Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
[nggallery id=55] FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Convolvere art show opening Jack Long at GR2 Sponsored by Scion June 21 – July 16 Reception: Saturday, June 21, 6:30 -10:00 GR2 2062 Sawtelle Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90025 gr2.net (310) 445-9276 Giant Robot is proud to host Convolvere, an art show featuring the work of Jack Long. Jack Long grew up in West Chester, Pennsylvania and received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2002. Painting in oils on wood, his work explores human relationships in a narrative setting. His paintings draw heavily upon the tradition of storytelling, often utilizing motifs and imagery found in mythology and fairytales. Now based in Los Angeles, he says, “I feel like people think of their lives in this way, relating moments in their lives to fairytales or mythology. My paintings have grown out of this; they reveal the deeply rooted patterns of storytelling, mythology, and mysticism in our lives.” For the show, Long is preparing at least 30 oil paintings on wood. Most of them will utilize a new plant motif as well as an extended color palette in his effort to depict man’s relationship with others, nature, and society.
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A day later. On Punk Planet. I had time to think about it, and I didn’t get into reading the many eulogies or blog posts that I’m sure exist for this fallen magazine. It’s been 13 years for them, and actually the same for us as well, and I do know their magazine will be missed tremendously. It seems like they fit well into the world of indie publishing. They’ve probably won a few awards at the hands of UTNE reader. If you go into any indie record store, and many mainstream ones as well, you’ll see their magazine with that special look that they created. Punk Planet was more than just a music magazine, that seemed like the last bit important about them. They covered the rest of a punk rocker’s life, from politics to design to finances, and that’s something most music magazines won’t touch. Unfortunately, the last one, finances is what ultimately ended this publication. The same distributor we used, Indypress, AKA Bigtop, went under leaving PP in a world of debt, and believe it or not, left us in a quandary as well. (This isn’t about us, and I seriously doubt people would give that much care if we ceased to exist as compared to PP) The debt of a distributor going down and not paying for perhaps 3 issues is huge, it’s over a year’s salary for most people, and where’s that money going to mysteriously appear? You’re pretty much fucked, and that’s what happened. It’s a shame that the demise of a magazine isn’t from shitty journalism, but it’s from the business of distribution – the part that’s largely out of a publisher’s control if you’re a newsstand magazine. The next parts that I’m sure helped their end, is the huge amount of crap online. There’s so much, that people are reading less in print, and just taking quick looks at blogs, and “tidbits” of information here and there. Are print mags actually in trouble as a whole? Ads are going the way of the internet more recently since the technology of online advertising has improved as has internet video and tv type of content. Maybe that’s another culprit. It’s not lack of funds by the readers, that’s for sure, since everyone seems to have enough to buy a beer or a boba, which is just about the cost of a magazine. So, I lied, this will be a little about GR, since I’m now thinking about our situation. Imagine, GR with no stores or restaurant – just a magazine. Are we in the greatest shape ever? Probably not. Is advertising in print down? Maybe some. Are subscriptions up or down. Maybe a bit down. So what’s going to happen here? What can we do to prevent ourselves from being the next Clamor mag or Punk Planet? I’m not sure if I have any answers to this, except I feel good about making a magazine, and I do feel that our work is important...
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A day later. On Punk Planet.
I had time to think about it, and I didn't get into reading the many eulogies or blog posts that I'm sure exist for this fallen magazine. It's been 13 years for them, and actually the same for us as well, and I do know their magazine will be missed tremendously. It seems like they fit well into the world of indie publishing. They've probably won a few awards at the...
Continue reading
I had time to think about it, and I didn't get into reading the many eulogies or blog posts that I'm sure exist for this fallen magazine. It's been 13 years for them, and actually the same for us as well, and I do know their magazine will be missed tremendously. It seems like they fit well into the world of indie publishing. They've probably won a few awards at the...
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. As to the latter two points, we could blame the Internet. It makes editorial content—and bands—easy to find, for free. (We’re sure our fellow indie labels, those still standing, can attest to the difficulties created in the last few years). We can blame educational and media systems that value magazines focused on consumerism over engaged dissent. And we can blame the popular but mistaken belief that punk died several years ago. But it is also true that great things end, and the best things end far too quickly. As to bad distribution deals, we must acknowledge that the financial hit we took in October of 2005, when our newsstand distributor announced that it was in dire straits, was worse than we originally thought. As the dust began to clear from their January bankruptcy announcement, we began to realize that the magazine was left in significantly worse shape, distribution-wise, than they let on. Add to that the stagnation that the independent record world is suffering under and the effect that has had on our ad sales, not to mention the loss of independent bookstores with a vested interest in selling our publication, and it all adds up to a desperate situation. This has been made far worse by the exhaustion felt from a year and a half of fighting our own distributor. It was a situation that didn’t have an exit strategy other then, well, exiting. The books line will continue to publish, and the website will continue to be a social networking site for independently minded folk; Dan will be staying with both, but Anne will be moving on, only blogging occasionally at punkplanet.com while she pursues other interests. All further inquiries about the magazine should be addressed to theend@punkplanet.com. There probably isn’t much else to say that we haven’t already said in PP80—in articles about new activist projects, SXSW, the demise of the IPA, and transgender media, and in interviews with the G7 Welcoming Committee, Andre Schiffrin, and The Steinways. Read it, enjoy it, and find in it enough inspiration to last until we come back in some other...
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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...
Continue reading
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...