C-Bub Productions began in Portland, Oregon in late 1988, as a natural outgrowth of the personal passion for music of its two owners: Bill Uhre and Cinde Berkowitz. Little did they know that their “two boxes of music magazines” would grow in the next decade to a collection of more than 500,000 magazines, books, posters, concert programs, and other memorabilia that would fuel one of the hottest mail order companies in the world of music publications and novelties.
From their current warehouse in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Bill and Cinde service a diverse range of worldwide clients (through e-mail, fax, telephone, and snail mail).Their clients include book authors, newspaper and magazine writers, TV producers and researchers, movie producers, archivists, and just plain fans. With complete collections of Rolling Stone, Goldmine Magazine, Playboy, and People, and near-complete collections of dozens of other magazines, C-Bub is particularly well perched to provide for the print needs of its clients. Nearly 50 percent of those collectors and journalists come from outside the United States.
In 1996, C-Bub formed an alliance with Goldmine Magazine, the bible of the record collecting industry, to officially supply that publication’s readers will all back-issue needs. In the past five years, C-Bub has branched out into providing one of the largest music memorabilia collections anywhere: with hundreds of tour programs, posters, promo items, and more than 150 life-sized promotional stand-ups of artists from Elton John and Barbra Streisand, to Pink Floyd and Tina Turner. Pinball machines for Elton John and Kiss, and a rare 1963 Scopitone Film Video Jukebox are just a few more of the current novelty items the business has available.
C-Bub has provided the All Music Guide with a history of the music magazine industry, contributed research materials to such star bios as The Raspberries Scrapbook, and Crossroads (the Eric Clapton) story, and sent magazines to VH-1 and MTV for documentaries. The company also produces the largest semi-annual record-collecting gathering in the Pacific Northwest, and a similar well-attended bi-annual record show in Tulsa.
Bill Uhre, co-founder, has spent most of his working life in and around the music industry. In the late ’70s, Bill worked in radio; and he got in on the ground floor of music video, having installed and operated Video Jockey systems in some of New York’s best-known music clubs, including the Ritz, Private Eyes, and Danceteria. He was the music-video editor for the legendary British label Stiff Records. In the 1980′s, Bill launched Vusic Express, a unique company that created a music video outlet for up and coming artists in over 500 nightclubs across America.
Cinde Berkowitz, co-founder, a communications graduate, worked in the film and video industry in New York City. Her credits include having worked on the cult classic, Class of Nuke ‘Em High. She later worked in film distribution for the highly respected Kino International, an art- and foreign-movie distributor. As well as co-founding C-Bub Productions, Cinde has been an avid worker in recycling and environmental programs, as well as instructing in water aerobics for the YWCA & YMCA.