Welcome to Lava Magazine.

Welcome to the first issue of Lava magazine. We're an online music publication that, as the name somewhat circuitously suggests, will attempt delve a bit deeper into the world of rock (to the bubbly molten core, if you will).

We’re starting out small. Right now it’s just me and a few gear heads helping to get this thing up and running. Fortunately, they know their way around The Web the way I know my way around music (I’ve been a music journalist for 40 years, which technically, is the actual age of The Internet—a nice and perhaps serendipitous coincidence. Perhaps The Web and I will learn to love—or at least tolerate—each other and forge some sort of lasting relationship).

While I say we’re small, our ambitions are not. Nowhere is this more evident than in the focus of this first issue: The Beatles. Yeah, we’re starting at the top.

Over the course of twenty years I interviewed each member of the band, plus producer, George Martin. During these interviews I was able to uncover new insight on a group of people you could easily call the most intriguing and written about music (and pop culture) personalities of the last half-century, much of which has never been published in a forum such as this. I asked John, Paul, George, Ringo and the other George many of the same questions and present their honest, insightful answers together, in their raw form in the latter-half of the featured story.

You’ll also notice something else a little different about this site. It’s those links over there to the right. They’ll take you to the Mauli Ola Foundation, an organization I can’t say enough good things about. In the same way that I love music, the people at Mauli Ola love surfing. 

While there are few things on earth I love more than music, there is nothing the people at Mauli Ola love more than surfing. So what did they do about it? They took that love and channeled it into a wonderful foundation that brings kids born with the incurable genetic disease of cystic fibrosis together with professional surfers for a day of surfing they will never forget. (It turns out surfing is not just good for the mind and soul for it’s Zen-like connection to nature’s waves, but it’s actually therapeutic and beneficial to healthy lung function for those living with CF. This explains the name, Mauli Ola. It means “breath of life” in Hawaiian.)

Please don’t pay us a visit without taking a moment to check out Mauli Ola, too.

Thanks for paying us a visit and be sure to keep checking back. We’ll be posting reviews and more features in the days and weeks to come. 

-Vic Garbarini

12/17/09