Meet our Editorial Staff

Music Industry Newswire™ has a highly experienced team of editors and working journalists who manage the content found in this online music news magazine.

Music Industry Newswire is a publication of Neotrope® established 1983 in California, USA.

Meet our Team:

• Christopher Laird Simmons

Christopher Simmons is one of those folks sometimes referred to as a “renaissance man” because of his many interests and his ability to be both an artist and a businessman by switching hats as necessary. Similarly, he has been at the forefront of numerous movements combining the arts and technology over the past 25 years.

His various hats have included direct marketing, art direction, illustration, journalism, music, photography, publishing, public relations, video editing, and Web development. He has been a non-stop entrepreneur since his teens — his first successful venture was a mail-order business selling movie memorabilia around the world at the age of 16.

He has composed music themes for two cable TV programs, including the award-winning VidKidCo, produced by the Long Beach Museum of Art’s Video Annex. As a musician he performed in several bands in the ‘80s, including “Pets Gone Wild” ( www.petsgonewild.com ) that was featured in the L.A. Times Calendar section, and was an L.A. Weekly “band name of the week.” He released numerous independent self-produced albums of electronic music in the ‘80s under the name “Bluetoy,” which were played widely on late-night alternative music radio shows, and reviewed favorably in music magazines like Electronic Musician. He re-mastered and re-released the albums on CD under his own name between 1996 and 2000 (his CD Beserker is available on iTunes, CDbaby, Amazon.com).

He has also been on the launch team of numerous successful companies including MacMall, FindWhat.com (now MIVA), and Send2Press® Newswire.

He has developed over 500 Web sites since March of 1995, including e-commerce projects for Oprah Winfrey and the No Fear clothing company, and an online 10-hour e-learning video course for DentalHygieneReview. He is also considered one of the first “experts” in search engine optimization (SEO), creating a proprietary technology called ContextEngine® in 1996 which has evolved over the past decade along with search engines to help Web sites rank higher and “be found.”

He has art directed numerous magazines, and was the Chief Creative at the PhotoVentures ad agency from 1982-1987. He has won two Harvey Measurement awards for most responsive magazine advertising, and an ARPL design award from Apple Computer in 1993.

He wrote one of the first magazine articles on using MIDI sequencing with a Commodore 64, and Sequential Circuits interface in the June 1984 issue of Polyphony (now Electronic Musician). As one of the first proponents of e-book technology in the publishing and advertising worlds, he published an electronic magazine (“e-zine”) of fiction and pop-culture called Nu*Real in the Common Ground format in Dec. of 1994 that was available for download on AOL and Internet news groups.

He has written for a wide variety of national and regional print publications including Computer Player, CrossMedia, Digital Imaging, Print on Demand Business, Micro Publishing News, Polyphony, Search Engine Intelligence, and Spazz. His business articles on graphic design and Web development were also reprinted by the Graphic Artist Guild in several issues of their member newspaper. As the founder of a small publishing company (Mindset Press, now Neotrope Press), he developed over thirty small press publications and “fanzines” between 1987 and 1990, including one that was featured in the “potpourri” section of Playboy magazine.

He has been widely interviewed by publications like PC World on Linux Web hosting (he operated a Web hosting business from 1997 to 2005), TrendWatch on PDF technology, twice by Entrepreneur magazine on PR and marketing, and been invited to speak at Seybold, and the annual meeting of the American Intellectual Property Law Association, among others. He has been interviewed numerous times for Internet radio and Podcast programs over the past six years related to public relations and Internet marketing topics.

He is the president and founder of Neotrope® which is involved in entertainment, marketing and PR; both online and in traditional venues. He is a current member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). As a public relations (PR) professional he works with companies of all sizes to help them “get ink” in the media and promote their brands and products. He has also served on the panel of judges for the PRSA Excellence in Tech Journalism Awards (2002, 2003, 2004 awards).

• John Scott G – (aka “The G-Man”)

John “Scott” G is a partner in Golosio Publishing (www.golosio.com) which creates and licenses music for songs, commercials, films, and TV. A related company, FookMovie, creates videos for recordings in their catalog.

He is also owner of G-Man Marketing, an advertising and communications firm in Los Angeles. Mr. G has created advertising campaigns for hundreds of clients, and has written/produced radio commercials and corporate broadcasts for such as Goodrich, General Dynamics, Verizon Wireless, Yale Hospital, American Cancer Society, DIRECTV, Micron, Legoland, the Auto Club and many more. If you have opened a newspaper, flipped through a magazine, or listened to the radio in the past two decades, your purchasing decisions have been influenced by the work of Scott G and his firm.

He is also the recording artist known as The G-Man, with his albums distributed by Delvian Records and available on iTunes. He’s a voting member of NARAS (the Grammy organization), on the Board of NARIP (National Assn. of Record Industry Professionals) and regularly writes about communications, marketing and advertising for many publications and Web sites.

• Jesse JJ Jame

JJ Jame is a percussionist and theremin player, formerly a member of the Redondo Beach, California based BoyRacer™ electronica band (no relation to the European band of same name), and a long-time electronic music blogger, formerly an editor for the defunct EMcult™ website. He also freely admits he constantly mis-spells “theremin.”

• Loren Weisman

Loren Weisman (www.lorenweisman.com) is an accomplished music producer based in Seattle, Washington. Having worked on over three hundred albums, Loren has also worked on numerous television, film, video game and radio productions, from New York to Los Angeles, Boston to Seattle. Loren is also the founder of Brain Grenade Entertainment LLC, and the author of the Freedom Solutions Recording Plan. Loren has also written The Artist’s Guide for Success in the Music Business, a book to help independent musicians achieve self sufficient and sustainable success.

A focused attention to detail and an innovative eye for possibilities are the trademarks of Loren’s unique creative philosophy. By meticulously defining and refining all the elements of a project with the artist, he ensures that every project meets the artist’s goals and dreams. Then, by applying his creativity, insight and experience to the project, Loren can create compelling musical experiences, with just the right sounds in just the right places.

Loren began his career on the east coast, working as a session and touring drummer for artists in genres ranging from Jazz, Latin and Blues, Rock, Funk and Fusion. Taking the advice of a friend, and through the knowledge gained with abundant studio experiences, Loren tried his hand at producing with dynamic success. After years of working with artists ranging across a diverse spectrum of genres, Loren mixes industry standard recording methods with his pioneering, independent approach.

Talent, creativity, spontaneity, and attention to detail describe the style and approach Loren takes to recording artists. Inspired by the structures of classic Motown, Loren lays out the foundation and the initial details of every recording in advance to achieve the most complete, creative and professional sounding album possible. From preproduction to budget planning, recording to post production, and all the creativity and design in between, Loren works together with the artist every step of the way to optimize every element of the project. He further distinguishes himself from many other producers by not taking royalties, percentages or production points. This leaves the artist in total control of their product with the most avenues for success and sustainability.

Loren is also the founder and chair of the advisory board of Brain Grenade Entertainment, a revolutionary music enterprise for the independent musician, specializing in production, promotion, marketing and branding. Brain Grenade Entertainment provides explosive ideas, methods and applications for artist production, empowerment and sustainability.

• David Kronemyer

Mr. David Kronemyer started his career in the music business playing 12-string electric guitar in a folk rock band. Lacking sufficient talent to continue as a performer he began to manage bands and promote shows. He formerly was Vice President of Capitol Records and Senior Vice President of Atlantic Records. Segueing to the movie business he became President of Gold Circle Films and then President of Cerberus Films. He currently is producing records and directing independent movies, none of which have much commercial potential. More at: www.kronemyer.com.

• Liisa “S”

Liisa (yes, spelled correctly!) writes for several national and regional magazines; daily and weekly newspapers; and business-to-business newsletters. Before joining the Neotrope News Network, she worked as an editor for a national medical publishing company where she managed a team of writers and did market research for new launches. Liisa also worked in the catering business for several years, and as a result, specializes in writing about the food and beverage business and has two monthly columns that feature chefs and wine experts.

Liisa received her Masters in Media Studies from the New School for Social Research in New York City and is currently a member of the Public Relations Association of Western North Carolina. She resides in the beautiful town of Asheville, NC in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains; she lives there with her husband, Bryan and Black lab, Annie.

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