The Underground Magazine

History

The Underground started as a senior project that placed a spotlight on the local music community at UCONN. During the spring of 2023 amongst the echoes of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Championship were the muffled sounds of drums and guitars escaping from the basements of off-campus houses. “DM for address.”

I spoke in depth about the rise of the subculture communities in Storrs on an episode of the UCONN My First Year Story podcast. When the weekend ended and I arose from the basements, I consumed countless resources on the role of creativity in our society and the stigmas attached to the word “artist.” When Friday returned and I descended once again, I saw parallels between what I had been reading and what I saw happening right in front of my eyes. Young people of all walks of life gathering in search of collaborative arts experience.

Full documentation of the creative process during the making of the magazine was posted to @pacifiedlux on Instagram. Slowly gaining more attention from students as the release date grew closer, process posts became a daily necessity. They weren’t just archives of first drafts and revisions but they were time capsules of each show. Though we complained about not having an accessible venue on campus to play music, what made the underground so beautiful was its impermanence. Each basement show was its own temporary world which expired at the end of the night. It was powerful to hold something as intangible as the underground in your hands, a tactile magazine.