Its onetime presenting sponsor went to the ever-expanding magazine graveyard a few weeks back, so it’s probably not too surprising that the Gramercy Theater in New York–formerly known as the Blender Theater At Gramercy–has had its lease put on the market by owners Live Nation. Are you interested in getting involved in the exciting business of live music? (It’s going to save the music business, you know!) The ad for the two-story venue (it has 186 seats on its top level and an all-important already-existing liquor license, FYI) is after the jump. More »
Well, the big story this week was probably the shuttering of Blender, the pop magazine who suffered the one-two punch of being a printed entity about music in 2009. Blender‘s overarching popism was a big influence on Idolator from the time of its launch in 2006, and even as the death spiral of ad pages resulted in its once-mighty reviews section being whittled down to a handful of 130-word blurbs, I admired its spunk and willingness to reach across the musical comfort zones that divide people more often than not these days, if not always its choices of “hot,” vaguely music-related cover subjects. After the jump, thoughts on the Blender closure from a smattering of people around the Internet, many of whom saw their bylines appear in the magazine’s pages at one time or another.
Alpha Media has shuttered its music magazine Blender, according to Ad Age. Ad pages for the musically omnivorous, list-happy mag had gone down some 57% between January and April of this year, one that’s proven rough going for glossies of all stripes. Blender editor Joe Levy—who came to the mag from Rolling Stone a little more than a year ago—will move over to Alpha’s lone remaining title, Maxim, where he’ll become editor. (Disclaimer: I wrote a few record reviews for Blender long ago.) UPDATE: Press release announcing the changes at Alpha—including Levy’s job-switch and the news that Blender.com will “continue as a digital destination”—after the jump. [Ad Age]
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the magazine in question’s penchant for featuring him in its pages, Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III topped Blender‘s year-end list of albums, which has swelled from 25 contenders to 33 for reasons that probably don’t involve the vinyl revival (if they did, then where’s that extra 1/3?). Full list after the jump, but here are a few thumbnail reactions:
THE GOOD: It’s nice to know that someone remembered the early-’08 reissue of Robyn’s album (No. 6).
THE BAD: More evidence that indie rock has become the “center” for the music-writing set comes from the 11-19 slots on the list, which (save Al Green) could have been cribbed in part from a the elbo.ws chart. (And yes, I include Katy Perry in that list. Haven’t you heard her MGMT cover?) Sure, Blender‘s initial mission of finding some sort of consensus in popular music, and covering every player within said group obsessively, is sorta quaint in the infinite-playlist era, but… I guess I just was hoping for something a little more curveballish than “no, really, My Morning Jacket is great,” is all.
THE WHAAA? I would think that the atonal, grueling presence of “Moving Mountains” would disqualify Usher’s Here I Stand from any year-end lists that weren’t focused on disappointing sales figures from superstar artists. But I’m wrong: It’s No. 26 here, right ahead of the similarly soft-selling E=MC2.
This weekend is going to be a bit shorter than usual thanks to Chinese Democracy coming out Sunday and the American Music Awards happening Sunday night, so I figured I’d leave you with a snippet of a discussion that I had with Pitchfork’s Marc Hogan, where I attempted to figure out why the indie-heavy stretch of that Blender albums list rubbed me the not-right way earlier today: “I guess maybe part of what I’m also trying (clumsily) to say is that I miss the days of the lost major-label gem? The good album that wasn’t by a megastar (either major-label ‘celebrity’ level or Jenny Lewis ‘covered by every music publication’ level—you can sub Lucinda Williams in for JL if you want) that was still worthy of recognition? That middle seems to have been lost in the great polarization between ‘music-related celebrities’ and ‘people who really mean it, man,’ and it’s a shame, because there are still tons of worthy albums out there that could have used the boost. (Maybe I’m drawing too much on personal experience here, but I do think these lists have some power, still, in this every-ear-for-itself age.)” But am I expecting too much from a wrapup that’s ultimately the result of a slightly massaged consensus?
Once again, we present Rock-Critically Correct, a feature in which the most recent issues of Rolling Stone, Blender, Vibe, and Spin are given a once-over by a writer who’s contributed to many of those magazines, as well as a few others! In this installment, he looks at the new issue of Blender:
Most critics have a love-hate relationship with album reviews. On the one hand, they’re an absurdly limiting format, forcing you to find things to say about albums you don’t care about, limiting your thoughts on albums you do care about, and requiring a bottom-line consumer reccomendation that might not really encapsulate your honest feelings. On the other hand, in these hard times for music scribes, record reviews are the one unique service we can provide that the public always seems to want. Which is why it seems crazy that Alernative Press was considering removing album reviews from its print edition.
Once again, we present Rock-Critically Correct, a feature in which the most recent issues of Rolling Stone, Blender, Vibe, and Spin are given a once-over by a writer who’s contributed to many of those magazines, as well as a few others! In this installment, he looks at the new issue of Blender:
