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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | Bill Silvers <wsilvers@earthlink.net> |
| Subject | Re: Sad news about No Depression |
| Date | Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:34:49 -0600 (GMT-06:00) |
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Jim McGuiness replied:
>John Micek writes:
>
>I'm not sure how that makes Stewart part of the problem, exactly.
>I think part of the problem with a magazine like ND is that it's so
>niche-y that it probably has a limited life-span. I'd gotten the
>sense in the last few years that the air had kind of gone out of
>alt.country/ND music. I'm not sure who's still pushing the boundaries
>of the genre. There's only so much choir-preaching you can do before
>you run out of new converts, after all.
>And, as a guy who works full-time in the media biz (newspapers), it
>really is mutate or die out there.
>
>
>
>Not nearly as niche-y as, say, much of the music discussed on this list.
>While I always had a problem with the Gram Parsons/Uncle Tupelo/Jayhawks
>worship aspect of ND, the magazine provided exposure to a lot of worthwhile
>artists who otherwise got ignored by the music press. The issue sitting in front
>of me has lengthy features on Otis Taylor and Malcolm Holcombe - neither of
>whom can be defined by some narrow definition of "alt-country." When was the
>last time Mojo took chances like that?
>
>Readership wasn't the problem. It was advertising. To ND's credit, they
>never watered down the product to lure potential advertisers (unlike daily
>newspapers, who do this all the time).
>Btw, I've been in newspapers for nearly half my life. I vow to be out by my
>birthday (March 18). A horrible, horrible industry.
>
>Jim McGuinness
>who is entering his bitter years and enjoying every moment
Excellent points, which you kinda beat me to. As a fan of alt-country and insanely great pop, the two niche sounds always seemed to me to have a lot more in common than not. Alt-country was "hot" in the heady mid 90's post-Uncle Tupelo days when bands like Son Volt and Wilco were rising from those ashes and bands like Whiskeytown, the Old 97s, The Derailers, Slobberbone, The V-Roys and many many more were carrying the banner for indie twang rock. As the scene faded into the new millennium, No Dep pointedly went from a narrow focus on alt-country, "whatever that is," (which was never really all that narrow to begin with, certainly not narrow enough for a lot of alt-country partisans. Meanwhile, just as it was common to see bands shrink from being labelled as "power pop," it was almost a joke for awhile how bands at the forefront of the scene shrank from the "alt-country" label) to the wider overview of American roots music of various types and stripes. This isn't, in its way, all that dissimilar to the early 90's pop explosion, which, as these things do, dissipated in force a bit as time went by (though it was certainly nurtured by stuff like IPO, Amplifier magazine, and, um, this list to name a few). The fact that the scenes weren't "hot" anymore didn't mean that bands weren't still making music that more or less fit into the nebulous niche boundaries, or even that they weren't already doing so for years before those scenes were "hot" to begin with. No Dep's folding is kinda sad, but it doesn't really mean that alt-country is any more dead than it wasn't before the magazine happened. People are still making that music, people are still going to see it, and in some places people are still talking about it. I let my No Dep sub lapse years ago and that was true for more than a few folks, but I was glad it was out there doing what it did, and the people I know who are still writing for No Dep were adamant that it was doing good business circulation-wise. I believe them when they attribute their demise more to the decline of the music bidness and the magazine/publishing bidness in general, as the press release said. The bands will play on, and whatever "air" there is in the scene will keep blowing. Same as it ever was.
b.s., laid off from my newspaper job (business side) 7 years ago
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