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I was very disappointed to read this this morning when I decided I would pay an overdue visit to Punk Planet's website:
Dear Friends,
As much as it breaks our hearts to write these words, the final issue of Punk Planet is in the post, possibly heading toward you right now. Over the last 80 issues and 13 years, we've covered every aspect of the financially independent, emotionally autonomous, free culture we refer to as "the underground." In that time we've sounded many alarms from our editorial offices: about threats of co-optation, big-media emulation, and unseen corporate sponsorship. We've also done everything in our power to create a support network for independent media, experiment with revenue streams, and correct the distribution issues that have increasingly plagued independent magazines. But now we've come to the impossible decision to stop printing, having sounded all the alarms and reenvisioned all the systems we can. Benefit shows are no longer enough to make up for bad distribution deals, disappearing advertisers, and a decreasing audience of subscribers.
It's a sad day. PP has long been my favorite periodical. Not just as an underground chronicle of punk rock and independent music, but as a vital, objective, and interesting source of essays, information, articles and commentary on larger issues in the world today.
Punk Planet has long been a fierce proponent of independent, DIY media, often reserving space in their pages for features on how we could take the reins and do it ourselves. Our dwindling "real" punk culture (not the one prefabricated and shipped out to Hot Topic stores) has lost another one of it's last bastions. DIY and subculture-based independent print media is in more of a sorry state for the loss, that's for sure. How sad a comment is it that one of the strongest and most enthusiastic voices for the power of independent media can't sustain it's own production?
I should've seen this coming, I guess. It's been harder and harder to get new issues in the last couple of years.
I still remember reading my first issue of PP. I had been reading Maximum Rock n Roll for years, and had kind of gotten fed up with it. I still bought it, because at the time, it was the only kind of "international" window I had to punk rock. But I always felt that MRR was kind of stuck up and elitist in that "punker than thou" way. The attitude and voice of the content was akin to the meatheaded older punks I grew up around who were always sneering at me and trying to keep me out of their scene because I wasn't "cool" enough, "drunk" enough, or "crusty" enough. That's what reading MRR was like. It was like, "Here's our scene, take a look at it, but don't touch, ya fookin' quiff! OY!"
From that first issue of Punk Planet, however, I felt instantly INCLUDED, not excluded. There was more of a "community" sort of aspect to the writing and presentation. The columns and articles were speaking to and with me, not AT me. I was reading about shows and scenes in L.A., New York, Wisconsin, Chicago, Virginia... but the way it was portrayed - it felt like, even though I was isolated in my little corner of Shitfuck, Canada - the scene we had here was somehow connected to it, part of the same scene.
And beyond the music, PP continually impressed me with the scope of it's attention to world issues and activism. They managed to attract the most interesting voices with the most unique perspectives. Two pieces immediately come to mind. One was a series of letters from a kid living in the middle of war-torn Bosnia compiled into an intense portrait of what it was like to be there during that time; it was coverage unlike any other offered by the standard media outlets, and offered a perspective that was painfully relatable. The other was a series of inteviews with inmates on death row that painted a vivid portrait of their existence and fashioned a look at the death penalty issue that could not have been achieved by any CNN or A&E Investigative Report.
I guess the demise of Punk Planet is just another symptom of the shrinking world, and the digital revolution. I imagine it must be difficult to sustain and attract new readers / subscribers when information and entertainment are so easily and quickly available from your home via the internet.
And I know voices and visions such as these will always have a place on the internet. But it's not the same. It's not the same as holding the magazine in your hands, getting the newsprint on your fingers, throwing it into your backpack and taking it with you, or picking up the new issue at the little indie record shop. Love of the printed word, and all that; Something to look forward to, pass around to your friends. It's like the whole digital-music-is-not-the-same-as-being-able-to-hold-that-record-in-your-hands thing.
Oh well, I guess i'll keep re-reading the back issues. I always find something new there anyway.
Congratulations on 80 issues and 13 years, Punk Planet. That is an amazing feat. You'll be missed.
_________________
I can't drive the bus and argue with you rubes all at the same time!
Last edited by Modem on Wed Sep 26, 2007 12:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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