Take a gander at your BPM’s, XLR8R’s, Spin’s (fill in the blank’s) There’s quite evidently a standard presentation to music mags and most of it has nothing to do with music, let alone crafting a cutting edge memorable experience –which for me is what music is all about.
As I see it, and sometimes unfortunately read it, current music publications, both in print and their digital counterparts, seem to make huge generalized assumptions about what they can be, or should be, and the subsequent content that that homogeny covers. Is there a central mold from which they all spring?
Last magazine, in my experience, to redefine the playing field was Raygun –and it only accomplished that for about two years of its publication starting in 1992. Raygun was a game changer and then over time the new ground it conquered became standard issue. They never had the same logo twice, photos were blurry, sometimes cut in half –and typography… next level –to the point of illegibility –but always to the destination of giving you a feeling for what they represented.
For designers, it was such a strange “rock and a hard place” to be. I mean everyone wanted to look as fresh as Raygun –but it was so obvious if you even tried. Over time they even became a parody of the vibe they created. So much so, that by the point of it’s last few years they looked like copies of the genre they had once led.
Raygun became a style, a flavor of presentation and design. A Cutting edge that bent type to express the very words and bands they represented. As it became adopted, that edge dulled and lost its impact as a leader. But at the time, it pushed the boundaries of digital publishing, took all of us to the next level, and demanded that every Art Director of any music rag rethink why they existed – or at least why their layout sucked so bad. Music is fury. Music is energy – look like it – feel like it.
Meanwhile in late 2008, the experience of the “living” online moment is devoid within the current “interactive” music magazine age. When someone tells you something, as in one way communication, there’s no room for conversation – and this is the age of the biggest conversation ever – you, me, us, all day, everywhere.
And you know what I’m really getting at, is that most of the big publications are shit. Trying to be lifestyle rags when all of it becomes is a soulless Sears catalog of accepted “alternative” banality. When did shopping become cutting edge? –Or a mark of being “out there” leading the pack?
As far as this blog and its eventual digital magazine experience goes –F**K Tech sections, Cosmetic tip sections, Fashion Sections, Food, Cars, Perfumes. Fuck all that – and fuck you –you fucking drug pushers of useless products ready for the landfill posing as the very height in taste and style of music. You can’t possibly design my culture and why are you continuing to support this consumer one that has no direction but oblivion. Question authority, I once remember as a quaint bumper sticker somewhere –question the authority of the majority of lifestyle rags.
And on an end note: If music sales are down (death of the record selling business) – doesn’t it makes sense that all the other products that go along with music should stop selling as well? Don’t ever let capitalism take your culture and then sell it back to you –let alone make a half-baked music magazine posing and getting by as a cultural tastemaker.
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