The Grapevine Revival. The Final Word

Anyone remember the revival of Grapevine?

Yeah, well I was one of major people responsible.

Do I regret it?

Do I bollocks.

It takes more than a bunch of twats on diskmag.de, EAB, Pouet and whatever web sites these particulars cunts inhabit to put me, or the team behind it off.

The Grapevine Revival was, in my mind at least, never intended to be a “scene magazine”, I wanted it to have a broader range of content than that. I didn’t want a readership of a few hundred, I wanted more. The only thing that stopped it was the lazy, apathetic nature of people: you want to read it but can’t be fucking arsed to do anything for it.

That’s why it failed, and that’s why I don’t care about the ex-LSD’ers coming out from the woodwork and mouthing off. Or for that matter the other gobshites who are involved in the piss poor excuse of a “scene” that we’ve been lumbered with. You’re a fucking disgrace to what has gone before, and I won’t take lectures from those people.

What were the reasons behind its closure?

Well that was 100% down to me. I owned the web space, I designed and programmed the magazine engine and I wrote the intros and GVEE (Grapevine Experience Enhancer).  After the first three issues, the main writers (myself and Dazzaboy) run out of steam, we just couldn’t carry the weight or pick up the slack from the contributors we had assembled. Also, the quality of the articles were were receiving was just appalling but I didn’t mind for the issues that had gone before, it was a jumpstart, but we couldn’t carry on like that anymore. I was trying to program an executable version of the magazine as well as editing the shit writing from others.

So I closed the web site without any notice to the anyone else, including DazzaBoy who had effectively been running the site while I was dithering about what to do.

I made a backup of the site, exported the databases and wiped it all and then disappeared for seven months to concentrate on real life and the next generation of my web sites. Not something some of the people involved forgave me for, but fuck ’em, it was the right decision and I stand by it even now.

From what I’ve read on other web sites, there seems to be an idea that the site was closed because of interventions/comments by Pazza and D-Man. As if!!

Even if I was aware, and I didn’t hear about it until nine months after I closed the site, and things were going well, I wouldn’t have paid any attention to what they said anyway, the day I listen to anything racist cunts from hell like D-Man say, Satan will be going to work in a snow plough! As for Pazza, well less said the better, his attitude problem with anyone and everyone hasn’t improved and my opinion of him is still as low as it was all those years ago. Hence why I started writing for Deadlock instead of Grapevine many, many years ago.

What could we have done to make it more successful?

I don’t think anything would have made it more successful in the short term. In the long term, things could have been different. I had a new design in the works, and there was a PC executable version I was pissing around with on and off for several weeks, so it could have been a new lease of life in the project.

After all the shit that has been thrown at us, and the pages of drivel in other magazines and forums about us, none of which comes even close to the reality of the situation, no I don’t regret anything about the comeback we attempted.

I don’t think it was that bad, but looking back at some of the content now, I’d have to say that half of what went into each issue should have been wiped as soon as it was received by email.

Given time it could have worked, but no, no regrets whatsoever.