My eulogy for Blender magazine

Last week Blender magazine announced it will shut down its print edition. I will miss Blender. It was easily my favorite music publication. Unlike Rolling Stone, which I can consume in its entirety during one 30-minute lunch, an issue of Blender took days to read through. It was just so jam-packed with information. There were all these cool features - Download These, The Greatest Songs of All-Time, Ask Blender, and the quirky last-page conversation. There was the feature where a band was given $848 by Blender and had to spend it all in one night while Blender's photographers documented the proceedings.

There was the monthly interview in which all of the questions were provided by fans. That was a great concept - the writers could ask the embarrassing questions they wanted to ask while shifting the blame to the fans - 'No, Tommy Lee, I personally would never ask if you've ever had a gay experience, but Betsy from Milwaukee really wants to know!'

I had a subscription to Blender for several years. It was only $7.95 per year, which worked out to less than 75 cents an issue. At that price you'd have to be a fool NOT to subscribe! Of course, maybe the low price explains why they went out of business.

My main beef with Blender was that they never put me in the magazine. I kept sending them photos for that section where they show fans with pop stars, but they never saw fit to publish one. Guess what, I'm going to publish them here, out of spite:

Scott with Conor Oberst, Will Sheff, Damien Rice, Sophie B. Hawkins, Pete Yorn



Despite the lack of publicity they gave me, Blender was some good shit. My greatest concern now is what happens to Rob Sheffield, pop music's most witty, entertaining columnist. I never heard the story of why he left RS for Blender, but I hope someone else picks him up pronto. He must not be allowed to linger in journalistic purgatory!