20 Years of Paste Magazine: Issues #8-13 (2004)

As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the launch of Paste Magazine, we’re looking back at our history year-by-year.

We start out with Issue #8, the Feb/Mar issue, featuring one of my favorite cover shoots with four up-and-coming musicians—Erin McKeown, Josh Ritter, Kathleen Edwards and Sondre Lerche—in New York. We mourned the death of Elliott Smith, brought in former Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong-Torres to write about recording an 82-year-old Hawaiian crooner who’d spent the ‘40s and ‘50s singing at an all-Asian nightclub in San Francisco and launched our Listening to Old Voices column with Andy Whitman on Nick Drake.

Listen to Paste Sampler #8

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Issue #9 featured Patty Griffin on the cover and Norah Jones on the sampler art and interior profiles on Blackalicious’s Gift of Gab, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Iron & Wine and Sufjan Stevens. Steve LaBate talked to Chuck D about the link between soul and rap, Tim Regan-Porter wrote about Japanese cinematic history, and Matt Hinton wrote about shaped-note singing, something he’d revisit in his first documentary.

Listen to Paste Sampler #9

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Los Lobos graced the cover of Issue #10 for June/July. Jay Sweet wrote a sweeping profile of Cowboy Junkies, Robert Davis spoke with Jim Jarmusch about Coffee and Cigarettes and Bud Scoppa wrote about Jackson Browne. Other profiles included Franz Ferdinand, Magnetic Fields and David Byrne. Plus we looked at “10 classic recording sessions”: from The Beatles at Abbey Road to U2 at Slane Castle.

Listen to Paste Sampler #10

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“Loretta Lynn. Tift Merritt. Drive-by Truckers. Marah. Kasey Chambers. Old 97’s. While none of these artists can be easily sterotyped, this is certainly the twangiest Paste we’ve ever published.” So began my editorial of Issue #11 with Wilco on the cover. But we also covered Jack White, Ozomatli, The Polyphonic Spree, Hong Kong Cinema, the Dardennes and Lars von Trier.

Listen to Paste Sampler #11

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Questlove graced the 12th cover of Paste in our Oct/Nov 2004 as writer Jay Sweet hopped on a bus with The Roots. Geoffrey Himes’s feature on Brian Wilson won Paste it’s first ASCAP Award. And Ben Fong-Torres wrote a piece called “The King of BBQ: Singing Elvis at Dean Fearing’s Musical Cook-Fest.”

Listen to Paste Sampler #12

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For Paste Issue #13—our first ever film issue—Eric Anderson illustrated his brother Wes Anderson, along with Bill Murray and Owen Wilson on the set of The Life Aquatic. We covered everything from the commerce of indie films to short films to music videos to modern French cinema. But we also had plenty of music, including our first profile of R.E.M. (also illustrated by Anderson), Tom Waits and Hem.

Listen to Paste Sampler #13