You hear that vile bubbling? That's the sound of America's indie rock press violently shitting its beige corduroy colostomy bag as it gasps its last.

...Full disclosure: I worked for Harp for a while. Publisher Glenn Sabin recently described the magazine as "irreverent." It wasn't. It licked musician ass until its tongue bled.

...In the early '70s the likes of Creem and Rolling Stone and NME were staffed by bedraggled refugees from the revolutionanddrugsandfucking-crazed underground press of the late '60s. Jewfro-ed honkies engaged in fistfights, drug orgies and bondage sex (literally—this is not a metaphor).

...I saw one angry punk lesbian writer—notorious for having fucked a female colleague and then having left her bound and gagged in a cupboard to starve to death—attempt to smash a pint glass in the face of another female writer for being "too girly." Honor was defended with fists and boots as much as it ever was in print. Bands that spoke homophobic, racist or sexist shit were slaughtered mercilessly. And the prose flowed like blood from a gaping head wound.

...Music journalism—seething with the reckless, showy, young-dumb-and-full-of-cum, anything-is-possibilism of rock 'n' roll itself—was drowned in a dull gray sea of mediocre fan jism. Bottom line: If you actually genuinely like Ryan Adams, Wilco, Bright Eyes and My Morning Jacket, you shouldn't be allowed to write. Period.

Dull writers write about dull bands for dull fans who form dull bands and become dull writers. It's like punk in reverse. The perfect shit storm. But now the sun is peaking through the clouds.

Crack open the champagne. Let's go piss on some graves.

Yeah, let's go poop and pee and wipe our noses on the wimps until they get all bloody and there's cum and stuff.

Harp On It [Philadelphia Weekly]

And so, fare thee well, Harp, published eight times a year since 2001 for those NPR/Whole Foods enthusiasts who keep up with modern bands. Harp is ceasing publication for the expected reasons: the March/April 2008 edition is its last.

Being that he never bought an issue before a few days ago, your Keyboard Krybaby often wondered exactly what differentiated Harp from that other similarly inclined and monosyllabically dubbed music magazine produced outside NYC. He can say that the mag under consideration this week is distinguished by the fact that a "harp" is a musical instrument that has been in use since antiquity, and not a substance that four-year-olds in nursery school are known to put inside their mouths instead of on popsicle sticks.

Near as KK can tell, Harp was distinct from Paste in that it assumed that their readers had a sense of humor (they might have liked Human Giant and Adult Swim, both of which are profiled herein) and might be interested in abrasive guitar music (Mountain Goat dude John Darnielle is played a 1977 cut by Rhys Chatham in an FOB "jukebox jury" piece, a Loren Connors reissue is assessed in the reviews section, the hipster-metal film Such Hawks Such Hounds is featured in the FOB), among other things. There's little sense of the ponderous and defensive middlebrow Bobo-ism that afflicts Paste.

Nonetheless, this issue covers all the artists and records that every media outlet with an eye on the same demographic mutually agreed would be emphasized in late winter/early spring 2008: Kathleen Edwards, Jim White, Nellie McKay, Steph(e/i)ns Merritt and Malkmus, the Kills, that horrible Marah band, the Whigs, White Denim, Ghostland Observatory, the Waco Bros., k.d. lang, the Breeders, the Black Keys, a Q&A with Danger Mouse in which it is noted that he's recently worked with "Susan Vega," the newly recorded rendition of the immensely dreary Trinity Sessions, and finally, a review of—"gawd, we two are so debauched; let's call our joint project something suitably roguish...like"—the Gutter Twins' debut album, Saturnalia.

Now, the contents of this final issue aren't particularly fragrant of despair; it seems like the staff was plugging away without much notion that they were about to lose their jobs. In light of the dutiful prose therein, the mag might have been more interesting to read if there was a stink of death afoot.

The folks who worked at Harp can perhaps console themselves with the fact that the new issue of Revolver runs with a very similar cover concept as their final issue. April 2008 Harp: Dave Grohl announces a run for the White House, and in so doing faces the camera in an Uncle Sam "I Want You" pose. May 2008 Revolver: Grohl and a constellation of hard rock elder statesmen like Serj Tankian and Davey Havok face the camera, each bearing the gravitas necessary to convince metalheads that this election is very very important indeed.

KK suspects that Revolver couldn't have cribbed the idea from Harp (the issue under consideration was on sale beginning in February), and that in any case the cover concept of famous people encouraging reader participation in a representative democracy is hardly a new thing. But one supposes that Grohl's minders would think it impolitic to have their client participate in two similar pursuits—that is, unless those minders had concluded that the climate for print media is so hopeless that no one should particularly care and that one of the mags was going under anyway.

Anyway, the Nicest Guy In Rock^TM sits with Harp editor-in-chief Scott Crawford for "Dave Grohl Rocks the Vote," which KK is fairly sure was not one of the more demanding journalistic interlocutions of his career. He strolls through the interview with his characteristic charm ("what America needs: beer and barbecue") and gets in a few licks at the current POTUS. But, as Crawford's intro only notes in passing, Grohl is from the D.C. area and is the son of a Republican speech-writer. KK would like to know about what it's like for a very famous rock guy to grow up around the seat of the federal government, and be one of many hardcore kids whose background is enmeshed with an entrenched, perpetual Washington establishment. Given that KK saw no mention of Harp's little "Grohl for President" stunt anywhere other than the mag itself, a frank discussion about an under-discussed aspect of D.C. culture (Harp was/is based in Silver Spring, Md., a satellite town to D.C., and you might think this subject would be one the staff has some insights on) would have perhaps been a better way to go out.

That piece leads "Rocks Populi," which examines the politics/ rock intersection, ho hum. The various articles are not very funny or insightful, and labors under frequent and dated references to Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.

Most of the scribbling in the final issue of Harp is manageable rock magazine fare. So KK wishes to stress w/r/t the following that he doesn't relish kicking anyone when they've, y'know, just lost their job. But some editor or other didn't crack the whip on one Rodger Cambria. This fellow attended last June's Fest for Beatles Fans, evidently the gold standard in the U.S. for such events, in Las Vegas. Some 10 months afterwards comes "Don't Stop Believin'," a chronicle of Cambria's trip and one that handily achieves the land speed record for the sheer abundance of cliches regarding the 1960s, the Beatles, and embarrassing hippies in journalism this year so far: not even the Sunday supplement of the Topeka Pig Testicle would publish this piece.

Mr. Cambria begins by comparing the sweltering Vegas June to "Hell," and then continues through "I've always envied the generation who came of age in the 1960s... it's easy to feel as if my generation has been slighted... there was a point in time when I thought Journey was the best band of all time"; through "I don't know what's more depressing: that my generation lacks the cultural and historical connection that unites Beatles fans, or that these refugees of the Love Generation [his description of the fest's attendees] have had their noble revolutionary ideals diluted to such a point where they exist only on the fabric of a t-shirt." Finally, Cambria is ejected from the Beatles Revolution Lounge for improper attire: "I was ejected from the revolution for wearing the uniform of the proletariat," he writes. "Karl Marx would be aghast." Perhaps, but it's also possible that KM would think that Mr. Cambria is peddling some lazy-as-a-mufugger tropes and may have not one original thought in his head.

But dig this! Mr. Cambria and a bunch of other folks signed their names to what they wrote in the final issue of Harp. KK cannot say the same about hisself, and thus wishes well the Harp staffers and various freelancers who put their names on their work at a time when music magazines are, frankly, double fucked.

THE GOOD: Grinderman squeaks in at No. 30, with Robert Wyatt's Comicopera behind it. Also, there's no Joss Stone in sight.
THE BAD: Rilo Kiley (No. 20) ahead of M.I.A. (No. 24)?! That is just wrong. (Damn hot pants.)
THE WHAAA? Who knew that Kings Of Leon (No. 29) put out an album this year? Anyone?

50. Tunng, Good Arrows
49. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, 100 Days, 100 Nights
48. Oakley Hall, I'll Follow You
47. Yeasayer, All Hour Cymbals
46. Manu Chao, La Radiolina
45. Bettye LaVette, The Scene Of The Crime
44. Beirut, The Flying Cub Cup
43. Explosions In The Sky, All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone
42. Mavis Staples, We'll Never Turn Back
41. Dr. Dog, We All Belong
40. Ian Hunter, Shrunken Heads
39. Patty Griffin, Children Running Through
38. Eleni Mandell, Miracle Of Five
37. Rufus Wainwright, Release The Stars
36. Bright Eyes, Cassadega
35. Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam
34. Ryan Adams, Easy Tiger
33. St. Vincent, Marry Me
32. Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew, Spirit If...
31. Robert Wyatt, Comicopera
30.Grinderman
29. Kings Of Leon, Because Of The Times
28. Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, This Is Somewhere
27. Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
26. Steve Earle, Washington Square Serenade
25. Jesse Sykes And The Sweet Hereafter, Like, Love, Lust, And The Open Halls Of The Soul
24. M.I.A., Kala
23. Bill Callahan, Woke On A Whale Heart
22. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Living With The Living
21. The National, Boxer
20. Rilo Kiley, Under The Blacklight
19. Bruce Springsteen, Magic
18. Georgie James, Places
17. The Good, The Bad, And The Queen
16. Wilco, Sky Blue Sky
15. The New Pornographers, Challengers
14. The Shins, Wincing The Night Away
13. Avett Brothers, Emotionalism
12. Devendra Banhart, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
11. White Stripes, Icky Thump
10. Jason Isbell, Sirens Of The Ditch
9. Neil Young, Chrome Dreams II
8. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
7. Radiohead, In Rainbows
6. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
5. Feist, The Reminder
4. Future Clouds & Radar
3. Iron & Wine, The Shepherd's Dog
2. Band Of Horses, Cease To Begin
1. Okkervil River, The Stage Names

So this is where we are now: Even the "thinking" music magazines out there feel like they have to play with floating numbers, Photoshopped second-tier starlets, and behind-the-fold musicians in order to come up with what they think is a decent cover. But really, Juliette Lewis and Minnie Driver? We're sure that Harp's editors were sad that 1000 Fires came out just a bit too long ago for Traci Lords to make the cut.

[Scan via ///trishtype]