Thursday 8 September 2011

CCPS Miscellany: VOX 1983 (Issues 1-3)

Last year, our friend Greg Kushner sent us a surprise package that contained a huge pile of early VOX magazines. Some of our younger readers may not remember VOX - it was the monthly (mostly) publication that came out of CJSW, acting as a program guide and also a barometer of the scene. Plus, even from Issue #1, it had some of the best writing to ever come out of this city.

The magazine kicked off in September of 1983, and ran for about 15 years. In 1998, in one of the most disastrous management/governance moves that CJSW has ever made, the paper was sold to the Vancouver-based Georgia Straight and relaunched as the ill-fated weekly Calgary Straight. This move proved only one thing: don't mess with Ian Chiclo. The Straight could never compete with FFWD and folded... we can't even remember when.

We like to sometimes think that Beatroute carries the spirit of VOX, but then we actually read Beatroute and realize - nope. That spirit is still out there, but rather than being concentrated in one place as it was with VOX, it's diffused through all our city's publications.

Anyways, to give you a sense as to what the big deal was, we'll be scanning and posting issues over the next while, as we have the time and ability. Here are the first three issues from 1983 to get you started:


4 comments:

neldoreth said...

VOX was a great paper, but it didn't die because of the sale; by that time it was already dead at the hands of FFWD. FFWD sucked advertising revenue from VOX, and on top of that, when VOX staff jumped ship from VOX to FFWD I believe that they literally took many advertisers with them. So, given that VOX was going down regardless, the deal with the Straight had the benefit of maintaining a CJSW presence in the Calgary music magazine world. So really, you're right, don't mess with FFWD; both the VOX and the Straight went down to them...

Gene Poole said...

Respectfully, we disagree. We still believe VOX would have survived if it had stayed monthly and not gone to crap. We'll eventually post some of the latter issues, and you'll see why it died. Crap content, basically.

Anonymous said...

Any business with Kamil Krulis at the helm of ad sales will eventually perish. There's the connect.

robin said...

Can you make these available simply as PDF downloads?

As an independent DJ at the time I knew Vox... some made their way to us in London ONT. Didn't save them, however.