Here’s some good advice- if you’re going to make an announcement to a lot of people online and you’re slipping in a joke that might not be obvious, always tack on something that does make it obvious ("ha, ha” or a smiley face symbol).  I learned that the hard way when I made this announcement about the latest issue of Perfect Sound Forever: “rock crit dean Robert Christgau will edit the summer issue of PSF (which will be followed by rebuttal issues edited by Byron Coley and Joe Carducci)...” The first part is true- Christgau’s doing the next issue- but Coley or Carducci ain’t doing any issues of PSF that I know of (though I’d be glad to work with them if they wanted to).  Since neither of them seems to be a fan of the Dean, I thought it’d be funny to imagine them doing entire issues as rebuttals to his work.  Not funny enough as it turns out since I received e-mail’s congratulating PSF for working with THREE esteemed scribes.  Only later did I realize that I posted that info late in the evening on March 31st, making it an unintentional April fools joke.  Oh well, live and learn… Admittedly, not as funny or outlandish as John McCain appearing at Burning Man (and yes, some people took that seriously too).

—Jason Gross

In already what’s shaping up to be a terrible year for music magazines (Harp, No Depression), yet another publication is going under.  Folio reports that Resonance is now calling it quits.  They were a fine indie publication- how could you not love a zine that puts Octopus Project on the cover and does a purposely fake Yo La Tengo cover with three models posing at the band?  Not to mention the fact that they offer the last two issues online for free.  Chalk it up to the usual problems- the postal rates for mailing mags shot up sharply, ad dollars sinking because of a bad economy (plus those bucks going online) and business models that didn’t embrace the web enough.  Harp and ND were looking to do more on the last front but it was too late.  I hate to say this but don’t be surprised if you see a spate of other print-first music pubs (not to mention many non-music pubs) go belly up in the rest of 2008.

—Jason Gross