5 ms·

City Pages, the Alt-Weekly Where Music Writing Reigned Supreme

68 points by tintinnabula 6y ago

DeafSquid 6y ago
Damn
bovermyer 6y ago
As someone who lives in Minneapolis, City Pages was also invaluable as a source of info on good places to eat and drink around these parts. Sad to see it go.
- DeafSquid 6y ago
  I live in Fargo and would always check City Pages to see where I should go when visiting
  - dhimes 6y ago
    DC as well.
joshmn 6y ago
Minnesota native here: Really sad to see it go. City Pages had a lot of really great information on everything from music to food. It and its writers took things too seriously, either, which was rather refreshing, regardless of your social or political viewpoint.
pessimizer 6y ago
There were alt-weeklies everywhere before the early 90s, largely surviving by being where you would find out all the bands that were playing that week, all of the plays if your city had theater, new restaurants and clubs opening up, and the drink specials at the places you knew and loved. At some point one figured out that they could make their personal ads into "1-900" numbers, and rolled every free paper up all over the country within a few years, first making them bland, then shutting most of them down after people stopped reading them. A very few survived when their parent decided to spend a minimal amount of money on them (as the bottom fell out of the "900" number biz.) I guess you take independent writing anywhere you can get it these days, but I'm not sure much has been lost. There will still be a market for those papers after covid, because they're basically entertainment programs, like maps to amusement parks. Maybe if what is now Village Voice Media are out of the business, they'll have a chance to flourish again.
trophycase 6y ago
Wow, I live in Minneapolis and love this paper, but did not know it was dead. Sad.
eric_b 6y ago
I was not surprised when they shut down the City Pages. It had become a shadow of its former self (and its former self was OK, but I can't imagine it deserving a write up in a national paper?). Any kind of credible music journalism had been gone for years. Honestly, reading this review I have to wonder, did the author even read the City Pages very often? For the last few years it was mostly a regurgitation of what was popular on Twitter with some salacious headlines thrown in.
- cowsandmilk 6y ago
  The author was the music editor at city pages from 2017-shut down, so I would assume he did read their music journalism, but might be biased about its importance.
  - eric_b 6y ago
    Yikes, that certainly does explain the write up. Maybe also explains the incredible decline in quality of writing over the last few years.
karlshea 6y ago
The cover and inner page from this year's annual "Best Of" issue. https://imgur.com/a/kPR5uj2 https://imgur.com/a/kPR5uj2 It's usually the biggest issue of the year, thick with articles and ads—but this year it was thin and filled with hilarious fake awards all related to the COVID and the statewide stay-at-home order, which had started two weeks earlier and would run for another month. It was exactly the laugh I needed then; I'll be super sad to see this paper go.

68 points by tintinnabula 6y ago

Damn

As someone who lives in Minneapolis, City Pages was also invaluable as a source of info on good places to eat and drink around these parts. Sad to see it go.

DeafSquid 6y ago
I live in Fargo and would always check City Pages to see where I should go when visiting
- dhimes 6y ago
  DC as well.

joshmn 6y ago

Minnesota native here: Really sad to see it go. City Pages had a lot of really great information on everything from music to food. It and its writers took things too seriously, either, which was rather refreshing, regardless of your social or political viewpoint.

pessimizer 6y ago

There were alt-weeklies everywhere before the early 90s, largely surviving by being where you would find out all the bands that were playing that week, all of the plays if your city had theater, new restaurants and clubs opening up, and the drink specials at the places you knew and loved. At some point one figured out that they could make their personal ads into "1-900" numbers, and rolled every free paper up all over the country within a few years, first making them bland, then shutting most of them down after people stopped reading them. A very few survived when their parent decided to spend a minimal amount of money on them (as the bottom fell out of the "900" number biz.) I guess you take independent writing anywhere you can get it these days, but I'm not sure much has been lost. There will still be a market for those papers after covid, because they're basically entertainment programs, like maps to amusement parks. Maybe if what is now Village Voice Media are out of the business, they'll have a chance to flourish again.

trophycase 6y ago

Wow, I live in Minneapolis and love this paper, but did not know it was dead. Sad.

eric_b 6y ago

I was not surprised when they shut down the City Pages. It had become a shadow of its former self (and its former self was OK, but I can't imagine it deserving a write up in a national paper?). Any kind of credible music journalism had been gone for years. Honestly, reading this review I have to wonder, did the author even read the City Pages very often? For the last few years it was mostly a regurgitation of what was popular on Twitter with some salacious headlines thrown in.

cowsandmilk 6y ago
The author was the music editor at city pages from 2017-shut down, so I would assume he did read their music journalism, but might be biased about its importance.
- eric_b 6y ago
  Yikes, that certainly does explain the write up. Maybe also explains the incredible decline in quality of writing over the last few years.

karlshea 6y ago

The cover and inner page from this year's annual "Best Of" issue. https://imgur.com/a/kPR5uj2 https://imgur.com/a/kPR5uj2 It's usually the biggest issue of the year, thick with articles and ads—but this year it was thin and filled with hilarious fake awards all related to the COVID and the statewide stay-at-home order, which had started two weeks earlier and would run for another month. It was exactly the laugh I needed then; I'll be super sad to see this paper go.