CULTURE SHOQ

The Madbury Club | A Talk With The Master Of Ceremony

Posted by Greg Weinstein | Filed under Cultureshoq, Features, Interview

The Madbury Club launched a few weeks ago and they’ve already seen servers crash and hundreds of new twitter followers, as well as published plenty of movie, music, and game reviews, trip recaps, seasonal lookbooks, group debates, and much, much more. The Master Of Ceremony, commonly known as Phillip T. Annand, or even simply just Phil, sat down for a quick chat about the Club and a few things that should be known in regards to his new society. He goes into detail about a variety of subjects and tells us some facts about the website which have yet to be told. With almost a year in the making, Phil finally welcomes readers from around the world to The Madbury Club.

Hit the flip for more details.

Culture Shoq: In a few sentences explain the significance and reasoning behind the Madbury Club.

Phillip T. Annand: The simplest way for me to describe Madbury is this: I was really tired of blogging in the same way that everyone else was and Madbury grew out of the desire to do something different. I shy away from calling it an online magazine and rather call it an online publication of sorts because Madbury wasn’t designed to function as a traditional “magazine”.

CS: What do you think makes you an “online publication” instead of just a “blog”? Because all “blogs” have posts, pictures, reviews, etc.

Phil: The format in which we present all of that typical “blog” material is what separates us and what I think makes it more accurate to call Madbury a publication… I actually don’t mind if people call Madbury a blog, so long as they don’t confuse what we do with what any of the other so called “blogs” out there are doing. For example we’re about to run a Madbury Travels series with a student who spent a few months in Brazil following a drum band. He’s not an official part of Madbury but we’re essentially “publishing” his work through our site.

CS: Why design a site using spread influenced designs and not just a regular pictures and write-ups? Because there’s a lot of work that goes into spread designs, like all the photoshopping and formatting involved.

Phil: That’s a damn good question. I wish I had asked myself that before I made the site because I could have saved myself a lot of future heartache. Laughs. The thought behind that is two things. First, I love magazines. I love everything about magazines and since at this moment in time I don’t have the means to actually put out my own printed magazine, I liked the idea of emulating that print style online. The second reason is that it was necessary to separate ourselves from other sites by doing something that we didn’t see anyone else doing. There are other sites doing online features, interviews and style guides online but there was no one else taking what used to be blog content and putting it into that format. So basically we saw it as a route to set Madbury apart.

CS: Why the name “Madbury Club”? There’s gotta be a story behind that…

Phil: Laughs. The name Madbury arose purely out of boredom and the desire to again find something different. I looked up just about every town name in New England because I knew I wanted something classic sounding, I finally came across the name “Cadbury” which became Madbury. But it was like a two week process looking through Shakespeare books and other ridiculous things.

CS: It’s obvious that you wanted the Club to have an ambiguous meaning to readers, but why make an “online publication” with an ambiguous meaning? And say, not just your one stop site for straight forward streetwear, sportswear, hip-hop, etc.?

Phil: Mostly because we don’t want to be a one-stop site for anything, we’d rather be a one-stop site for a little bit of everything. We’ll have coverage on new Jordans, but it will also be next to coverage on Super Nintendo. We have features on Spring style, but we have spreads that document hiking adventures in the woods. So I guess it all just goes to serve the versatility of the site.

CS: You’ve mentioned a “Madbury Club extended family” on the site a few times, what are your plans for those individuals and what importance will they play in the Club?

Phil: Those are basically the people who might not necessarily be helping the day to day running of the site, but who support the vision and play a key role in developing content in other ways. So it could be a photographer I know in Canada who brings in a unique perspective and vision to a certain spread, or a writer from London who lends her voice to a particular feature.

CS: Any big names we should know about for the extended family?

Phil: Hmm. Well I’d like to think that some of the biggest names helping out aren’t even people who are “well known” on internet circles. But as far as notable folks you’ve got one of your own ranks in Marcus Troy, Chris Lee of C to the JL, Joe La Puma, and Hyun and Hawaii Mike of LTD Magazine who are all friends that I consider extended family and will be showing up in one way or another at some point.

CS: Introduce the top three head honchos who help run the site day-to-day.

Phil: You’ve got Ellington Hammond who’s involved in just about everything alongside of myself to do with the site: writing, photography, the whole nine. And then the Brooklyn contingency of fellows, Demetri, Juice, and Erick. They all write, develop ideas, and make up the character that is “Madbury”. Those guys are all brothers and the site only gets produced through their help.

CS: You stated “we’re making it up as we go along” on some posts, so does not having a specific direction make it harder or easier to post content?

Phil: Mostly it makes it easier. We don’t have a that set in stone direction that some sites have where they have to put their foot down and say, “there’s no way in hell we can post this for our readers”. Since our readers don’t necessarily expect anything in particular yet, we can sort of throw whatever we want out there and see what sticks. There are definitely some moments where we have to X things out over here though. This isn’t like a Lil B free for all or anything.

CS: Explain your reaction when the servers crashed during the grand opening.

Phil: Ahh man that moment was the worst. After months and months of building and preparation to then finally flip the switch and then see the entire site crash…it sucked man. No other way to put it. When I realized that it meant a few thousand people had tried to access the site all at once though. Well then at that point I had something to be happy about. Laughs. I also realized that everything we had thrown around as promotional material seemed to have worked quite well.

CS: You guys had a quick turn around time after it went down. Did you guys do anything in particular to get the site back up, or did you just have to wait it out for everything to settle?

Phil: Oh that was more or less a top secret call on the Bat-Phone to our server guys who got it all fixed. Bigs ups to Greg over at Intrahost, free plug. Laughs.

CS: How has still being a college student played an effect into owning a clothing line (The Award Tour) and running a Club?

Phil: It’s resulted more than anything in the complete lack of any normal sleeping schedule. In some inexplicable way I’ve managed to remain on the Dean’s List and keep all of this other stuff rolling at the same time. College is a great time, it’s let me meet a bunch of people who I’ve worked with and more than anything it’s given me a foundation that inspires a lot of the work I do with Madbury and The Award Tour. Lectures, crazy Professors, all of that is just inspiration.

CS: What do you have in store for The Award Tour?

Phil: Man, I’ve been neglecting AT for the past few months to be honest while prepping Madbury. Now that the launch is done though, it’s Award Tour’s turn to get a full face lift and change in direction to separate it from the other lines out there, the same way I attempted to do with Madbury. Fun times on the horizon.

CS: Any top-secret projects in store for the future or new additions to the line which customers haven’t seen yet?

Phil: Hmm. I don’t want to get imaginations running too wild and then get caught up and not be able to deliver what I promise. Just rest assured that things will be kept extremely funky.

CS: What can readers expect from the Madbury Club in the coming months?

Phil: We’re going to be running and expanding in every possible direction. Spreads are going to be coming in from every direction and the coverage is just going to get better and better. I’m also trying to round up a bunch of blokes and hit the trail for the first annual Madbury Summer Series, which will be a massive hiking and fishing expedition. We’ll see if anyone bites on that offer, and if so the documentation of that will be nothing short of epic. Laughs.

Tags: The Madbury Club   |    June 27th, 2010   |