RTP-area local music and culture

[grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>]

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
>
> -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene