Celebrating 25 years of antiMusic with Keavin Wiggins
Peel back the curtain for a peek at the wizard of antiMusic.com and the Day in Rock
When I was fresh out of journalism school and anxious for writing work, I wrote a sheepish note to the editor of a website I had discovered and loved while in college.
antiMusic.com featured sharp, passionate writers and I had hoped my complete lack of experience (minus a few class assignments used as writing samples) wouldn’t completely embarrass me.
Color me thrilled when Keavin Wiggins welcomed me with open arms and gave me the opportunity to write album and live reviews - while also learning a little bit more about what an awesome and giving person Keavin is as he works diligently, and rather quietly, behind the scenes.
As I’ve waded in and out of the antiMusic pond the past 20 years, Keavin has always been kind, helpful and excited to see me off into any potential musical journeys, of which there have been a few that have been phenomenal life experiences. Not to mention, giving me a platform to become a better writer.
antiMusic celebrates its 25th anniversary on April 1, 2023, and to celebrate I wanted to peel back the curtain a bit and see if he’d be willing to share some of his own story.
And with his characteristic patience and grace in dealing with me, he agreed to in his own words.
Who are you and what do you want?
I’m just someone who has loved music from a young age and I have been blessed with the opportunity to pursue that passion for half my life.
In the early days of anti, I used a pen name and still would, if I could get away with it. I wouldn’t put my name on anything. I like the focus to be on the music, not personalities, controversies, politics, behaviors of rockstars or even myself or our writers, but on the actual music.
That’s my idealistic side, but my practical side knows better.
Motley Crue’s bio wasn’t called “Shout at the Devil and Dr. Feelgood”, but was called “The Dirt” for a reason; because a lot of people love to read/hear/see that side of things. You have to cover some of that stuff, but I try to avoid it as much as possible and stay focused on the music.
What do I want?
Iron Maiden to rightfully be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at long last!
All kidding aside, I’d love a world where talent was truly recognized and rewarded and artists that have it could pursue it and share that music with the world.
But that’s not our world and like I tell my kids when they pull the “it’s not fair” card. I ask them who lied to them and told them life is fair?
Thus, we have the person who did a mind blowing rendition of the “National Anthem” at the Super Bowl when he should have rocked the half-time show instead of an auto-tuned dancer.
Life’s not fair, and success is not based on the level of talent. In the music biz and outside of it.
What artist, song or album really put the hooks in you to make you become a lifelong music fan?
My mom loved music and had an amazing record collection, so I was exposed to a lot of great music early on. Beatles, Stones, The Doors, Four Seasons, Bach, Brahms, CCR, Moody Blues, I could go on and on.
The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” was probably the first song I fell in love with because I related to it.
In life, I am not an overly emotional person, that’s just not my personality type. But music has always been about emotional connection for me.
Now the album that changed my life and made me truly passionate about music was Def Leppard’s High ‘N’ Dry.
I was 10 or so and an older neighbor (around 18) had a friend back out of going to a concert at the last minute and asked me to go. He didn’t care about the headline band, he wanted to see the opener. A group he had only heard one time on the local radio station (probably KMET).
It was Def Leppard. I think that it may have been their first concert in the U.S. and the crowd was there to see Pat Travers, but Leppard took command of the audience and I remember my friend yelling the name of the song he knew (“Wasted” I believe), and Joe Elliott looked shocked that he knew the song.
The energy of that live show had me hooked. A few months later I saved enough money to buy High ‘N’ Dry and I’ve loved it ever since. (On a side note, I still have the Rock Brigade shirt my friend bought me at the show)
What about that experience made such an impression?
I had a feeling of belonging that I never experienced before. The same when I got the album.
I was always the oddball. When I was in 2nd or 3rd grade I was failing reading (they discovered I was just bored with the material) so they had an OT teacher give me a bunch of tests, Myers/Briggs, IQ, etc and I remember him explaining to me that I had a rare personality type that only 1% of the population had.
He said one of the gifts of this type was that I would easily understand other people, often times better than they would understand themselves. But the downside was that very few people would ever understand me.
For a point of reference, the Dr. House character was based on my personality type. He then told me that my IQ would present similar problems socially and I would understand things automatically that would not be as clear to most people.
So a true 1%er, and I felt that disconnect because of those differences from my peers growing up and never having a strong sense of belonging.
But at that concert, I felt like I belonged and music has always given me that. Sharing the same experience as hundreds of other people there, the differences melted away.
My brother once told me that someone could know me for 10 years and not know me at all. I come off as aloof, but am actually very engaged. Music has always broken through and stimulated my emotions. It brought out another side of me that was buried deep. It still does and it gets me out of my head, where I spend most of my time. It’s a great respite from everyday worries and concerns.
It’s hard to explain to anyone that hasn’t experienced that isolation and then finding that unity.
It also gave me an identity, I was a rocker!
I would go on to find friends based on that mutual love of music and the other differences didn’t seem to matter as much.
Take us back to the beginning, what sparked the launch of antiMusic?
I was hanging out with my friends, Michael and Brian, and we were talking about bands that we loved who never enjoyed the popularity we felt they deserved. The conversation turned to starting a website to promote bands like that. The internet was still pretty new at that point, about three years into the boom and three years away from the bust.
We took the idea and ran with it. I was already running a few sites related to one band I was into, so we ended up naming the original site rocknworld.com after one of their songs and started it on April 1, 1998.
Thanks to the openness of the internet back then, pre-Google, people found us pretty quickly as we built up content. I couldn’t imagine trying to start it now, since it is so frustrating trying to find things online now. Brian bowed out after a few months, sadly.
After a year we had a few thousand readers a day, but the name created difficulties. Back then there was also a site called the Ultimate Band List that fans used to find pages about artists they liked and because our names started with an R, we were listed pretty far down on the directory pages. So I wanted to find a new name that started with A.
I was reading a book about the founding of the Record Academy at the time (people behind the Grammys) and how they started it as a counter to the birth of rock and roll, believing this new form of music was “anti-music.”
I read that term and saw the context and it seemed perfect. I loved the irony of the name when you first hear it without knowing the story behind it.
A site promoting rock music called antiMusic. A lot of people never got it, believing we were against music.
The music world has transformed completely since the launch of antiMusic, how has that changed your relationship to music?
I don’t think it has changed my relationship to music at all. I still love it. But the difference is that there are fewer great new bands that have a chance of success or even reach the point where I would hear them.
That’s not to say there are not great new artists, but the industry just doesn’t take a chance on new artists like they used to.
A lot of the biggest bands in rock history would never have had a chance into today’s market. They would have been dropped after their first album wasn’t a big hit and rather quickly.
Guns N’ Roses took a year to take off. Today, the label would have given up on them after a few months. Let’s be honest, even then most labels would have. There is a reason Geffen launched GNR, Nirvana, etc, because they stuck with artists they really believed in.
The internet, as well, has transformed completely, how do you balance that with the original goals you had with antiMusic?
It is hard. And I will admit failure in that department. Even recently. It’s easy to get sidetracked and the pandemic really hit us hard.
The majority of our content comes from the Day In Rock and there just wasn’t a lot of news to report during that time. Plus people had bigger things to focus on.
So coming out of the pandemic, I expected readership to return to normal levels and when it didn’t, I went against my best instincts and turned to SEO experts. Big mistake.
All the changes they suggested didn’t work and some alienated regular readers. The Day In Rock is meant to be a digest that people can read through and after a few paragraphs the reader can click over to read more, if the story interests them.
I came to understand early on that you could have the best article in the world but people won’t click over to read unless they know the name of the artist being covered.
That was the inspiration for the Day In Rock and it seems to fix that to a point. I can tell by the views of Singled Out articles from new artists that we feature and if they tell a compelling story, people click over to read more and listen to the song.
The SEO geniuses said, “no, you can’t have all that text. Read more links are a no no. Google/Bing hate that. You need to just have a photo and a headline.”
Needless to say, that was a big flop. But sanity has returned, and the format that earned us loyal daily readers was put back in place.
In the beginning it was easy to “build it and they will come.” Now it’s “make the search companies happy and they might send you readers.” But that was counter intuitive for us, because for years we focused on content for our readers and it worked.
For us, we had to pick the readers over silly tricks for search results. Our content is for music fans, not search companies.
If we fail at some point because of that, so be it.
How has antiMusic influenced your personal life?
It has completely dominated it. I don’t think I’ve had a weekend off in 25 years, or rarely even a day. In my personal life, the responsibility of keeping it going made me give up a lot.
I didn’t get married until 5 years ago. Luckily my wife is supportive and “gets it.” But countless times I gave up doing things because I had work to do.
On the other hand, it’s given me experiences and friends I never would have had without the site. Meeting a lot of the musicians I grew up admiring, and becoming friends with a few.
It has also been gratifying when I hear from a reader they discovered music that is new to them from the site. Even a few rockstars have told me that and it makes me smile and realize part of the original dream was realized.
What are some highlights, if you could point to just a few?
Like I said, meeting some of my idols. I know you had that same experience with Dio. But getting to meet people like him, Axl Rose, a few of the guys from Iron Maiden, and countless others, is definitely a highlight for me personally.
But the real highlight has been receiving feedback from readers that they discovered a great artist because of one of our articles. That still makes my day.
Another huge one has been the ability to work with some truly amazing writers. I’ll give the credit to them and our readers for making it 25 years.
If I was just me it would be a random blog covering music no one has heard of.
You've provided a platform for many writers and music journalists. What advice would you have for someone just getting started in writing about music?
Stay true to your passion. Don’t compromise it for work. Be honest with your impressions of the music and don’t try to fake it. If you don’t like something, don’t write about it.
It always comes down to if you connect with the music or not. If you don’t, that’s fine because someone else does, so let them write about it.
People absolutely love Springsteen. I never got it, his music never connected with me. But it does for millions of others. So I wouldn’t be the right person to review his show or album.
If you love music and want to write about it, go for it. Very few make a great living at it. So start a site or a blog, freelance, post on social media, there are plenty of avenues to take.
What have you learned?
Far too many things to go into here. But the most important thing I believe is to be a champion for what you believe in, and don’t waste your time or effort trying to bring down what you don’t believe in.
What do you hope is the enduring legacy of antiMusic?
Personally, I hope that most of our readers can take something away from visiting the site. Discovering and falling in love with an artist. Learning something about an artist you already love.
I hope our passion for music comes through in what we do. We are not a big media company, focused on huge profits. We are simply a group of writers that want to share our love of music by writing about it in various ways.
Great interview!!!!