The Decline

I don't know a lot of people who at one point read The Onion's "A.V. Club" section with the same fervor I did from 1997 to 1998 (before the avclub.com url, clicking past The Onion's main page to get at the archives and look at what Henry Rollins had to say in his first interview), but I assume that those people are nonetheless out there.

The law diminishing marginal utility vis a vis A.V. reading didn't seem to apply during that time (q.e.d.: 2nd-half 1997 RS covers featured The Prodigy's Keith Flint, RZA and Zach de la Rocha and Puff Daddy; 1st-half 1998 of same featured Fiona Apple and Mariah Carey). Around 1997 to 1998, there was, post-grunge, a new and emphatic divide between "mainstream" and "indie," as the terms applied back then.

It was during these two years that the information barrier that kept obscure artists obscure began to disappear. Napster was on its way to the middle-land. At that stage in the game, the A.V. Club was perfect; anyone interested in finding out what was going on in the then-extant underground had only to read a feature interview in A.V. then leave their family computer on all night, hoping at least one of the low-ping downloads would be sitting on the desktop in the morning. Ani Difranco was on the cover of SPIN magazine in 1998. White critics were still pretty brave to write about rap music. White kids were still not sure whether to feel guilty about liking what rappers had to say about women.

The A.V. continued to yield this kind of enjoyment until around 2004, when blogs and Pitchfork hit it big. Suddenly it was very easy for obscure musicians to rocket from obscurity to relative obscurity.

Now, as has been repeatedly and emphatically pointed out, the gap between "indie" and "mainstream" has been obliterated, as "indie" has become less a descriptor of music and more a derogatory name for people with an irritating sense of fashion.

No publication, I think, is a greater casualty of the bridged indie chasm than the A.V. Club.

There are other considerations. The Onion moved from Madison, Wisc., to New York, N.Y. September 11 happened and the 'ion couldn't really handle it, pussing out the day of (I never understood the laudatory comments indicating the editors showed good taste by holding off until the following Tuesday, thereby creating a safe distance and editing out snide comments at a time when snide comments were especially needed), Pitchfork and Gawker rose up. Likely all these events co-conspired to kill the main things that made A.V. special, but the biggest change was one that extended beyond the newsroom and into a unified pop landscape whose towering mountains and obscure valleys became increasingly flattened.