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While life is loaded with transitions, it’s safe to say that going to college opens up a whole other can of worms in that department. Attending a university usually means leaving the cushy womb of your parents, meeting new people, trying “new things” and deciding where your life is going to lead you once you’re done.
A lot of students finish college and still don’t have a clear idea where they’re headed. But some have game plans. They work diligently after class in law firms, finish internships or, at the very least, begin applying for jobs their senior year.
Andy Georgin, 22, a born-and-bred Cincinnatian finishing his marketing and business degree next month at the University of Cincinnati, had feelers out and nabbed his next gig which will take him to Chicago in September. Of course, it all began early in his college career when he was bitten by “the bug” that led him into the music business.
Lured in on a whim at the suggestion of a friend, Georgin began doing work for a music marketing company called Ignition. Throughout the course of his college career, he has done similar work for the label Velvel and the major distributor BMG, hanging Backstreet Boys posters in records stores and making sure the stores are stocked with Dave Matthews CDs.
Georgin’s latest job is leading him to mildly familiar ground: As Midwestern regional director of sales and radio promotions for the independent Time Bomb Records, Georgin will still be checking on some of those same record retailers.
But his job at Time Bomb — home to well-known indie stars such as Social Distortion, Rev. Horton Heat and Sunny Day Real Estate, plus a host of others — will not only find him expanding his territory by a few thousand miles, working radio and doing some regional band scouting: He’s also making the potentially daunting transition of relocating to Chicago.
While he’s traveled all over the country (and world), Georgin has never lived fulltime outside of Cincinnati’s city limits.
“It’s tough,” he says over drinks at a Corryville watering hole. “My only move has been from the West Side to Clifton. So I’ve been calling people and asking about neighborhoods and how far it is from places I need to be, and trying to figure out how much money I’ll need to have to spend.”
People born in Cincinnati can be either incredibly anxious to get the hell out or completely content staying here for the rest of their lives. Georgin knows Cincinnati’s limitations in regards to the opportunity before him, but with family and friends being left behind, it made him rethink his previous animosity towards the city.
“I used to be a prick about Cincinnati, in a critical way,” he says. “I thought it was really conservative and boring and not a very good city. The day I accepted my offer (from Time Bomb), I was driving down 471, right where you see the P&G building, and I got bummed. This is my city, and it’s not going to be my city any more. I’m not really used to that yet.”
Of course, the move isn’t the only major life change Georgin is soon to experience. Unlike his last job at BMG, Georgin now has an opportunity to work with around 15 artists overall (as opposed to around 20 a month), and he actually enjoys most of the acts on Time Bomb. While continually working music jobs, he’s also had to maintain his grades at UC.
“It’s weird that I’m actually done with school, and I’m done being a fuckin’ kid in a lot of respects,” he says, noting the drastic difference between messing up in school and blowing it at your job. “You fuck up a class, who cares? You drop it and take it another quarter. I screw up for Time Bomb, I’m unemployed.”
“It’s more responsibility than I’ve ever had, and I’ve spent my whole life up to this point doing school in one form or another. Like today, I did some work for Time Bomb, I studied for an hour, and I still had time to hang out. But if I was strictly working, I wouldn’t have to be studying or working on a proposal for this class or something for school. Now that is gone. It’ll be weird to not have that around and have to focus on one thing.”
Georgin originally thought he would get into international business, but the music business struck him as an exciting and usually fun foray. Now that he’s been involved in it for a few years, he admits he recognizes the jaded feeling that often burns people out of the industry altogether. But, besides an ever-present love of music and a fascination with the business, he says his satisfaction with helping an act succeed makes it worthwhile.
“The way I look at it, you really have a hand in somebody’s dream,” says Georgin. “(Artists) don’t want to play in clubs to 10 people for the rest of their lives. I feel really lucky that, on any level, I’ve helped make their dream come true. I’ve worked with bands that I thought were really good, and I’d see them one night as an opener, the next time a headliner, then their single’s No. 1 and then they’re playing Woodstock. Maybe me hanging posters in a record store isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I still feel that’s important and I’m proud of that.” ©
This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 3, 1999.