FAQ – English

On this page you will find the following information:

Practical / Contact
Cooperate
Magazine + CD
website
Agenda
Organization

Practical / Contact

What is Gonzo (circus)?
Gonzo (circus) is a bimestrial independent paper magazine on new music and culture. Each issue is accompanied by a Mind the Gap CD. Gonzo (circus)’ blog is updated daily.

Who can I concact regarding my subscription?
For questions about your subscription you can mail klantenservice@aboland.nl or call 0031(0)251313939 (which is a Dutch local number).

How do I contact Gonzo (circus)?
For questions regarding the Gonzo (circus) magazine and blog, you can use our mailform. Do leave your full name, a valid email address and, optionally, your phone number so that we can get back to you as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, there are not enough hours in a day to send a confirmation or feedback for every piece of information regarding events and copy we receive, but be assured that we will get back to you if we are interested in what you sent us.

We are in office from 10.00 till 18.00 on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and from 10.00 till 14.00 on Fridays.

Where can I buy Gonzo (circus) magazine?
For a complete list of stores that sell Gonzo (circus), click here. You can also order back-issues in our webstore.

2012 deadlines
You can find the copy and print deadlines here.

Advertising
For more information regarding advertising in the Gonzo (circus) magazine, please click here.
Gonzo (circus) magazine is proud to be a truly independent magazine; even though we are thankful that you are choosing to support us, the placement of your advertisement does not automatically grant you our editorial attention or endorsement.

Cooperate

Gonzo (circus) makes no concessions to editorial independence. However, that does not mean we are are opposed to any and all forms of cooperation. In fact, we love to enthuse our readers for interesting initiatives –preferably from Flanders and the Netherlands -that fit our philosophy.

• You can add your event to our agenda at the bottom of www.gonzocircus.com/agenda. Please email webagenda@gonzocircus.com for details. Our editors will make a selection of interesting events to include in our blog and biweekly newsletter.
• We are always open to ticket and goodie contests.
• Please contact us at least 6 months in advance for editorial co-productions and guest appendices. Do not bother to contact us regarding advertorials.
• Please contact us at least 4 months in advance for extensive media-partnerships. We only have space for a limited amount of partnerships.
• Please do not hesitate to contact us with any special cooperation ideas. We are always willing to try to accommodate interesting and relevant ideas!

If you want to support Gonzo (circus), nothing helps us more than your subscription or advertisement!

Magazine + CD

What kind of content does Gonzo (circus) include?
Each issue (100 pages) of Gonzo (circus) contains:

• An editorial regarding (cultural) actualities and the new issue.
• Background information of the new Mind the Gap CD that you receive with every issue.
• An extensive agenda regarding music, art culture, news and contests.
• “Signalementen”: new-found new music talent from around the world.
• Columns.
• At least ten interviews and/or polemical essays.
• Ca. 200 reviews of music/sound, visual arts and print.
• One or two label/scenereports.

We also regularly publish themed appendices, guest editorials et cetera.
Got an interesting proposition for an article? Contact our managing editor. The managing editor will collect all propositions and present a selection to the editorial board, who will make an independent choice of articles. Please contact us at least two months before the publication of the issue you would like your article to appear in.

Why do I never read concert- or festival-reports in Gonzo (circus) magazine?
Gonzo (circus) is a bimestrial magazine. If we were to publish concertreports in the magazine, chances are they would be almost four months old by the time of publication. Of course we do publish concert- and festival- and exposition-reports reports , usually within a day, on our blog.

How can I submit materials for review purposes?
Please refer to our submission page for detailed instructions and deadlines.
If you wish to be a candidate for inclusion in the next issue, please do make sure that we receive music and films at least 10 workdays before the review-deadline and print at least 21 workdays before the review-deadline.

Why does Gonzo (circus) publish reviews of old releases?
Gonzo (circus) is a bimestrial magazine. Sometimes we do not receive review-copies on time, let alone find time to listen to them with the attention they deserve. We also like to take some distance and contemplate our opinion, rather than simply rush to try and be the first to review a release. Lastly, we aim to be a contextual reference guide, with relevant reviews that still make sense when you read them a few years later, rather than just empty talk around a new release.

Mind the Gap

With each issue of Gonzo (circus) magazine you receive a compilation CD called Mind the Gap. Because we like cool physical things, we package Mind the Gap in a rough carton sleeve with awesome artwork by our resident artist Kees Peerdeman. Mind the Gap contains topical tracks as well as older and sometimes obscure gems that deserve your ear. Mind the Gap is independently compiled by our editors and the costs are completely covered by Gonzo (circus). We take financial or otherwise commercial offers for inclusion on Mind the Gap (or in Gonzo (circus) for that matter) as an insult.
It usually takes a few days for iTunes and Gracenotes and the like to correctly include the new Mind the Gap’s data, be patient!

Website

What kind of content does gonzocircus.com publish?
On gonzocircus.com you will find:

• news
• an agenda
• additional reviews
• exclusive contests
• concert- and festival-reports
• a back issue database
• editorial picks
• a webshop with back issues, t-shirts and other assorted merch
• links to our social media profiles

Why does gonzocircus.com not publish any audio or video?
We would love to publish audio and video, but at this moment we simply cannot afford the current licensing rates of Sabam or Buma/Stemra (the Belgian and Dutch equivalents of RIAA).

Agenda
You can find an agenda in Gonzo (circus) magazine as well as on gonzocircus.com.
The agenda in Gonzo (circus) magazine is composed of editorial picks, while the gonzocircus.com agenda is more comprehensive. We are regularly given handfuls of tickets for many events to give away, so you will usually find lots of contests exclusive to the magazine or gonzocircus.com, so be sure to check both!
The agenda on gonzocircus.com is largely composed of events added by third parties, moderated by our editors. Interesting events are granted a recommendation, which we will also add to our biweekly newsletter. If you would like to include your event in one of our agendas, please contact our managing editor at info@gonzocircus.com.

Organisation

Can I write for, or become otherwise involved in, Gonzo (circus)?
If you would like to write for Gonzo (circus), please send your CV, a motivational letter and some samples of your earlier writing to info@gonzocircus.com. Be sure to include your musical and/or artistical preferences which you are comfortable writing about. Reasonable skill in writing Dutch is appreciated.
If you would like to be a Gonzo (circus) photographer or illustrator, send your CV, a short motivational letter and a link to your online portfolio to image@gonzocircus.com.
If you would like to help out behind the magic curtain, for example as a copy-editor or IT- or marketing-specialist, please mail your motivational letter and CV to info@gonzocircus.com.

Important: Gonzo (circus) is made by volunteers. Expenses are, of course, covered.

So is Gonzo (circus) Dutch or Flemish?
Experiment and innovation are borderless! Gonzo (circus) has been both Flemish and Dutch since its birth in 1991. More specifically: our publication reaches the whole of the Dutch-language area in West-Europe and our writers and editors live on (and hail from) both sides of the Dutch-Flemish border. We even have some Dutch editors living in the peace and quiet of East-Flanders and some Flemish editors living in the always rushed Dutch Randstad region. We have postal-addresses on both sides of the Dutch-Flemish border for your convenience. In the past two decades the Gonzo (circus) editors have developed an interesting common ground on the subtle linguistic differences between Flemish and Dutch resulting in a very recognizable Gonzo (circus) language-melange.

You can find Gonzo (circus) in specialist magazine-, book- and record-stores in Flanders, Brussels and the Netherlands.

Of course, the music, initiatives, artists and thinkers are not at all limited to the Dutch-language area. We love and embrace innovative art from all over the world.

Why does Gonzo (circus) collaborate with logistical partners? How does Gonzo (circus) maintain its independence?
For years we distributed Gonzo (circus) from our own living rooms; we hand printed your addresses, mailed every issue ourselves and phoned potential advertisers at the unholy hours when we were done. But with the growing readership of Gonzo (circus), the business of home-publishing was taking its toll on our editorial quality and the world of music has changed as well; a lot of record-stores that used to sell Gonzo (circus) have closed and, as an independent niche magazine it is nearly impossible to get noticed in the sea of magazines without putting your full-time attention to it. With Virtumedia we found a publishing partner who completely respects our editorial independence and is as passionate about the publication and distribution of niche magazines and subjects as we are about making the best Gonzo (circus) magazine that we can.
No, we are not home-published anymore, but that means we have got all our hands and heads free to improve the editorial quality of Gonzo (circus) even more. We hope you can appreciate that.

What about the grant from the Flemish Community?
Don’t bite the hand that feeds? Not entirely. The Flemish government supports a handful of independent cultural and socio-critical magazines like Gonzo (circus), with respect to editorial independence, because it values independent cultural critique as an important pillar of society. The Flemish government cannot, contractually, ever interfere with our editorial independence and the grant enables us to build Gonzo (circus) into an ever growing but truly independent critical platform. Which is pretty awesome.