Drop Tommy, clothing maven and former publicist for Zane, is handling similar promotional chores for J.B. Video, a company that has been in the fetish mail order business about ten years and is now looking to go mainstream adult. The Dropster says J.B. Video will be specializing in fetish hardcore.
Tommy explains that things kind of came to a head at Zane when he was getting as much attention from the press as the product. He didn't specifically name names but uses phrases like "egos as big as the Grand Canyon".
"I first met Matt Zane in a coffee house," Tommy said. "He heard that I was making clothing. I started off making T-shirts for Zane and took over Dr. Neptune's position as the p.r. agent."
Tommy: "I came up with the idea of throwing parties, but Chuck was against it in the beginning. Their idea of a party was a bunch of older people sitting around on a park bench with a cake. Chuck said, 'Why would I want to throw a fucking party for a bunch of $#!@ and feed these $#!@. I'm in the porn industry and I make movies.'
"But, all of a sudden there was a lot of big parties. A lot of people that came were my friends. Even now I could get on the phone and get close to a thousand people just by calling ten people.
"Matt had the idea of the term Gen-XXX," Tommy continued. "That was his concept, and he needed me to propel it. He gave me something and I ran with it. The companies like Blunt and Kickwear and all the clothing companies, those were all my friends, people that I established friendships with that helped support that stuff.
"Everybody believed in what I was doing and supported it. Zane pretty much funded it, and Matt was into it." But Tommy said things soon became apparent when certain promises were made and weren't delivered on.
"It didn't happen," he says. "I kept hearing the comment, 'Don't tell me, show me.' Hell, there was over a hundred magazines I got the company into in less than a year, four pages at a time - color - from New Rave to Genesis to some of the bigger ones. Matt wanted me there, but I always felt on the defensive. I just stood up for what I was promised."
Even though he had carved out future relationships with mags like Details, Spin, Maxim and GQ, Tommy said when he left Zane, he took his clothing company sponsorships with him. "These were personal friends who did favors for me."
Tommy put some of those connections to good use. Along with Danny Boy from House of Pain and John Boyer from Blunt Clothing, he formed a company called Diamoto Clothing which also boasts its own record label. Tommy says Diamoto's product is in about 2,000 stores, national and international. "It's going off the Richter," he says.
