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  • From: grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>
  • To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: NPR story...small music magazines hurting (& No Depression among
  • Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:47:19 -0500

Ah, interesting that the tidbit about them continuing the website was buried 4/5ths of the way through an exceedingly long article, one whose lede was "This week's announcement that No Depression magazine was shutting down took most of its fans by surprise. The bi-monthly magazine, which helped define as well as popularize alternative-country music, will end a 13-year run with its May/June issue."

As if the magazine as an entity of words & ideas was somehow completely & fully connected to its physical presence, and thus the continuation of the website was so non-salient that it could safely be buried way down near the end with the minor tidbits.

Of course, it's not too surprising once you read these sort of pathetically cranky recent blog posts from Grant Alden:

(samples: "Three of them suggested we consider podcasting those long pieces, with NPR's long-running "This American Life" as a kind of model. (Here I must confess that I've not heard the show, but, perhaps, I should go find a podcast of it!) . . . My immediate reaction is a knee-jerk luddite response: good god, not more software to try to learn, not more technology to embrace . . . one of my many frustrations with the world wide tower of babel is that I can't even control what typeface you're reading this blog in. I can't control how the text appears on your screen except in the most crude ways (I can choose bold or italics or what size the type is, sort of).")

http://www.nodepression.net/blogs/grant/index.html

But there's a glimmer of hope in his most recent post, wherein he says, essentially, "fuckit, y'all seem to want us to continue online, so by god let's look into the possibilities": http://www.nodepression.net/blogs/grant/2008/02/all_right_then_lets_design_thi.html

Some random context about Grant Alden. He's the writer who came to the Big Record Stardom Convention in Chapel Hill in 1992 and then wrote, in Alternative Press,

"Is Chapel Hill the next Seattle? Not if the overheard mutterings of A&R executives are to be believed. Not if the modest expectations of the bands remain unchallenged. Not if the musicians stay within the comfy confines of Chapel Hill. And especially not if what I heard is the best Chapel Hill has to offer. To be fair, Thursday night's pop line-up at the Cradle, headlined by Dillon Fence and Queen Sarah Saturday, was pleasant enough . . . .

. . . . but mostly listeners were treated to fragments of great ideas that were not, somehow, fully realized. Take Polvo, who came on just before Superchunk Saturday night. A pair of guitars swirled through intriguing variations on sounds originated by Sonic Youth, building to crescendos that never quite happened. The vocalist has little stage presence and does not sing well (nor is his "bad" singing a useful supplement to the music), and the drummer seemed to play the entire 45-minute set at the same numbing tempo."

To be fair, he had a few nice things to say about a few bands. Heck, you can read the whole thing here: http://jpg.groovo.org/gpj/altpress-brsc-nov92.jpg

Ross

Todd Morman wrote:
Yeah, Menconi did a story about this a few days ago; front of the Life
section and all:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2766/story/956544.html. The web site's gonna
continue.

todd sad to say but shutting down the print version now sounds like a very
smart move on their part morman

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