No Depression and Harp Magazines

[Drazil]

What next? Paste?

[stickman]

Hope not. Paste is really great (most of the time).

[Kalle]

Agreed if Paste goes that would be a travesty. It's consistently my favorite magazine every month.

[Beltmann]

I like the subject matter in Paste, but I'm not thrilled with the overall quality of writing. (No plans to cancel my sub, though.)

[tugmoose]

Crap! I was just at their SXSW picnic on Saturday. Must have been all that PBR they were giving away.

[jimmyjimmy]

I like the subject matter in Paste, but I'm not thrilled with the overall quality of writing. (No plans to cancel my sub, though.)

 

Andy Whitman's stuff is usually pretty solid. His is usually the first articles I gravitate towards.

Just poking through Paste's latest edition last night and noticed they've changed the layout a bit. Not sure how I feel about that yet.

 

I decided to forgo the "pay what you can" subscription incentive last year they offered since I actually look forward to picking it up at a local bookseller. Thinking that would also benefit the publisher in the long run... I'd hate to see Paste fail too.

[delmarkurt]

I guess it's official:

 

Harp Magazine Discontinues Publishing after Seven-Year Run

 

Guthrie, Inc., the company that publishes Harp magazine, announced today that it has discontinued publishing Harp, effective immediately. The last issue sent to subscribers and newsstands was the March/April issue with Dave Grohl on the cover.

 

Founded in 2001 by editor-in-chief and art director Scott Crawford, the magazine entered into a partnership with the owners of JazzTimes in 2003. The result was a sophisticated rock and pop magazine that was critically acclaimed and well-respected in the music industry for its candor, style and breadth of coverage. The magazine's web site

[blureu]

Bluegrass Now is the next to go.

 

 

http://www.countrystandardtime.com/news/ne...;t=Bluegrass_No

[Vacant Horizon]

Andy Whitman's stuff is usually pretty solid. His is usually the first articles I gravitate towards.

Just poking through Paste's latest edition last night and noticed they've changed the layout a bit. Not sure how I feel about that yet.

 

I decided to forgo the "pay what you can" subscription incentive last year they offered since I actually look forward to picking it up at a local bookseller. Thinking that would also benefit the publisher in the long run... I'd hate to see Paste fail too.

 

i gotta say i always look forward to paste, but i end up getting frustrated. they cover all this MOR adult pop as well as the obligatory indie rock that i could care less about. they also cover the big ones like wilco, but everyone does that. i am always wishing to find some hidden gem, but to no avail. the writing is touch and go critical at all. this is all so ironic to me with it's whole 'signs of life' tagline. they really just highlight all this crap out there when there only a few bands these days worth really getting into. i think that is why these mags are going under. we get the latest news on the web. by the time harp covers a new wilco album, damn, all of us here have been talking about it for months. this, along with the dirge of really good stuff out there these days. for this, i blame the record industry as they focus on corp rock and make it so difficult for major and indie label artists to grow. i also blame consumers for jumping on the band wagon with every new wining indie rocker, dance band, or brittany and the ridiculous overblown pretension that goes with the former. really, when is punk gonna end? i mean, how long are we gonna settle for bad = good. noise equals music and off key equals innovative. i could go on, but i have already said enough to get lambasted on this board. oh well. it's an interesting time in music.

[FaintingGoat]

Bankrupt and folded. Too bad, it was a fine mag. Yet somehow Tiger Beat continues...

 

http://www.harpmagazine.com/news/detail.cfm?article=12387

 

Harp Announcement

[Kalle]

http://forums.viachicago.org/index.php?sho...l=harp+magazine

[Wendy]

What other print magazines might be worthwhile for us VC music fans?

 

I already subscribe to Paste.

 

I was ready to subscribe to Harp when this news broke, but I don't think I ever did.

 

 

[W(TF)]

I don't know what kind of financial troubles these mags had, but it may be that they weren't doing everything they could to run it as a business..? For a case in point, pick up a copy of The Atlantic - a highbrow newsmagazine that has been a mainstay in US culture for a long time. What's interesting is their advertising base, in addition to the usual Chevron, Allstate, Cunard Lines, and ads from book publishers, you'll find ads like Bose Headphones, "Erase Wrinkles Without Botox", "America's first Silver Dollar", "Exercise in exactly 4 minutes per day", "Yankee Stadium Cufflinks", "Delicious, Perfect Eggs Every Time", "BlueMax High Definition Lamp", and so on. If these guys go out of business, it won't be for lack of trying to diversify their revenue base.

[solace]

What other print magazines might be worthwhile for us VC music fans?

 

I already subscribe to Paste.

 

I was ready to subscribe to Harp when this news broke, but I don't think I ever did.

 

 

 

Under The Radar, Magnet, & Filter

[Kalle]

I subscribe to Paste, Guitar Player, Mojo, Uncut, American Songwriter and Harp before (some of these are dads but I read them every month). Paste is easily my favorite, I hope they don't go bankrupt.

 

I also buy Under The Radar and Exclaim (Exclaim is a free Canadian magazine, quite awesome).

[Analogman]

Happy anniversary, baby

 

For the last 21 years I have had a really cool job: I have been a music critic. To varying degrees this peculiar job has fed me (occasionally lavishly), and clothed me (though the stream of free t-shirts has trickled to an unsteady drip, along with everything else), and even sent me to exotic locations at the expense of those old, broken, evil major labels (Dublin, Barcelona, Little Rock, etc.), back when I couldn't afford the ethics journalists are supposed to have, and when it was important to leave Los Angeles as often as possible.

 

It is probably not a good sign when one of Mary Gauthier's songs runs through your head, though I am misapplying this one to my 49th birthday, on which arrived -- not unexpectedly -- two boxes of the final print edition of ND. Yours will come soon enough, if you're a subscriber, and it's worth finding on the newsstand if you're not, for it really is as good a magazine as we've published.

 

I shouldn't have opened a box, since I knew what was inside, but I did. Doing so gave me a bad couple hours, until I left the compound and went out to plant strawberries. Which helped. It was a beautiful day in Eastern Kentucky, and today is another, which is also good because we have another 50 strawberry plants to get in the ground.

 

Now... I need to be careful here, because ND will continue online, and the brand will continue in at least one other way that we'll be talking about just as soon as Peter and Kyla and I make sure the note we're going to post says what we want it to say.

 

But there's a lot of me in this last issue, almost certainly too much. Too much, at least, for my right arm, which typed 9,000-odd words (not counting two interview transcriptions) and designed all but the ads and two editorial pages in a 144-page magazine. That arm is now hors d'combat with repetitive stress syndrome which will, I'm told, eventually subside, and would behave better if I quit typing these things, but I won't just yet. There's a lot of me because it felt very much like my last chance, my final statement as a professional music critic. Quite possibly my last magazine to design.

 

Quite possibly it's all over-wrought; certainly it's the most emotional thing I can remember putting in print since, really, the first piece of mine The Rocket printed all those years back, a long essay on the process of getting my friend Judy sober, and it's about her anniversary just now, though I can't remember how many years it's been. Twenty-three, maybe?

 

Which is not to say I'm going to quit writing, nor about music. But which is to say that I see no way forward but to admit that this particular career has come to an end. There are no jobs, and too many of my writer friends are already out of work. And I have marginalized myself these last twelve or thirteen years, disconnected almost entirely from the star making machine, indulging only in the music which spoke to me, and not the music which spoke to the marketplace. So everything which comes after, that's a hobby. And I'll do it for fun, and whatever profit remains to be wrung from the doing.

 

Which is also not to say I'm going to quit designing, though with the layoffs and drumbeat for the end of print, I'm hard-pressed to imagine what magazine I might be allowed to design.

 

All of which leaves hanging the question: What am I to do with all these things I've learned, all this stuff I've accumulated with the single-minded obsession of being the best designer I could be, learning everything about music I could absorb?

 

I don't know. And so the office will remain a mess a few more weeks while we plant and I work on the family businesses, and practice sleeping eight hours through the night again. Maybe even nine, if such decadence is permitted.

 

For thirteen years I have been allowed a wonderful, constantly renewing canvas on which to paint. For the last three or four, as a designer, it's even been a tolerable painting. Maybe my writing has gotten better, maybe not. But now, abruptly (though I have known it was coming for some months), I have neither paint nor canvas, nor the prospect of renewing either. Which is an entirely inadequate metaphor, unfair to real painters, but so it goes.

 

And I am deeply grateful for your collective indulgence in this small matter, particularly to Peter and Kyla (and Mary, who has known and put up with me all those 21 years; and to Trish, the best ad rep I've ever worked with). To our writers, photographers, and illustrators. And to all y'all. Thanks.

 

It's been a hell of a lot of fun, and I will miss it far more than even these words may suggest. The internet and MP3 files, they're the future and all, but I can't imagine them ever being all that much fun for me.

 

Strawberries, as it happens, were my favorite fruit growing up. Time to quit picking at these keys and get some work done.

 

Be well.

 

Posted by Grant on April 17, 2008 11:52 AM

[LouieB]

Sad really....

 

LouieB

[hardwood floor]

Sad really....

 

LouieB

 

just a fucking shame

 

depressing as hell

 

i don't know what the hell kind of society we've become where there's no room for a magazine as routinely brilliant as No Depression

 

then i see kids walking around or sitting in restaurants and coffee shops staring like fucking zombies at their cell phones and waiting to be told by corporate america what faceless piece of shit MP3 to download next and i guess i understand

 

it sickens me what we're becoming

 

i'll miss No Depression, but more than that, I'll miss a world where a magazine like that can thrive

[LouieB]

Yea, I agree. No Depression covered music that was not being covered by most of the mainstream magazines. I would glance through any of the other music mags on the newstands and read the reviews and never want to buy hardly anything I read about there, but ND always covered enough different stuff that i always wanted to buy more albums than I knew I could afford, including reissues that most other magazines didn't give a shit about.

 

Sure the whole roots rock thing got a bit out of hand (the ads in ND were sometimes both humorous and somewhat silly) and even ND started to cover a much wider range of music than its original mission, but it appeared to be going strong. It began to cover the soul revival as well as the alt.country and folk fields, which was not a bad thing either.

 

C'est la vie I guess....

 

LouieB

[Golden Smoghead]

i don't know what the hell kind of society we've become where there's no room for a magazine as routinely brilliant as No Depression

 

then i see kids walking around or sitting in restaurants and coffee shops staring like fucking zombies at their cell phones and waiting to be told by corporate america what faceless piece of shit MP3 to download next and i guess i understand

 

it sickens me what we're becoming

 

i'll miss No Depression, but more than that, I'll miss a world where a magazine like that can thrive

I think it's a-ok to miss ND and be sad that a mag you like is going away.

 

However, posts like this are just out of touch when they decry iPods and people who don't read magazines / newspapers. A couple thousand years ago, Buddha supposedly said, "Everything changes, nothing remains without change." I do not own an iPod and still buy magazines on the regular. However, it's just your ignorance about what those kids are doing that depresses you.

 

In fact, they're on their iPhones and laptops going to places like viachicago or their favorite blog to hear about up-and-coming music. They're listening to the podcast of NPR's "all songs considered." They're dl'ing old episodes of ACL. The work is still getting done, just the medium has changed. I'm sure when ND came out, people were like, "OMG the world has gone to shit! it's all commercial! boo!"

 

The world is not f'd up, but some good people are out of work and that sucks. However, the music goes on. And maybe it's thriving more than ever, I for one am certainly way more plugged into my local music scene because of technology than I ever was before the Internet allowed me to have a better idea of what all is going on in my area. For those of us who don't had the luxury of good music stores and lots of time to spend at clubs, the 'net has definitely made our musical world richer and more interesting.

 

So, while I appreciate that you are sad, do not really mourn a world that requires lots of trees to get chopped down in order for people to read about good music.

 

Have some faith!!

[LouieB]

, Buddha supposedly said, "Everything changes, nothing remains without change."

I always heard that was Confucius....but then no one was around with anything other than paper to record who said it and when....

 

LouieB

[CortezTheKiller]

I always heard that was Confucius....but then no one was around with anything other than paper to record who said it and when....

 

LouieB

The best advice by Confucius is "Man who go to bed with itchy ass, wake up with stinky finger."

[LouieB]

My final copy of ND showed up a couple days ago.....sad day...

 

LouieB

[Analogman]

If someone could grab me a copy and mail it to me - that would be cool. The only place that carries it here - seems to not be getting the last issue.

[LouieB]

If someone could grab me a copy and mail it to me - that would be cool. The only place that carries it here - seems to not be getting the last issue.

Let me see if Laurie's has a copy today, but you may want to contact ND directly. They do send out individual issues.

 

LouieB