While a diehard music fan through and through, I’m also a comic book nerd at heart. So in the spirit of DC Comics, here I present the partially untold secret origin of how Under the Radar came to be and why it has stuck around for two decades. It may be self-indulgent, but it seemed like the 20th Anniversary Issue was a good opportunity to put our history on the record, for those who care to read it.
Under the Radar was born out of love and that love was fittingly born out of music and dancing. It was in the dimly lit basement of Hollywood’s oldest Italian restaurant, Miceli’s, that I first saw her across a crowded dance floor. December 2, 2000 was the date. The occasion was Par Avion, a weekly dance club night focused mainly on international indie pop. Just as we began to dance together, the lights went up. We exchanged a few words at the bottom of the stairs and some awkward glances outside as we waited for our friends (one of mine had disappeared to the goth club next door), and then I walked off to my car. Halfway there I had a feeling that I would regret leaving it at that. Running back to Miceli’s, almost like a scene from a movie or a Pulp song, I was relieved to find that the beautiful girl was still there. Her name was Wendy and I gave her my number on a cheap business card I had printed myself.
“When I saw Mark that night, in that tiny basement, my first thought was, ‘There he is again!’” Wendy remembers. “At this point, I had seen Mark twice before. Once at a Grandaddy in-store at the Virgin Megastore on Sunset Blvd., and the second time at a different club night called Club Bang! on Hollywood Blvd. that specialized in Britpop. Both times, with a girl, so no-go. But when I saw him a third time, and without the girl, I thought, ‘What are the chances!’ And the rest is history.”
After our initial meeting at Miceli’s it didn’t take Wendy long to call me and it didn’t take long for our romance to flourish. We only had a short time before I was due to fly home to London for Christmas, so we had three dates in only two weeks. By the time I was back from London in January we were official.
Without Wendy and I meeting, there would be no Under the Radar. Neither one of us on our own had great ambitions to start a music magazine, the genesis required the combining of our individual talents. Although, based on my parents’ careers, you could say it was foregone conclusion that I would embark on a career in music journalism.
I was born in London in 1976 to a British father and an American mother. My mother, Mary Moore Mason, had grown up in Roanoke, Virginia. Her father had once been a pianist and the leader of a jazz band that toured the college circuit, before he switched to the more stable profession of insurance. My mother had found herself in London at the tail daily newspaper in Richmond, Virginia, but then became a travel writer after living in France and Greece. She then switched to public relations for the iconic Pan Am airline, which is what she was doing when she met my dad.
