The third indie music magazine bit the dust and 2008 is not even three months old.
Right in the middle of South by Southwest in Austin, TX, the news arrives that Harp has folded.
Put another log on the Pitchfork fire. Long live Pop Matters!
It's the end of Side Two for two music magazines, alt-country No Depression and indie rock Resonance.
Industry ads are drying up because record companies are merging and throwing their marketing dollars onto the web. Record stores have been closing down everywhere. When you've got Pitchfork, Idolator, and Stereogum with instant news and reviews, who wants to support an outdated communication vehicle called a "magazine?"
The Reaper plays Ryan Adams' "Love Is Hell" on the way down the river tonight.
Guitar One, Guitar World Bass, and Guitar World Acoustic. All closed quietly in the <cough> dead of winter.
The Reaper didn't even wait one week to take the first magazine of 2007, Future Music. January is usually a time when the Reaper heads down to Miami, parties along South Beach, drinks boat drinks.
My trip was postponed.
A noble magazine informing home musicians how to make big hit singles and that groovy music on the radio. Except many home musicians surf the web and don't read magazines. Some have trouble reading music, you expect them to read a magazine?
'Tis unfortunate because the remaining how-to-make-music magazines are some of the worst art directed publications on the planet. These magazines must be the only ones on the planet that can make music seem unsexy and often, downright ugly. These guys got a lucky break.
So the Reaper parked downtown at Fifth Avenue, hauled all those synthesizers, drum machines and Mac computers, and moved them to the big boat. Of course, I was tripping over some cables and nearly tore my cloak! And what do you think I was playing on this Yamaha keyboard on the trip down? "Heart and Soul," of course.
It's been a leisurely time for the Reaper. I've been following the World Cup matches and a few times, I almost came to visit the US team, but they did themselves in anyway.
And it had been pretty quiet... frankly, those games occupied me, until the real resignation of Spin's editor-in-chief via Blender, Andy Pemberton.
Now let me tell you, folks: Spin is going down. Right now, it is a ship without a captain and there is practically no direction it can go in except what it's been doing all these years: alternative poster boys, throw in your typical political/social story, and hope for the best. As a matter of fact, they are probably rushing to put Dashboard Confessional's Chris Carabba on the next cover as fast as possible to assure their readers that the Pemberton-edited Beyonce issue was a mirage.
Sometimes I feel like this is Jump The Shark, magazine version. In the case of Spin, once they hired a kinky sex columnist and threw a party for her, it was all over. That's not just jumping the shark -- that's being shot through a cannon over the shark.
If it was Spin's outdated editorial that got it into serious financial trouble in the first place, there is probably no other way to go but back down that path. And that path will lead to me and then we'll all be reminiscing down here about Third Eye Blind, Blind Melon, The New Radicals, Alice in Chains, AFI, and all these other bands that would only be championed by Spin and nobody else.
The Reaper just saw this shot of Spin's first cover under new management, including former Blender editor-in-chief Andy Pemberton.
And this is why the Reaper is just sharpening his blade for Spin. It is just a matter of time. Here is why I'm "crazy in love" to be hanging around...
1. Longtime Spin readers are probably going to wretch when they don't see Fall Out Boy or Yellowcard on the cover, but... Beyonce!
2. This looks just like a Blender cover, especially with the prominence of those infamous lists. There's room for only one Blender magazine, and it's called Blender, not Spin.
If you have been a compulsive compact disc and music collector like the Reaper, then ICE magazine was your meat.
You didn't know I had a CD collection? The Reaper has an account with that other "river" -- Amazon -- buying CD's for many many years and storing them in some caves here. Very tough organizing CD's when it's dark all the time, and sometimes I feel like that guy from Diner... but I digress...
Unfortunately, the Reaper had to come today for ICE -- unpaid bills, dropping subscriptions, music blogs stealing its audience. The Reaper hates to take magazines that clearly have great value, but its time was due.
Let us have a moment of rock and roll as we cross the river with ICE.
Although Gawker editors are too young to remember the legacy of Circus, but at least smart enough to link to its great oral history, this is a sad loss for the Reaper. But not unexpeceted.
Circus is one of the great rock magazines to be created in the 60's -- Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy, Circus and Creem. The Reaper knows this because we've been around for a long, long, long , long time.
With Spin barely keeping its grunge head above water, how can one expect a totally indie rock magazine with no money to stay afloat?
So the Reaper takes Circus across the river today with sadness, playing side two of The Beatles' "Abbey Road."
