Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, takes a look back at the impact The Village Voice has had on music.
On Tuesday, it was announced that The Village Voice would be
ending their free weekly print publication. Though The Voice will be keeping
their website alive to continue their work reporting on politics and culture,
the impending absence of the print edition marks the end of an era in New York City’s
culture scene.
Over it’s more than six decades of publication, The Village
Voice has been home to some of pop culture’s most prominent reporters,
including music critics Robert Christgau and Lester Bangs and writers Ezra
Pound, James Baldwin, e.e. cummings, Allen Ginsberg and more. Even though it
has changed hands numerous times over that period, its quality has not
suffered, leading to three Pulitzer Prizes, a National Press Foundation Award
and a George Polk Award.
From its beginnings as a way for the citizens of Greenwich
Village to find out about news, cultural events and other important area
information to it’s now national and global span, The Village Voice has been
and continues to be a big part of music and culture. From concerts to album
rankings, the publication has left its mark on the music scene both locally and
globally.
Take the Pazz & Jop Poll, for example. Robert Christgau
created the Pazz & Jop year end music poll in 1971 for The Village Voice as
a way to tabulate the best albums and singles of the year. Hundreds of music
critics would send their weighted top ten lists to the publication for
compilation resulting in the final ranking. Even after Christgau was
unexpectedly fired from the publication in 1996, the Pazz & Jop poll
continued on, with 2016’s list coming out this past January (David
Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’ took the number one album spot while Beyonce’s
“Formation” took top single). It is still the most respected year end music
list available.
The Village Voice has also been deeply involved in live
music. For years the publication has served as a source to find out about
upcoming shows in the Greenwich Village area. But starting in 2001, the
publication decided to get into putting on its own live shows with the launch
of the Siren Music Festival. The free Coney Island music festival ran for 10
years and featured some of the biggest bands in indie-rock, including Ted Leo
& the Pharmacists, M.I.A, Spoon, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The
Shins, Modest
Mouse, Death Cab For Cutie, Cursive, Broken Social Scene, Matt & Kim
and more. In 2011, the festival changed its location to South Street Seaport
and its name to 4Knots, but continued to promote the same influential
indie-rock bands its predecessor did.
Between its reputation for outstanding news and cultural
coverage and its influence in the local and national music scene, The Village
Voice has been a cornerstone of New York’s culture scene for decades. With the
end of its print publication, another piece of the city’s history fades away,
only to be overtaken by the “new technology” of the internet.
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top new independent record shop, we have a wide selection of new and used vinyl
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