magazine

In October 1883, Theodore Presser began publishing The Etude, a magazine of music for experts and students. Presser had studied music and led university department for years, but wished to spread the love and understanding of music beyond the conservatory and university. With $250, Presser started publishing his music magazine and almost immediately had to expand to larger facilities to keep up with the demand.

The Etude was published into the 1960s, and reflected the times it spanned. The earlier issues were primairly classically-focused, but as tastes and technology changed, Presser’s magazine evolved to include jazz, ragtime, modern composers, and encompass new technologies from the phonograph to radio to television. This progression is what appeals most to a non-musician like myself. While I wouldn’t pass up a copy of Radio Guide and its articles on performers and music, The Etude has always seemed a bit more stuffy and mechanical. While The Etude does include a good amount of training and technique, the magazines are usually quite readable. There are often articles on the quality of music itself, profiles on the lives of composers and performers, and stories about how instruments are made or advents in new technology as it applies to music. There’s a surprising amount of overlap between The Etudes of the 1930s and Radio Guides from the 1930s — their focus may be different, but record collectors like myself won’t be disappointed by the articles of this period.

An obvious crossover are the sheet-music collectors; while much of the appeal of sheet-music tends to be the cover art, amateur and professional musicians alike do collect sheet-music for the songs within. Each The Etude usually has 5 to 10 pages of sheet music inside, arranged piano. The amount of music sadly declines in later years. Each issue usually has several short tunes in a variety of genres; these genres change as time passes, but largely remain classical, or at least ‘music-schooly’ in that the 1950s issues don’t include Frank Sinatra tunes.

Another of my favorite part of these magazines are the advertisements — ads for player pianos, music schools, and girdles figure prominently in early The Etude, with radios and phonographs picking up prominence through the 1920s and 30s, then to tape recorders, amplifiers, and electric organs into the 1950s and beyond. The interior pages, sadly, were largely black-and-white, although the outside back cover was usually in color. The Etude’s covers changed in style as well over the years — in the beginning, each issue was page-numbered by volume, but this practice diminished by the 1920s and the magazine began to look more like a modern magazine. Earlier magazines measured 13-1/2″ x 10-1/2″ but in the early 1940s the format changed to a sheet-music-like 9-1/2″ x 12″. In my opinion, the cover art through the 1930s was the best of the magazine; after the smaller format change, covers were still creative, but by the 1950s covers seemed to use more clip-art, photos, and classic paintings. Before the 1920s, only the January issue had a cover, as the rest of the year was expected to be bound into a single edition.

Having all the resources of a publisher, Presser began to release sheetmusic, which, of course, had prime advertising placement in The Etude; The Theodore Presser Company he founded still exists today, continuing to publish the music of new and classic composers. The Etude may not be still published, but so many issues were sent out to schools, independent music teachers, and music afficianados, they are quite common at auctions and estate sales. Whether you are a musician, or just a dedicated listener, you shouldn’t pass up a pile of The Etude: you’ll probably find something more interesting than you think.

Magazines are a fun diversion of ephemeral publishing. They’re far more permanent than a lot of ephemera, closer to books than newspapers are, but by the magazine’s periodical nature a replacement appears on a regular basis. A lot of writers got their start in magazines, and most freelance writers consider it a coup when a magazine picks up their articles. A magazine’s longer timescale allows for more in-depth stories than a newspaper, so there’s a lot for readers to enjoy. They are usually printed in large volume, so there’s a chance they’ll survive long enough for a collector to track every issue down…if they’re lucky.

So, as you might guess, I have a few magazine collections. One can be viewed here, a collection of the Howard Binford’s Guide, a local ’sights and scene’ magazine from the Fargo area in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. As an amateur Fargo historian, these old magazines hold a treasure trove of trivial information — what movies were playing, what musicians were in town, profiles of not-so-famous locals, editorials with historical notes, photos of new buildings, long-gone buildings, and all sorts of neat info. I’ve found them at the used book stores before, but it’s a small-run magazine that started 40 years ago and ended 20 years ago. How’d I get all these in my collection?

Tip 1: Put an ad in the paper. Most classifieds have a section for ‘items wanted’, giving people a place to ask for things they want, in hopes somebody has some to get rid of. I actually used a service of the local waste disposal department that lets people put up free ads to get rid of their junk. If your community has an active Craigslist community, it might work as well, or if ads are cheap turn to the newspaper’s classifieds. I left the ad in until it expired, requesting old issues of the Guide, but via the Google Cache another Fargoan found me about a month later. She’d uncovered a box of Binford Guides when cleaning her basement, and dropped me a line: I saved them from the garbage, she got a little extra room in the basement, and now I got to fill in a bunch of spaces in my collection. It’s far from complete, but getting a bunch this way saved me time tracking down issues one-by-one.

That brings me to my collection of The Philistine, a magazine of witty lifestyle advice from the Roycrofters. It was published once “every little while,” that translates to ‘monthly.’ The first batch of these were bought by the wifey and I at a local antique shop, without knowing what they were. We were intrigued by the old advertisements and the name, and I got more interested in them the more I researched. Documenting the original set I got, I laid out their age on paper, by issue. Most of the ones I had were from around 1907, and the title page listed them as from Volume 24.

Tip 2: When collecting magazines, track volume and issue numbers to figure out what’s missing. Most serial publications identify issues by ‘volume’ and ‘issue’. How those are done varies depending on the publisher; some publishers, like comics, are always ‘volume 1′ so that the issue number never resets. Magazines often treat volume numbers as year-numbers, with each issue number corresponding to the month. Magazines intended to be compiled by volume often use sequential page-numbering (issue 1 ends at page 121, issue 2 starts at page 122), which helps put issues in order. By pulling together a few issues spanning a year or two of time, it should become clear what system a magazine uses. Another handy option is to find a library with microfilm or digital archives — it’s a quick way to see what the back-issues look like, and plan your collection accordingly. Publications changed size, format, and regularity without warning, so the last issue of a magazine may look quite different than the first.

The Philistine changed volume-number twice yearly: June and December. Using this info, I backed up chronologically, making myself a ‘checklist’ of all issues back to Volume 1, 1895. That’s a lot of space to fill in, and I doubt anybody in the area has a box in the basement they’re getting ready to throw out. So, to fill out this collection, I’ve been doing:

Tip 3: look for bound editions. Most often found on the shelves of libraries, many periodicals released bound collections of their back issues, available to their readers and lending-libraries alike. While these can be somewhat rare, getting an entire volume of a magazine for $20-$30 is easier than trying to piecemeal together a year of magazines in individual issues at $3 ea with separate shipping on all.

The Roycrofters also ran a bookbinding shop, so they were handy enough to bind their own Philistine back-issues. This makes them more widespread than a lot of other magazines, especially smaller-circulation magazines that didn’t save for posterity. I’ve bought several, but they’re mostly later-year issues like the ones I already have. As you might notice with the Binford Guides, it’s easier to find the more-recent issues, after the subscriber list grew and issues have had less time to end up in the trash. What do you do when you need to fill in specific issues, or find those rarer, older issues?

Tip 4: become obsessed. Well, you’re a collector, aren’t you? Those missing issues are like a rare action figure or limited-edition print. There’s fewer of them around, come up for sale less often, and are less available than you’d like. Watch the online auctions, search Google, dig through boxes of paper at auctions, and do whatever you can to get it. You’ll long for the days of spending $20 on a bound collection when you’re shelling out $25 for a single rare issue. I’m not to that point yet (and my pockets — and wifey — would never forgive me for spending that kind of scratch), but there will come a day when there’s three minutes left in an auction and going over budget seems like a good idea. That, there, is an obsessed magazine collector.

Yes, it’s true; the more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps this is most true when looking at vintage magazines, books, and other publications devoted to women.

Certainly this makes sense when it comes to certain matters of home life — those domestic skills one’s home ec teacher prattled on and on about.

What’s really changed in sewing? The machines have become lighter, the threads stronger and more color-safe, and even the fashions go in and out like the tide; but these things only improve upon the good-old-ways and reinforce that a few basic vintage sewing guides are all girl needs to re-vist retro fashions or to become a modern DIY maven.

And what about cook books? Despite what this 1956 Woman’s Day magazine says, little has changed in cooking. (Real cooking that is; not the microwave making, open box & follow instructions, stuff we do today — that’s food preparation, not real cooking.)

Again, the appliances have improved, the utensil materials have changed to withstand dishwashers and be kinder to the slick linings of pots and pans, but a dead chicken or raw carrot must be prepared the same old way.

And did you know that recipes cannot be copyrighted? So what does it matter if your Betty Crocker book was printed in 1950 (as my dear Grandma’s copy was) or 2008? OK, the flours may have ‘improved’ and you may have to know your shortening from your butter (neither are exactly the same as today’s margarine), but these are small adjustments any good cook can make. Or so I am told; I just have to follow the info Grandma wrote, scripted in her own hand, in the margins of the pages. My homemade cakes are waaaay better than the boxed versions, and when I make our traditional holiday cookies, they are really the traditional cookies. (Especially when I use Grandma’s bowls and vintage cookie cutters — it’s like she’s still with me, in the kitchen, singing Silver Bells… Even if it’s June.)

So it makes sense when some publications stay the same; they have no reason to change. But others…

Others you think would change — would have to change. Like magazines targeting women.

We are modern women, right? Our needs are different, so the issues presented to us would need to change… And the covers, not just in the images but in those attention-grabbing tag-lines, those, one would think, would need to change to reflect the times and our lives. But sometimes, it just seems that all that’s really changed are the fonts, the faces and the fashions.

While I spend lots of my time — one could easily argue that I spend too much of my time — mocking magazines, catalogs, and holiday crafts of yore, what is equally readily identifiable is that we women have not come a long way, baby. No matter what the Career Girls Game may try to tell us.

Mixed in with the acceptable & ‘understood’, like recipes and the tips to make life easier (most of which are recycled, issue by issue, decade by decade), are the more insidious.

Fashion, having long ago replaced individual style because it sells more ad space, still doesn’t stress the combination of form and function.

Beauty isn’t really about appreciating what you have; it’s about projecting what others want — be it men, your boss, or the cosmetic company. Beauty isn’t about confidence, but insecurity. Aging, of course, being the largest fear.

1949’s Beauty After Forty, by Edith Thornton McLeod, proclaims that “the mature woman has the right to life, love and happiness. She should pursue that right without loss of dignity!” Message: Beauty is the only ticket to happiness and dignity. (Sounds like how many magazines out today?)

If you’re doing as all the advice says, you’ll be forced to ask yourself, “At What Age Should A Modern Girl Marry?” Just like Beautiful Womanhood in 1923.

And then there will be the children…

Parenting is not about raising safe & sane children, but about making them into little fashionable things about which we can boast. Or, at the very least, not be embarrassed by; we can, if properly tutored in the magazine, always quote from the latest teacher and their school of thought to prove we really are doing the best we can. (And now, today’s modern woman can do the same for/with her dog — from dressing it, to pet nannies.)

Even celebrity obsession isn’t new. The Internet and digital photography may make it more rapid, but the rabid nature of the beast — to have us consume the people, profiles and products — has not.

Take a tour through vintage women’s publications and you’ll see that the times have not changed. Or that publications do not think we women have. Or is it that women have not changed in all this time?

We may no longer drive pink cars & control pink vacuums, but we’re still being pandered to as if we’re the ‘little woman’. And the arrow in this modern little woman’s heart is that we still buy it.

At least some of us do.

Me? I have no subscription to the latest women’s magazines, paper or online. I’ve got all these stacks of old magazines; and when I compare the old to the new, I find the pages aren’t the only things which are yellowing and brittle.

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I don’t want to be that guy that they someday find buried under 5 feet of flaky old magazines. I really don’t. I don’t want to suffer the indignity of having them realize that I ate my own left arm to survive while I was trapped, and I don’t want them, most importantly, touching my stuff.

When I realized that I was probably already 75% THAT GUY, I decided to start parting with some of my magazines and eliminate that possible fatality from my immediate future. I’d much rather have my corpse discovered under 750 pounds of Darth Vader memorabilia anyhow, because at least Vader is badass – National Geographic much less so.

My love affair with magazines has always been a tumultuous one, and it very likely began with my subscription to Nintendo Power back in the early-1990s. As each issue arrived in the mail, I’d immediately flip to the tips and tricks section, seeking out passwords and hoping beyond hope that they’d actually match up with my meager supply of games this month and maybe help me finally beat the creepy alien guy at the end of Mega Man 2. Pages upon pages were dedicated to full maps of game levels and how to beat them, we’d get the occasional comic book chapter set in the universe of Metroid or Super Mario Brothers, some trading cards, and what generally amounted to a very fulfilling game-related experience. The ridiculous stack of these magazines grew exponentially, until I simply had to part with them to make room for the next big thing, though I still maintain that I regret every Nintendo item that I’ve ever lost contact with.

As that interest inevitably waned, Wizard Magazine took over. Every month, I’d get the scoop on what was happening to which comic book character, as well as read lonely nerd observations about which heroine was the sexiest THIS month. The artworks featured inside were all prime examples of the creative comic book boom of the mid-1990s, and provided all kinds of inspiration and things to mimic as I was finding my own visual feet, building upon the surreal video game art of previous years. Wizard Magazine slowly became less and less amusing (as well as mired in mini-scandal after scandal), and even its action figure counterpart, ToyFare, lost its luster, so their re-subscription cards found their way to the trash, as did piles upon piles of back issues. While video game hints remained eternal, nerdy speculation about artists and comic storylines that happened six years ago were only remotely amusing from a pseudo-historical perspective.

Somewhere in there was a misguided gift of a subscription to Time Magazine as given to me by my grandparents, mostly because I was a Newsweek man at the time. Again, this was another collection of magazines that lost all factual validity very quickly, often only weeks after they were published. Beyond that, their flimsy paper stock clearly wasn’t intended to endure more than one casual reading. Years of back issues fell into the recycling bins. Yes, even the pithy back page current-events snippets. Magazines, by their nature, are usually designed to be temporary, dispensing the most current topics and trends and not expecting to remain current after the next issue comes out, so it’s unusual to find an older magazine in anything resembling pristine condition.

Through multiple collections of magazines, few have survived. Of all of these, only National Geographic remains nigh eternal by virtue of its inherent beauty and acknowledgment that the environments and sciences that they’re reporting on are in a constant state of flux. Plus, they have neat things to draw from. I revel in the monthly arrival of WIRED Magazine in my mailbox (only ten dollars a year), and haven’t yet found the willpower necessary to part with semi-antiquated informational bits, because there’s undoubtedly some band they mentioned that I haven’t explored yet, or a page of science that I haven’t mined for my own personal benefit. I found my illustration gig at Daytrotter after reading about them in WIRED – surely my career in nuclear physics isn’t far behind. Still, one isn’t likely to find safely bagged copies of WIRED Magazine at the local flea market – that honor is reserved almost exclusively for Playboys and their careful documentation of the evolution of American sexuality.

Also indispensable is the collection of Juxtapoz magazines building up outside the bathroom door, featuring many of the most current (and usually blisteringly overexposed) pop surrealist artists of today, following evolving art trends, and dutifully licking the heels of seven or eight omnipresent creators who have long since stopped deserving it. These too, someday, will find their way back to the paper pulp repurposing centers and into other magazines, or toilet paper, or highly flammable dollar store paper lanterns. Most recently, though, an issue of Make Magazine fell into my hands, and I fell in love with the potential of magazines all over again.

This is a magazine designed to be preserved, full of scientific experiments and ‘hacks’ and ‘mash-ups’ of everyday objects. It’s casebound, it’s compact, and it’s a thing of exciting beauty – so much so that I buckled under the excitement and ordered two box sets of past issues from their website, all lovingly presented in slipcases. Once you start buying back issues to fill in a magazine collection, you might as well just lie down and start piling them on top of you, because that’s what fate, with the aid of its best friend gravity, is gonna do to you anyhow.