Clubbo?

Clubbo Records Clipper Cowbridge, "Soda Pop Shop"

Clubbo is the name of my two collaborations with Elise Malmberg. The first is www.clubbo.com, a sprawling “music fiction” project. The second is our legit business, clubbo.biz.

The first Clubbo spins a story about a bogus record label with a 45-year faux-history. The site at www.clubbo.com features “classic” recordings, archival photos, tawdry artist bios, and lots more. We aimed as high as possible in terms of detail and realism — and much lower in our humor. The site presents Clubbo as a real label, down to the fake copyright and credit info. Even many of the site’s supposedly external links are fabricated. (Here are the real credits, hidden within the site. Don’t tell.)

Some recent Clubbo press:

USA Today: “Best Internet label: Clubbo. A half-century of the secret history of popular music unfolds before your ears.”

NPR’s Day to Day: “The best example yet of using the Web to tell a fictional story.”

The Guardian (UK): “A brilliant spoof. Godlike.”

Slate: “A fake record label shows the way for online fiction.”

Spin: “An amazing rock website.”

The Telegraph (UK): “One of the ten top spoof websites.”

Yahoo! News: “The greatest label that never was.”

San Francisco Bay Guardian: “Not only funny, but smart as hell.”

Museum of Hoaxes: “One of the most elaborate, in-depth hoax websites I’ve come across.”

Yahoo! Picks: “Despite its checkered history, Clubbo once boasted a stable of artists that serious students of pop culture just can’t ignore.”

Not obsessive enough? Don’t worry — it gets worse: I recently finished a Clubbo novel. The Clubbo Story tells of a disillusioned young musician who lands a gig archiving the Clubbo catalog for a retrospective CD project. But before long he starts to tamper with the recordings, illicitly inserting himself into the label’s history while grappling with his own haunted past. (Here is an excerpt in PDF format.)

Elise and I also do business as clubbo.biz. We provide writing, editing, music composition, and multimedia production services in the music, audio, tech, art, design, and business fields. Our clients have included Apple, HBO, VH-1, Sony Pictures, Disney, Universal Music, Digidesign and Yamaha.