As has been widely reported elsewhere, No Depression magazine has announced that it will cease publication with its 75th issue in May.

I'm ambivalent about the news. When ND launched, I was an active member of the message board on AOL (!) that spawned it, bought every issue and/or subscribed for the first few years and contributed a couple of pieces in the early going. It was several years ago, however, that I missed picking up an issue after my subscription had lapsed and realized, when I saw on the newsstand one day that a subsequent issue was out, that I didn't really miss it all that much. Apart from picking up the rare issue when the cover star promised a long interview with a favorite artist, I have largely ignored it for quite some time.

The reasons are twofold. The first is that I simply grew weary of the genre. I rarely go back and listen to much of what is termed alt-country, and when I do, it is to hear the early work of bands that have long since shaken off its shackles. The second is that at times the magazine simply wasn't very good. Much of the writing was hamfisted, the work of people with more passion than chops. That shouldn't condemn a magazine outright --plenty of fanzines and 'zine-like magazines (Magnet, et al) suffer a similar variation in quality -- but coupled with the fact that the music the magazine had proscribed itself to cover was a bit of a dead end, it signaled the death knell for ND.

The magazine's editors seemed to realize this fairly early on, branching out beyond the world of alt-country with occasional features. Thing is, I could read about these artists -- and the best alt-country acts -- in other, often better magazines. Though ND improved over its run, particularly in terms of production and design -- there was too much competition.

I appreciate the efforts of Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock, and hope their plan to move the operation fully onto an expanded web site will work. There obviously have been enough fans of this music and this magazine to sustain it for 13 years, and a decrease in ad revenue could be countered by cutting the cost of printing and distribution that come with a print product. Still, perhaps it's simply time for this to end. I thought hearing about this would lead me to pull out some old alt-country discs, but it hasn't yet.

Labels: magazines, music