About

“Is it a drug reference or something?”

“It’s a play on 420, surely…”

“Not implying anything… but has to be a drug related thing… or…?”

Usually, those are the first guesses at why we’re named 402 Productions. In very rare circumstances have I heard Oh, from Omaha! Cool! Alas, we are not from Omaha, nor is it a play on 420 or anything to do with drugs or weed at all. For this story, we must go back a few years…

One of those awkward high school nights where none of our usual friends were hanging out — rather, a hodge podge of a few friends from every tiny group from high school were hanging around a Cold Stone Creamery one night. Our friend, Derek Tekus, was getting off work next door at Starbucks and we were waiting on another friend to meet up with the two or so car loads of people. Due to some stupid and very unlikely circumstances, the lady who was the boss at Cold Stone decided that we were harassing her single employee (mind you, it’s the winter and it’s almost closing time). Regardless of the harassing of her employee (we were not harassing anyone at this point), the only people in the vicinity are us. Finally, the boss lady tells us she is calling the cops on us for harassing her employee. Derek Tekus, who just got off, begins making fun of this ridiculous notion that we were somehow harassing this person at all from outside of the Cold Stone as we talk amongst ourselves in a little huddled circle. He proposed the police in this small town we lived in would eat up the call and would come check out the ruckus. He believed the call that would go out over all police frequencies would say Uh, there’s a 402 in progress at Cold Stone Creamery. Kids standing around talking in front of a business, being mistaken for criminals. And thus, 402 was born.

Of course, an actual 402 in California is based around “impeding rescue effects”, which I think is a fancy way of saying someone is trying to block the attempts of  rescue job or something. To us, 402 means something vastly different. Those random friends outside of that stupid ice cream place ended up shooting movies together and filming live bands for a few years. They started to get a little more serious about it in college. During college, things became harder to do because of distance between everyone. This, with conflicting ideas of what 402 should become, stalemated the entire company aspect built around the friends of 402.

In it’s place, a very strange forum existed. Yet again, everyone in the community gathered together because of very strange reasons (other forums closing, people wanting to stay together and connected, the lack of Facebook accounts for many at this time). The community grew larger and the forum regulars became more frequent and friendly. Soon enough, everyone was exchanging phone numbers and contact info for meet-ups.

It wasn’t until very recently, within the last three years, that 402 Productions became a music reviews website. The scope is truly about finding the newest and latest music and reviewing this for those diving for new music. In a sense, we are promoting the artists and bands that have yet to break through. We hope to become a channel that allows these very new artists and bands to be seen and heard well before they are overshadowed by the latest craze or overlooked because an editor at a larger website liked a different band more. We take a very no-nonsense approach to reviews and try to make it as objective as possible.

In this, 402 itself is much more than the name. The history doesn’t really make sense as to how we got here… but from inside looking out, it makes perfect sense. 402 has always been about the strange, the new, the exciting, the terrifying, the uncharted, and the list goes on. We exist not just out of passion, but out of need. It’s an easy way to describe who we are and why we are. We live and breathe 402.

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I couldn’t find myself deleting the old “about” page… so here it is below.

Last edited March 2009.

402 Productions, the company and website, have seen many different changes over the years. The company, initally a DVD production company, started out making DVDs for artists like Gratitude, onelinedrawing, and ArnoCorps. Many of these DVDs never saw the day of light for miscellaneous reasons. The company’s workforce, split mainly between the three founders, Remy Chan, Ryan Tamborski, and myself, Nick Wan, found DVD production to be harder and harder, losing less drive due to artists not wanting to do what we want as well as ourselves losing the drive due to our distance between each other. Finally, the face of 402 Productions changed over the Summer as we started to produce music rather than DVDs. Artists like Erik Schau (www.myspace.com/erikschau) and Ariana Lenarsky (http://www.myspace.com/arianalenarsky) ended up doing some songs in Tambo’s studio, code named Shedaluma. The word got out and Tambo started rallying artists to his studio to be produced. Flying under the flag of 402 Productions, the once DVD-turned-music production company has always immersed itself in the idea that music is life. In some way, regardless of the official nature of the company, 402 Productions will always be “producing” something related to music, and that idea is something that doesn’t change.

As for the community, the original genesis was far before the idea of 402 Productions. Starting out as the fan forum for the band Straylight Run, the community initially boomed due to unreleased tracks from Straylight Run being posted on the forums. After being a community known for leaking music, the forums boomed with people in search of new Straylight Run, Taking Back Sunday, and Brand New tracks, along with other bands. After a mix up in the website’s ownership, the original website was lost with all it’s members and posts. A reformation was made by myself on a forum named Smackaroons, which was a forum for me and my friend Brian Lin, originally one of the staffers for the Straylight Run fan forum. Smackaroons was primarily for writing and literature, but after a migration of the faithful regulars, it soon became a music forum once again. After Brian Lin took over Straylight Resource, the fan site, completely, he reintroduced the forum and we all migrated to the past forum again. Unfortunately, it was shortlived. At the same time, 402 Productions’ website was initiated, and the transition from one forum to the other was somewhat seemless. Most members have been around since 2003.

Overtime, the 12 or so members who keep the community above water became the crux of the entire site’s survival. Without the strong support from all of us, this would never have existed.