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Posted by Paul Serotsky I was already finding it seemed rather "thin" (in the sense that there was no longer sufficient substance to hold my attention for anything like a full month) when, one day, I received some SPAM mail from Haymarket, from which I discovered that I could receive "Gramophone" more cheaply than my direct subscription! At the time, I was utterly unaware that Haymarket had "taken over" the publication. Maybe I wouldn't have minded, but they didn't even have the courtesy to reduce the cost of my current subscription, and they didn't even bother to reply to my letter of enquiry. This was a straw that irretrievably damaged the camel's back of a dyed-in-the-wool Yorkshireman, as it made that "thin" look more like "emaciated". I didn't bother to wait to see if things might pick up again, and jumped ship on the spot. Sadly, I find myself agreeing with everything that John and Patrick have said. "Gramophone" is but one example of the accelerating erosion of "substance" by the burgeoning "LCD Tendency". The World is apparently becoming obsessed with cosmetics. To take another example, just one of many: only yesterday, on the news, I witnessed a piece on the demise of OU television, a piece that positively rejoiced that no longer would we have to "suffer" those "awful" complicated, incomprehensible technical diagrams. No voice was raised to point out that such things are part and parcel of physics, engineering and higher mathematics, and that no amount of "cosmetics" (flashy visuals and sound-effects) would replace them effectively, not if "understanding" was your goal. The parallel with the decline of "Gramophone" is depressing, to say the least. Where will it all end? If all are sheep, who will be the shepherds?
on December 16, 2006, 5:06 pm, in reply to "The Decline of Gramophone"
80.229.144.169
I can probably stretch the range a bit - my first "Gramophone" arrived through the letterbox in 1963/4. In those days, it was a genuine "monthly" magazine, in that one month's copy kept me busy right up until the next one arrived, and sometimes I even found myself torn between finishing the last one and diving into the next.
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