The Rocket, the Bible of Northwest rock for 21 years, is apparently dead. Its 10/19 issue failed to get distributed, and the Midwesterner who bought it earlier this year has suddenly laid off its 18 staffers.
The paper (it liked to call itself a magazine, but it was still on tabloid-size newsprint) maintained a quite consistent aesthetic and attitude over its long existence. It always championed graphic excellence (many of its ex-art directors and freelance designers went on to careers at "real" magazines in NYC) and tight, if sometimes bullheaded, writing (its verbal alums include John Keister, Ann Powers, Robert Ferrigno, Scott McCaughey, Gillian Gaar, Evan Sult, Bruce Pavitt, and Robert McChesney).
It always championed the regional rock scene, though it also liked to consider itself a bit more sophisticated than its milieu. Its frequent lapses into Attitude-with-a-capital-A caused no end of predictable scorn from bands that thought it didn't write enough about them, or that it wrote about them but in an insufficiently reverent manner.
It was never exclusively local (it would put out-of-town "alternative" stars on many covers, and even had a '60s-oldies phase in the mid-'80s). But it gave a damn about Seattle rock bands years before any other prominent print organ did (remember, there wasn't even a Stranger until late '91, and the Weekly didn't give a damn about post-sixties youth).
By treating local bands as worthy of criticism, rather than something that had to be "supported" like a needy child, it performed an invaluable part toward the scene becoming what it became.
And when it did champion local acts, it did so in a way that made its suburban and out-of-town readers believe there was a bigger, more powerful Seattle rock scene than there was at the time.
It was never a great moneymaker, despite its influence. For most of the '80s it was a thin monthly (at a time when most other big US cities had at least one real alternative weekly), dependent upon ads from recording studios and instrument stores rather than end-consumer businesses. Like certain popular but marginal restaurants, it kept going by finding new owners hoping to turn it around. It went from once to twice a month; it added a Portland edition; it toyed with restaurant and movie coverage.
In the mid-'90s, it got bought up by BAM, a California chain of similar (but squarer) papers. Shortly after that, BAM shut down its other operations; leaving The Rocket as the last colonial outpost of a vanquished empire, a la Constantinople. Earlier this year, BAM finally gave up and sold The Rocket to a Midwesterner who either didn't realize how badly BAM had mismanaged it or mistakenly thought he could bring it back.
In the end, The Rocket's music specialization (and its odd fortnightly schedule) may prove to be what did it in. It couldn't compete for general nightlife and lifestyle advertising with The Stranger and a newly youth-ified Weekly, which both came out often enough to include complete movie calendars. Tablet, a new fortnightly alterna-tabloid whose second issue came out the day The Rocket announced its end, is trying to take both a more topically general and geographically specific approach (only circulating within Seattle) than The Rocket did.
But despite these specific conceptual limitations, some will undoubtedly see The Rocket's apparent end as another sign of the Northwest music scene fading back from former glories. Don't believe it.
The paper's failings were all its own, and were built into its basic concept. The music scene will continue without it, as a now-mature offspring that no longer needs to be prodded into striving for its full potential.
TOMORROW: How to improve Northwest Bookfest.
IN OTHER NEWS: Instead of trying to outlaw hiphop, maybe the "family values" goons should look at those violence-inspiring boy bands!
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