The All-New STYLUS.

the comments section was a bad idea imo

-- omar little, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 17:36 (5 minutes ago) Link

Nah, most of us were pretty self-loathing

Wow.

P Mac stunned like a muh

Well, I thought the comments section was pretty great, but then I would, wouldn't I (I posted as grandbanks). Stylus really was great. Tried not to be a dick too often, but this isn't about me. Thanks for all of the hard work, and for keeping those comments sections rolling. Made for a lot of shit, but every once in a while really fucking worked. The site (and writing) was definitely better than the comments.

I couldn't keep up: were you the same as pabanks?

Nope, just grandbanks, though people got my name wrong a bunch.

Loved you guys! Sad to see it end.

oh god it's fucking alext being his usual pass-agg snarksome self on that poptimist thread. fuck that.

Stylus was one of my favorite magazines. While its passing saddens me, my immediate feeling is one of gratitude. More than any other magazine, Stylus was an indispensable companion of acumen and wit in a world where the chaff was increasingly mistaken for the wheat. My favorite contributors were Thomas Inskeep, Mallory O’Donnell and, of course, the Singles Jukebox cabal (easily the best singles reviewers around). Every happiness to you all!

Yeah, I really wish the Singles Jukebox could live on somewhere else.

Me too, but I think WBS had burnt out on it just as much as Todd had with the main site. Not only was he in charge of finding and uploading 20 songs a week, he was then saddled with the unenviable task of begging people to submit blurbs about them. Bear in mind, I greatly preferred the 2007 system where we weren't assigned songs and could write about whatever we liked, but that left Will pulling teeth when nobody could be bothered to say anything about Daughtry.

Makes sense, but I'm really going to miss that the most I think. It was great for me to keep on newer singles from older albums I might have ignored.

Will definitely miss reading the singles jukebox, but I have to admit, I found it really difficult to write for (I signed up in the summer and came through with maybe 4-5 reviews). The turnaround time was just too quick. If you didn't claim your songs early on by sending in your review, you wouldn't make it in. I can see the advantage of this from a publication's perspective and from a reader's perspective, but trying to shape snap judgments into some kind of coherent review I was comfortable with was incredibly difficult. I'm fussy and slow at this stuff, so maybe it's just me, but I reached a point fairly early into the process where I thought, no way can I keep up with this. I don't know how some of the regulars did it--unemployment?

Still, I'd be happier if it was still around. In terms of my new song playlists, I bet half of my titles were discovered thru the jukebox. I don't know where I'm gonna pick up on some of this stuff.

I had some trouble with that, too, Scott. Mostly what I'd do was download everything that hadn't gone up yet on Sunday, listen to them on the way to work on Monday morning, and send a batch or two during the rest of the week (usually no more than 6 songs total). Sometimes I'd get off that schedule, though, and end up not being able to submit anything at all that week. And Mondays were usually shot for me, too, since I didn't have enough time to listen over the weekend.

It became easier when Will started creating a publication schedule, so I knew that if I wanted to review a particular song I had to have it in by a particular day. Before that, you're right, a song would often go up before you knew it.

Esteban Buttez offered to write for the Singles Jukebox and got turned down!!

SO MUCH FOR THAT THEORY!!

Shut the fuck up already.

i thought he had his own board where he could be unfunny?

I wasn't aware of this and I'm sad to hear the news. Stylus was a welcome reminder that people are still capable of caring for and writing about music without regard for its potential appeal, and/or the writers' misplaced sense of involvement therein. It is a beautiful thing to consider for how long Todd and his compatriots maintained such fanatical altruism; even more so if you understand how little they benefited, and how much they sacrificed.

I lost a lung while reviewing a Fat Joe album. So much sacrifice.

Burns owes me about $16,780, which I expect to reclaim in two days in the form of Jaegermeister shots.

Alex, you're confused - I was talking about the people that ran the site, not the thundering nobodies from which they accepted copy.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a64/bartleyride/9ea8cc38.gif

Alfred, isn't Jager a bit crass for you?

I've written for other sites, so I can't exactly say I have no dog in this fight, but at least mine are currently muzzled, and -- here it comes -- I will really, genuinely miss Stylus and its often insightful and generally talented writers.

Thank you Liz C. for reviewing my band.

<3

Couldn't you guys write goodbye articles that suck instead of all these great ones? *sigh*

And that's it; no more updates, ever.

Maybe tomorrow Todd'll be all like "it was just a Halloween horror prank, lol!" :-(((

Shut the fuck up already.

WELCOME TO REAL LIFE, SON

I just checked the site and saw something about Ned Raggett and a Xanadu piece.

what baffles me is why if all the writers are all like 'no one else does what the site did, it filled a gap, no one else will let us write whatever we wanted' etc they don't club together and start a new site?

Isn't there like 40 or so of you?

like a phoenix from the ashes...it might've been harder work but c'mon...do you love what you do or not?

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000000ZGO.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg

wbs did a great job keeping the jukebox on top and relevant i have to say.

Goddamn, those essays today really killed me.

Yeah, good stuff all around.

would have liked to see blurbs for all albums/singles but i'm just being selfish. anyway, i'm in the (fairy large 'round here, it seems) boat of people who can thank todd for my first writing gig. he's a cool dude and put up with a lot of my bullshit. RIP.

Makes me want to book a last-minute flight to NYC, to be honest.

I just checked the site and saw something about Ned Raggett and a Xanadu piece.

Uh?

Alfred off-handedly mentions Ned in his year-end essay; I don't know about Xanadu.

mike powell's essay is A++++. good thing he's been writing for the voice and such.

Powell: all-round best writer Stylus ever had.

Makes me want to book a last-minute flight to NYC, to be honest.

DO IT.

dom otm.

xp I never knew it was happening until Ian mentioned it last week!

Anyway, I won't go. I just moved into a new place and have spent too much money lately on movers and furniture and such, but I'll dearly wish I was there.

so is the site going to stay up for awhile?

It'll be up for a long while, which saved me gi-normous printing expenses.

I just checked the site and saw something about Ned Raggett and a Xanadu piece.

Uh?
Someone said something about it being a joke and I thought about the time Freaky Trigger went down.

It'll be up for a long while, which saved me gi-normous printing expenses.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, October 31, 2007 2:48 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

does that mean that there are intentions to keep the domain and server up for the foreseeable future and preserve the archive? or is there a good chance that the archive will up and disappear a year or two down the line?

Burns said it'll be up for at least a year.