Editor’s Note: This is the unpublished version of my Letter From The Editor I ran in the Winter 2007 issue of IRT. Initially, I had cut it on account of music editor Rob Harvilla’s kind albeit neutral mention of our humble publication in his CMJ blog as a sign of solidarity. But after reading the Pazz and Jop issue of the new Voice, which not only fails to thank any of the critics who have been submitting ballots for umpteen years (2006 being my 9th year, personally), but also completely eschews the original P & J poobahs’, Messrs. Chuck Eddy and Robert Christgau, kind gesture of posting all of the polling critics’ top ten lists and comments on their website. How’s that for a fine fuck you, huh? So just on principle, here is my original, uncut Letter From The Editor for Winter 2007, complete with my initial commentary on the newly diluted, New Times-ruined Village Voice:
Dear New York,
Welp…
CBGB has officially shut its doors after over 33 years of underground rock. A special thanks to former IRT art director Jesse Smith for hooking a brother up with an extra ticket to see the almighty Bad Brains on the second night of their three-night last stand at the venue that made them Jah Rastafari here in NYC. And then two weeks prior to that, seeing Fishbone rock the OMFUG like it was 1991 had me skankin’ to the beat like Lloyd Dobler all over that mo’fucker. I still can’t believe that famous canopy will never illuminate the Bowery ever again. Now I know how the hippies felt when the Fillmore East went tits up.
Tower Records succumbed to their own corporate incompetence and now we have six gaping holes in the New York area where the only commercial chain record shop that matters once stood. I’ll never forget my first trip to the Tower in Carle Place when I was in 8th grade, where I picked up R.E.M.’s Green and the Travelling Wilburys Vol. 1 on cassette, while
completely eschewing the now ultra-rare copy of Mr. Bungle’s The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny that I still kick myself in the head over for not picking up to this day. Yeah, they might’ve been too expensive, but shit, man, if you were looking for anything from Wreckless Eric’s Stiff Records collection to Archie Shepp’s Attica Blues to The Moray Eels Eat The Holy Modal Rounders, they had it in stock with copies to spare. Try finding that stuff at FYE. Good luck.
And finally, what the hell is up with the Village Voice. Man, listen. I was never a big fan of Chuck Eddy and Robert Christgau. Eddy once wrote me an email stating that “none of the writing in IRT was Voice quality work” while Christgau is a codgy old bastard whose best years are long behind him. But I would take those cranky, elitist poobahs over the complete moron the corporate souljackers at New Times have running the music section of the Voice these days. To every New Yorker currently writing hate mail to Rob Harvilla and the other nutlicks who turned one of the last bastions of renegade journalism into another kowtowing homogenized “alternative weekly” who puts assholes like Constantine from American Idol on the cover now instead of people in NY who matter, keep on hating those haters. And if the Voice won’t print your letters, send them over to IRT, cuz you know we will.
And for those of you who still can’t figure out what the Interboro Rock Tribune is all about, please review this letter over and over again until you recognize that the New York that we grew up in is dying a slow, painful, rotting death and the only thing we have left
is the memories of the Utopia we once knew and loved.
Well, at least the minority of us who lived in the area their whole lives and didn’t transplant themselves here from Canada, Ohio and Kazakhstan or wherever the hell those people who run that other so-called local music magazine come from.
Memories that you will only read, well at least in an authentic light, here in the Interboro Rock Tribune.
NYC needs the IRT, perhaps now more than ever.
Whether you can get down with that or not, hey man, that’s your issue.
Respect,
Ed.
Last Modified : February 13th, 2007
Filed under : news, Op-Ed
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