but I know that when I think of No Depression, I think of magazines just flying off the shelf and frantic calls from Barnes and Nobles all across the country begging for more copies because the cover with Alejandro Escoveda has been selling like gangbusters!

No Depression isn’t Rolling Stone right? The whole point of the magazine is to highlite music because of artistic, rather than commercial relevance. If “selling magazines” was the reason for their existence, wouldn’t they have Carrie Underwood and Tim McGraw on the cover?

and assumably people read No Depression to find out about music that doesn’t get huge exposure elsewhere, but that is awesome correct? so my point, is that if No Depression is going to have critical credibility, then instead of highliting 1.artists who are mainstream and famous (Miranda) or 2. Artists who have been around 10 or 15 or 25 or 40 years and already have afanbase and are recognized as awesome, No Depression should actually prove that they have critical clout and put an artist on their cover who is awesome who can actually use exposure. Rolling Stone back in the day was hip because they didn’t need soundscan or 10 years of history to tell them what was cool or good. They knew what was cool and good.

No Depression shouldn’t rely on the popularity of their cover artist. Conversely they shouldn’t need to siphon the credibility of their cover artists. Their magazine should sell because No Depression has credibility on their own because they have proven (over their rather long history, its not like its new) that they know what is cool and good in the world of roots/country music.

finally the major labels do something vaguely intelligent. Isn’t it way past time where they should have all of their content digitized on a server somewhere that people can go to to put their old records/whatever on their ipods? Isn’t that a no brainer? It’s like “oh gee, we have all this awesome content lying around, should we sell some of it? Nah, who has time for that???”

“No Depression co-editor Grant Alden unleashes some pent up anger about formulaic Texas music and stupid songs on his blog”
No Depression, pah. I’m sick of their lame magazine being full of boring articles about dreamy sounding folk rock. I’m also sick of music that values being obtuse over being clear and understanable. Plus, didn’t they have Miranda Lambert on the cover like 2 months ago? So its like “oh Texas music is all well and good when its helping us sell magazines, but on my INTERNET BLOG I am gonna rip Texas music a new one! HAHAHAHA!

and didn’t the editorial in the Miranda issue say something like “well, you guys may think that this is lame of us because shes like mainstream and we are only supposed to like stuff that isn’t, but we waged a battle with Nashville back when it was Garth and Shania, and largely the battle is won.” I laughed out loud when I read that. Talk about a phyrric victory huh? Another victory like the last 10 years of Nashville and we’ll have won ourselves right out of an American artform.

Hell yeah for Moot Davis. The new album is the most interesting awesome sounding album of the decade. The first one was cool, but this one is like, crazy good. Pete Anderson man, he just keeps churnin out dank records. Good for you guys for featuring it.

I’ll take No Depression seriously when they put someone like Moot Davis on the cover, for once. But then again, real country music is so passe isn’t it. Stupid No Depression.