Post-Mortem: Grapevine
by Ken D


Most readers of this article will have a fair idea of what
LSD Grapevine was. Not just a diskmag, it was the UK's best
and most respected scene publication. Had there been any way
to accurately measure readership, I'm confident it would have
been in 5 figures. 

Over 21 issues, Grapevine came from being a simple "message box" 
couple-of-hundred-K release, designed to pad out many a forgotten
compilation, to a 3-disk monster with it's own team of 
sub-editors, artists and musicians. However, the real credit for
Grapevines success should go to everyone who ever wrote an article. 
Grapevine was written, produced and distributed by "the scene", but 
not much of it was about the scene. In the days before personal 
websites, writing a Grapevine article was as good a way as any of 
sounding off, showing off or sending up. 

But after the lackluster - and months late - issue 21 (too many 
"articles" lifted wholesale from early websites, usually by 
"Cygnus"), Grapevine disappeared into legend. There have been 
many attempts to revive the patient, and we'll pick up that 
particular story in the next issue. But it's worth discussing 
some of the reasons the fizz went out of the bottle labelled 
"Grapevine". So, in no particular order ...

Blue boxing: The UK Amiga scene, for so long based around the 
jiffies-and-floppies culture of mail trading, was decimated by
blue boxing. With a pair of headphones, a modem and your tone
generator of choice (Roxbox, anyone?), even the rank amateur 
had access to the world's bulletin boards. Suddenly, copying 
disks, writing letters and buying stamps seemed like such a 
waste of time: cosy up to the sysop, get yourself a "dissy" 
(disabled ratio - download all you like without having to upload)
and never have to worry about firing up XCopy again.
Once the human touch was taken out of trading - no friendly 
letters with the disks, no personalised floppies with the 
traders name in inch-high letters - it wasn't nearly as much 
fun. 

Then the unthinkable happened - BT, happy to tolerate the abuse
of the network when it was limited to a handful of dedicated 
phreakers, couldn't ignore it any more and installed filters 
on the trunk lines being used by hundreds of happy modem 
traders. The community that had transferred almost wholesale 
from writing letters to sending proto-emails was fragmented,
and having grown accustomed to the ease of the BBS way of 
trading, no-one wanted to go back to stuffing jiffies.

So no community, no motivation, and ultimately no Grapevine. 

Pazza: Paz was, at least until the very last few issues, 
Mr Grapevine. Quite apart from the time he would spend 
compiling, editing and duplicating Grapevine, he was an 
instantly recognisable name for the scene to look to. 
Once he "retired" from Grapevine (and the scene), the 
mag was left in the hands of LSD members who, although 
capable, were relatively unknown (myself included) and 
had no idea how much time and effort Grapevine required 
to compile. The quality dipped, especially with the 
aforementioned Cygnus textfiles shovelled in as filler.
Amiga: by 1994, the Amiga was entering the autumn of it's 
lifetime. Commodore was mortally wounded by debt and bad 
management, and while the farce of the Escom and Gateway 
saga was still to come, everyone knew the Amiga's days were 
numbered. No OEM-led innovation left the Amiga in the hands 
of a few German blokes who wrote and built great software 
and hardware, but weren't so good at giving you any clues 
as to how to make it work. Most Amigans couldn't help but 
look over the fence at the green grass of the PC scene; 
Windows 95 validated the PC as a entertainment platform, 
and Doom and Quake provided a gaming experience that simply 
couldn't be done on a stock A1200. Sure, kit an A4000 out 
with a CyberGraphX card and the potential was there, but 
we're back into the German problem again - "ja, it's up 
to you to make it vork".
Growing up: most of those involved with Grapevine - readers 
and authors alike - were in their teens or early 20's at the 
time. Grapevine soaked up time, which gradually becomes a 
rarer commodity once the opposite sex (or maybe even the 
same sex?), houses, careers and kids spring into one's 
life. Those who were once passionate about the scene and 
what they could contribute found themselves unable to summon 
the energy or enthusiasm required to devote a large chunk of 
their spare time to a disk magazine.

So there you go, 4 things I think killed Grapevine, and a 
good proportion of the UK scene to boot. Disagree? Then there's 
only one thing to do: the same thing you would have done 10 
years ago. Stick your thoughts down in a file and mail them 
through to the GV team. 

[End.]