The Crutch Stumbles, Rights Itself

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on May 10, 2006 1:48PM

Though Chicagoist exists only in the zeroes and ones of HTML coding, that doesn’t mean we don’t heart the print world. Few things are better than spending our Sunday morning curled up with the paper or picking up a zine or two when we’re out buying records. (Yes, buying! Not downloading! And records! Not MP3s! Fear our Ludditeness!).

Unfortunately, there’ll be one less zine for us to pick up from now on. The Crutch, modestly billed as “a rock and roll publication” and produced here in Chicago, is ceasing publication in its current form and re-launching as a blog.

In the past, the zine covered not only Chicago bands, but also national indie acts of some reknown. This month’s issue (available in PDF form on The Crutch website along with several back issues) carries features on Gogol Bordello, Silver Jews, and Living Things along with reviews of several new albums from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wolfmother and Pretty Girls Make Graves.

The Crutch Blog promises to be the music blog with “the biggest balls and the best natural tits,” which certainly sounds promising. The Crutch website has never lacked for great downloadable music, and the Crutch Blog continues that tradition with some live Raconteurs cuts and covers of the old Burt Bacharach chestnut “My Little Red Book.”

Chicagoist has always admired The Crutch’s smart writing in the face of so much of today’s rock criticism that seems intent on showing off how much smarter the writer is than the material that he or she is reviewing. While we’ll miss The Crutch as a publication, we’re fans of blogging too and look forward to reading The Crutch 2.0.