JazzTimes in suspense

So I just received an email (actually it arrived last night) informing me that JazzTimes has "suspended publication of the magazine and furloughed its staff while it finalizes the sale of its assets." That's a direct quote from the website, so I'm not speaking out of turn. (I can't hyperlink where I am now, but you can find it at www.jazztimes.com.)

That's just beautiful. Not just another magazine on the chopping block, but one that's devoted to jazz and that writes very well about it. And I'm not talking about my writing by any means. Evan Haga, Bill Milkowski, our beloved guru Nat Hentoff, as well as the occasional sharp and witty two cents from editor Lee Mergner - it made me glad to be part of the publication. The magazine also proved that while jazz has a rich past, it has an equally important future that people need to know about. (And how. You know how hard it was to get a Mosaic review in there if your name wasn't Scott Yanov? No offense, Scott, you're the tops too. I did get to review a few Mosaics.)

I'm getting ahead of myself. The magazine's not defunct yet. I'm just worried. It's just that I've been through this before, you know.

Go out and buy the May issue of JazzTimes while you can. It has a great interview with John Zorn, who's on the cover. And when you go to the counter, slam it down and say, "I'm mad as all-get-out, and I'm not going to take it anymore."

If only that would happen on some sort of scale, maybe we could start a revolution.