you, but you can mark it FAO the editor. We may put the best emails up on the site in a correspondence section, but if you don’t want your email put up then say it is private! Please keep any correspondence to music chat, magazine comments, or shop-related questions. You can also connect to us on our social media pages. We use Twitter and Instagram.
Question: Can I work for you? Are you recruiting?
Yes, we are looking to expand a bit. We have a tiny team and we work on the magazine for the love of it, making money largely from the shop. At the moment, it would be volunteer writers only with a love of rock, punk, or perhaps Goth roots. Send an email to the editors (Mark or Benny) with some info on you and we will happily give you a couple of pieces to do. As we expand, we will look to pay writers, and you would be at the top of the pile. Right now, though, we need to walk before we run! We have been posting on social media (August 2022) for a couple of volunteer reviewers.