I just started an eZine called NC ACT, which stands for the North Carolina All City Times. I had a f-ed up copyright experience last year with a certain magazine that for now shall remain nameless, so now I have to copyright the names right away, which in reality I’m doing by using them, but I’ll make an official statement anyway: Today I started using and claim ownership of the names NC ACT and All City Times as trademarks owned by me, Cherryl Aldave. Okay now for the important stuff.

Here is why I started this eZine and what it’s all about:

NC ACT was founded in the spirit of collective advancement as a tool for unifying the disparate North Carolina Hip Hop and Spoken Word scenes. The goal of NC ACT is threefold: one, to provide Hip Hop and Spoken Word PROMOTERS across the state with a F-R-E-E way of listing their events statewide, two, to let FANS across the state know when and where their favorite acts will be appearing, and three, so ARTISTS can find out about venues across the state for touring purposes.

As the newsletter develops we will also post news and info artists need, like places to send music for review, audition info, etc. In the near future we will also post links to interviews and stories about North Carolina artists on the web (so we can support those artists’ net presence by reading and linking to those articles) and allow artists to post mp3′s, photos and other files on our Yahoo! Groups website.

NC ACT is also open to posting college events and community activism events that may appeal to the North Carolina Hip Hop and Spoken Word audiences.

NC ACT is published on Wednesday, with the first issue available February 9th, 2005. To start submitting events right away, please send the event info (100 words max) with your name and contact info to Cherryl at ncact-owner[at]yahoogroups.com. The

deadline for the week’s upcoming newsletter is the Friday before that edition’s Wednesday publication date. If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at ncact-owner[at]yahoogroups.com.

And that’s that. I really saw a need for this in North Carolina because our state is very wide, and has been difficult to organize in the past for political purposes also. To subscribe to NC ACT if you live in NC, click here.