Friday, May 22, 2009

You've always been searching for something

Hard not to feel that, for all the Death Of The Printed Music Press (Overall) discourse it’ll bring about, the announcement yesterday that next month’s issue will be all she wrote for Plan B magazine leaves a very specific gap in the market. Not that the criticisms that it was often more keen to impress a very particular writing style of some of its contributors than press the bands they were writing about weren’t valid, but against their enthusiasm and pushing things forward Artrocker is too full of itself, Bearded is still working out where it belongs, Under The Radar isn’t printed often enough and keeps you guessing as to where it’s actually based, Clash doesn’t know what it is, Mojo knows exactly what it is, Uncut would like to think it knows what it is, The Word knows what it was but thinks it still is, Stool Pigeon is only fitfully available, Q is only fitfully all-encompassing, the specialist rock magazines are and will remain specialist rock magazines with all that entails...

Everett True shut his first magazine Careless Talk Costs Lives after a set period as that was the deadline by which it had to achieve all it set out to do. With Plan B it feels like whatever battles were won were done so without the ongoing support of the ranks.

(EDIT: Everett's valediction)

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