Thursday, April 30, 2009

R.I.P. Skyscraper Magazine

A few weeks ago I noticed a bunch of blog posts talking about and honoring the death of Blender Magazine. This eight year old magazine who was more corporate than Rolling Stone and Said Kate Perry’s debut was one of the best albums of 2008, had everyone, even Pitchfork, lining up to lay a flower next to its coffin. This was like the death of Jerry Farwell. Everyone with half a brain saw the evil in it and how stupid it was, yet didn’t want to look like they were dancing on their grave so they said some nice things after it died. Well sometimes some graves need to be danced on (and desecrated), especially one that committed on final musical crime; drawing attention away from Skyscraper Magazine’s passing. After 10 years and 30 issues, Skyscraper had to pull the plug due to the economic times. Now they will move to the internet, revamping their current website for their musical updates. So what’s the point, you may ask, if they will continue online? If I told you your favorite band will now only release songs by MP3 and would never tour again, how you feel? Their still your favorite band, but it isn’t the same. Sure, some people griped about the magazine, saying it was to noise or math rock centric. But the magazine was dedicated to bring to light all hidden music and, had people actually dug into the magazine, would have seen amount of different artists they covered as well as the quality of their review section. What other magazine had interviews with both Deerhunter and Bad Brains in the same issue? What other magazine had the same amount of space devoted to covering the bands as it did reviewing them, done for the simple reason of making sure no band, no matter how small or genre, was found and discovered (or rejected for sucking)? With Harp gone as well, leaving the weight of quality independent magazines on Magnet and Under The Radar, I hope they hold on.

No comments:

Post a Comment