Countercultural publishing has never lacked for diversity, but there aren’t too many periodicals where you can find a 16,000-word essay on yippie exorcism of the Pentagon side-by-side with a matzo ball soup recipe from the Black Keys, a piece on filmmaker Haskell Wexler, and relationship advice from Mississippi bluesman T-Model Ford. That’s where Arthur comes in. The exuberantly eclectic free magazine, based in Los Angeles and Gaithersburg, Maryland, is distributed all over the country, in parts of Canada, and even in the UK, and it’s established a strong foothold in Chicago. The bimonthly publication’s usual print run is roughly 40,000 copies, of which about 3,000 end up here–only New York, LA, and San Francisco get more. And many local labels advertise in its pages, from longtime institutions like Drag City and Touch and Go to newcomers like Locust and Flameshovel.
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When the first issue of Arthur hit the stands in autumn 2002, the publishing industry was in a slump and the magazine seemed unlikely to survive. In the words of its editor, Jay Babcock, Arthur was entering the fray with “a counterintuitive editorial approach, a pretty untried business model, and no start-up money”–in other words, contributors could write about whatever they wanted to, but they wouldn’t get paid. Volunteers would also handle almost all the distribution chores. “We’d send boxes of the magazine to them,” says Babcock, “and then they would decide where to put issues in their city.”
For inspiration Babcock turned to late-60s countercultural touchstones like the San Francisco Oracle, the Realist, and even early Rolling Stone. He studied mid-70s issues of NME, Melody Maker, and New York Rocker and soaked up the spirit of classic punk zines like Slash. He decided that he wanted his magazine to rely on long-form coverage of underground music and art but also cover politics, philosophy, and fringe culture.
That issue set the tone for the magazine: its contents include a long excerpt from BMX biker Mat Hoffman’s biography accompanied by Spike Jonze’s photos, a profile of late Texas filmmaker Eagle Pennell, an interview with sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke, a comic by Silver Jews front man David Berman, and articles and record reviews from former Forced Exposure editor Byron Coley and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.
“In the end, we want to be considered in the lineage of American underground culture,” says Babcock. “We want to try to continue the aspects and values of the counterculture that stretches back to the jazz age and even farther back. We’re not there yet, but we’re off to a good start.”
