I’ve been a subscriber to Guitar One since 2000 or 2001. I always appreciated its dedication to lessons and learning, where Guitar World is more of a rock rag aimed at guitarists, and Guitar Player until recently skewed toward an older demographic. Guitar One in many ways took the place of my favorite magazine, Guitar (formerly Guitar for the Practicing Musician, which died around 1997). And so now Guitar One is dead. I learned this when I received a copy of Guitar World in the mail. The second page insert informed me of the demise of my preferred magazine, and that the two magazines, owned by the same publisher, have been fused to some degree.
But it’s just not the same, and now I have a subscription through November 2008 to the crappiest guitar magazine in the world. This is a rag that regularly hosts beer chugging contests between its staff and famous guitarists. This is a magazine that I subscribed to up until 1993 when Frank Zappa died, and they put Dimebag Darrell on the cover. Dime’s cover article featured a list of his tour-bus supplies in which he listed “acid – for long bus trips.” That so incensed me that I tore off the cover.
Granted, I was 17 and prone to melodrama. Now I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’ll probably test drive a few issues. There’s an offer for a refund, so maybe I’ll look into that.
Magazines are a precious thing. I think they can be an example of how well a competitive marketplace can work; however, they are also a realm where the adage “a rising tide lifts all ships” does not apply.
I feel your pain in different ways. I miss BYTE. I miss the pre-Internet Computer Shopper. I miss when PC Magazine was a thick as a rural Arkansas phone book. *sigh*
We’re getting old, man. Part of me thinks all magazines and paper media should die. The distribution system is inefficient and the environmental impact involved in newspapers and magazines is just staggeringly wasteful.