By AIDAN RASMUSSEN
Peter Healy thought he had found the dream job - staff writer for Brass, this country's supposed answer to Loaded magazine. The softly spoken London School of Journalism graduate soon realised that, aside from the scantily clad women, Brass had very little in common with its British counterparts.
"I got offered the job as staff writer and I thought I was going to be working for the local version of FHM, but I soon realised that I was working for a magazine for undersexed West Auckland panelbeaters," he says.
Healy found himself working under Andrew Palmer, an editor who wanted to take Brass in a raunchier but less advertising-friendly and less mainstream-appealing direction than Healy had envisioned.
"For a while there it seemed that there was an underground tunnel from Showgirls to our office in Albany," says Healy.
When Palmer was editor, $7.95 would buy you a magazine overflowing with low-budget model shoots that left very little to the imagination, and a decidedly un-PC segment called "Burgers and Loaves," a kind of blokey what's hot and what's not when it comes to female celebrities (now called "Trolls and Dolls").
Porno video reviews also featured, as did an ad asking readers to send in nude photos of their ex-girlfriends. While their English equivalent sections, in Loaded and FHM, are not too dissimilar theme-wise, they at least feign to do it with a little more class and tastefulness.
Palmer left after five issues, citing the same difficulties that Healy would soon encounter as he enthusiastically, and some might say naively, stepped into the breach as interim editor, hoping to enact his tamer vision.
In its short life Brass has suffered from a crisis of identity. While not being as graphic in its content as Playboy it's still not as tasteful or titillating as FHM or Loaded. It also lacks the cheeky wit and humour characteristic of the writing of the British mags and looks positively amateurish when it comes to production values.
Even bookstores don't seem to know where to put it. In the Film and Television section of Borders you'll find it sandwiched between Men's Health and Arena, flanked by Esquire and Loaded, but edging dangerously close to Penthouse and Forum magazines. In a Three Lamps stationery shop it was lying next to style bible Wallpaper.
That could be about to change under the stewardship of new editor Lee Davis, who says the reason Brass got such a bad wrap in the past was because, "It was crap, simple as that. It was soft porn with features and it was poor-quality soft porn too."
Leaping to their own defence, Healy and Palmer say this bad-quality porn and the general low production value of Brass is because of a trio of inexperienced, "tight-arsed" publishers who had too much say in the running of the magazine.
"They had people that weren't qualified to make editorial decisions trying to dictate to me what should be in the magazine," says Healy.
This, he says, has resulted in static sales (the first two issues sold about 10,000 copies each, but sales haven't risen much since then).
The publishers take ultimate responsibility for the magazine, whether it is good or bad, says Wayne Smith, one of the trio. Despite being criticised by his former employees, he remains coy and won't even consider criticising Healy, "because I still consider him a valuable contributor to the magazine." But he does say that he had difficulties communicating with Palmer.
Smith offered the editor's job to Healy, but he declined through lack of motivation and enthusiasm. He is concentrating on writing a screenplay and getting his freelance career off the ground. He hopes that Davis can turn Brass into the FHM-type magazine that he so desperately wanted it to become.
Sentiments shared by the new editor.
Davis is admiring a model heavy with makeup out in the grey drab of Albany's Rosedale Industrial Court. This seemingly innocuous suburb plays host to the office, studio and printing press of the once quarterly and now bi-monthly Brass, and has done so since its inception in April last year. A maroon-coloured Harley Davidson lookalike lies idle under the model's tight black velvet pants. Her hands grip the motorcycle handlebars as she turns her head, revealing her cleavage to the photographer's lens. The straps of her violet halter-top fall down her naked back.
"Nice ass," says Davis as she leans forward.
The carpenter by trade and journalist who has written for Loaded, FHM, the Times and Metro has been enlisted to take the tits out and put the taste into Brass.
How does the 36-year-old Londoner propose to do this?
Don't be fooled by the almost fully clothed model on the motorcycle. She's a rare thing in a publication that will still contain swimsuit and underwear shots. But this time round, you can expect a better-quality photo for your $7.95, as Davis has been allocated a bit more money than his predecessors for photo shoots. But this comes at a cost for Brass voyeurs - a new no-nipple policy.
As committed as Davis is to keeping Brass slightly less fleshy, so too is he to creating a distinctly Kiwi magazine that's not a clone of his British and Australian rivals. Davis is adamant he'll be using local talent, local writers and local girls to achieve this. He imagines his magazine will have the irreverence of Loaded, some of the fashion out of Pavement-type magazines and the girl shoots of FHM. (Hmm, naked, skinny, malnourished schoolgirls, perhaps?) And he would also like to see his features written in a National Geographic-type vein. What?
"We want something good that you can read, lots of entertainment and lots of nice pictures of girls. We want a lot of humour in there, our captions have to be funny on our pictures and we want some features in there that you can get your head round, something you can read in the toilet in the morning ... or in the afternoon ... "
Those dunny readers Davis is targeting are a more mainstream market of 20 to 40-year males, men who like to get out, enjoy rugby, love sport, are very patriotic and like a laugh. The "I'll have a side of porn with my meat and three veg" kind of guy, the good old Kiwi bloke that Healy was trying to move the mag away from, who he says will be completely dead within a few years.
It remains to be seen whether Davis' Brass will be any different to previous incarnations. When quizzed on what to expect on October 4, the date his first issue reaches the stores, the boyish father of one demurs, goes all secretive and says, "You'll have to wait and see."
Possibly realising that it might be in his own best interests to open up a little, he decides to elaborate. The predictably proud Davis says, "You'll find a bikini-clad Ainslie from Young Entertainers on the cover, a big feature on motorcycling and a lot of Kiwi music. Weta, Fur Patrol and Tadpole all grace Brass pages in their upcoming issue, as well as a column by ex-Shortland Streeter Lynette Forday."
More of the same, then?
As far as future issues go he says, "I don't know, I don't know what I want to do at the end of this day, let alone months down the track."
But there's one thing that he has no doubts about. According to this English lad, Kiwi blokes are gagging for a bit of Brass.
"The Kiwi bloke hasn't got his own men's magazine and they need their own magazine and we can see as clear as mud that they want one. I'm getting e-mails and letters every day.
"Kiwis are crying out for a magazine like this."
Fresh polish for Brass
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.