After The Village Voice announced this week that it was folding its print operation, a couple people compared the venerable NYC rag’s demise to the end of Gawker, the snarky online tabloid taken down by Hulk Hogan and his shadowy financier Peter Thiel. For too many reasons to list, this comparison seems to my mind hardly apt. There’s a gesture toward the Voice’s profane unruliness, but the alternative weekly, founded in 1955, transcended the blog age’s sophomoric nihilism. The hermetic container of its newsprint sealed out frothing comment sections; no links ferried readers through rivers of personalized algorithms.
The Voice published hard journalism that many, including Voice writers themselves, have ruefully revisited of late. Its music and culture writers like Nat Hentoff, Lester Bangs, Sasha Frere-Jones, Robert Christgau and so many others are some of the smartest in the business. Its columnists, editors, and reviewers—Andrew Sarris, J. Hoberman, Robert Sietsema, Tom Robbins, Greg Tate, Michael Musto, Thulani Davis, Ta-Nehisi Coates—equally so.
In its over sixty-year run, Voice writers sat in the front rows for the birth for hard bop, free jazz, punk, no wave, and hip-hop, and all manner of downtown experimentalism in-between and after.
Amongst the many remembrances from current and former Voice staff in a recent Esquire oral history, one from editor and writer Camille Dodero stands out: “The alt-weekly’s purpose was, in theory, speaking truth to power and the ability to be irreverent, and print the word ‘fuck’ while doing so.’” Mission accomplished many times over, as you can see yourself in Google’s Village Voice archive, featuring 1,000 scanned issues going all the back to 1955, when Norman Mailer founded the paper with Ed Fancher, Dan Wolf, and John Wilcock. There are “blind spots” in Google’s archive of the Voice, noted John Cook at the erstwhile Gawker. In 2009, his “searches didn’t turn up any coverage of Norman Mailer’s 1969 campaign or the Stonewall riots… and there’s not much on Rudy Giuliani’s mayoral bid.” Many years later, months and years in the Google archive remain blank, “no editions available.”
The Voice has had its own blind spots. Writer Walter Troy Spencer referred to Stonewall, for example, as “The Great Faggot Rebellion” and used a phrase that has perhaps become the most wearisome in American English: “there was mostly ugliness on both sides.” This anti-gay prejudice was a regular feature of the paper’s first few years, but by 1982, just as the AIDS crisis began to filter into public consciousness, the Voice was the second organization in the US to offer extended benefits to domestic partners. It became a prominent voice for New York’s LGBTQ culture and politics, through all the buyouts, cutbacks, and unbeatable competition that brought it to its current pass.
The paper also became a voice for the most interesting things happening in the city at any given time, such as the goings on at a Bowery dive called CBGB in 1975. Character studies have long been a Voice staple. Lester Bangs’ write-up of Iggy Pop two years later cut to the heart of the matter: “It’s as if someone writhing in torment has made that writhing into a kind of poetry.” Back in ’75, Andrew Sarris wrote a rather jaw-dropping profile of Hervé Villechaize (in which he begins a sentence, “The problem of midgets….”). …. the more I look through Voice back issues, the more I think it might have been a Gawker of its time, but as onetime columnist Harry Siegel tells Esquire, “what made it unique depends a lot on the age of who you’re asking. It was a very different paper in different decades. It was valuable enough for a long time that people paid money to read it.”
Indeed its first issue cost 5 cents, though by the nondescript cover, above, you wouldn’t guess it would amuse or titillate in the ways the Village Voice became well-known for—in its columns, photos, cartoons, and libertine advertising and classifieds. But most people these days remember it as “free every Wednesday,” to proffer dance, film, theater, music, restaurants, to line subway cars and birdcages, and to open up the city to its readers. The Voice is dead, long live the Voice.
Enter the digital archive of the Voice here.
Writings from the Voice have been collected in these anthologies: The Village Voice Anthology (1956–1980) and The Village Voice Reader.
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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
As a North Carolinian I loved The Village Voice for many reasons and had a print subscription for years in the 80s.
They affected politics probably more than once but a key memory is their feature on the Greensboro Massacre in 1979.
They helped raise the national profile of a truly heinous attack on anti-Klan activists when far too many were buying into the bogus notion of a shoot out and letting the cops off the hook though they were clearly involved.
Thanks VV!
Fashion Institute of Technology around 1975, Eddie Moore of Harlem had a fashion show there and the Village Voice covered it. I was one of the models and i am trying to find that issue. Thank you something to share with my grandkids
I am interested in the original JAF cartoons published in the Voice during the 60’s.
I am searching for scans of the monthly “Pazz&Jop Product Report” column published 1979 and 1980 in Village Voice. Who can help?
I am looking for the Voice article June 22 1982 about Jerzi Kosinski called :
“Jerzi Kosinski’s Tainted Words”
by Geoffrey Stokes and Eliot Fremont-Smith
——————————————-
If not to the paper edition article itself, I would highly appreciate a link to the original text of the article.
Anyone ?
tnx.
I’m looking for and article on P.P.O.W gallery in the east village in 1985 point of view show
Looking for the article by Philip Nobile, “Alex Haley’s Hoax: How the Celebrated Author Faked the Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Roots,’ ” Village Voice, February 1993
I am interested in the article of Peter Schjeldahl, “Systems ’66”, Village Voice, September, 1966. It is a text of great importance to me for my phd research. I would appreciate if someone has it and is willing to share.
Looking for Carman Moore’s review of Harry Partch concert entitled “Blo-bou to Chromelodeon: The Audience Catches Up”, VV, Sept. 12, 1968 pp.40, 42, 62. It’s for an upcoming CD release. Help!
John Schneider
PARTCH Ensemble
Venice Beach, CA
Hi why can’t I see the classified pages in 1981?
Thanks
Am searching archives for issues in December 1971. How can I retrieve them.
I am seeking any Village Voice from MAY 1998 — I’m seeking a show listing for the music venue Tramps
An entire year of the Village Voice, 1968, is missing. Can somebody load it in, please?
I’m looking for two Hentoff articles from 1983 (september 6 and september 20) anyone?
Looking for the Frances Fitzgerald article on the Vietnam war that appeared in 1966
I would appreciate if someone would upload the full year 1966 as it’s pertinent to my research. Thank you.
I am working on a Marketing Research project assignment. I have to locate concert ads in marketing for a subject band. I chose U2 as my subject band. Can you possibly send me the concert ad I need from the Village Voice archives for this show?
U2 @ The Ritz, New York on Nov 20–22, 1981.
Thank you!
John Soto
Yes, please!
I am looking for 1991!
Looking for Iggy Pop photo on Halloween 1986 night in Lower Manhattan’s West Village for my research.
Thank you.
I am searching for an article written by AJ Benza on the Haitians in the club scenes during the 90s.
Hi Ralf,
I was once an active “rock critic” from the era, so I clipped most of these columns and have them. I am only missing about 10 monthly reports. Have you had any luck tracking these down since 2019? Please respond at roberthull5@gmail.com.
Best regards,
Robert
I am doing school research and I needed to review issues of VV from 1980’s. Can I do that under this archive? How can I sign up and is there a cost? Please let me know as soon as possible. Thank you.
John Soto
I have the Sept 1966 Village Voice. I do not see the article you mention.
god, i don’t believe some of these comments! Instead of actually going to Google Books i.e. following the link, you inundate this page with questions and entreaties. You act like he is the one who is supposed to find the issues and articles you want! WTF!!!The man gave the link for you to use to access the archives! USE IT!!!
Josh Jones, who posted the link above, CAN’T give you directions or assistance with the Voice archives on Google Books. For that, guys and dolls, ASK GOOGLE.
I noticed that some of the issues are only a few pages long. Why this is is something only the uploader can explain. Again, CONTACT GOOGLE. If that doesn’t work, contact the Voice, they do still have a site.
Searching Google Books is free of charge. However, there is a cost as with all “free” services online: Google will faithfully track and record everything you do, even if you don’t have a Google mail account or a YouTube account. Also, Google gets suspicious if you spend a half hour or more looking for something. Whilst browsing the archive, suddenly I got a message saying “we have detected unusual activity from your browser.” it then demanded I do one of those ludicrous and annoying “find the bicycles in each photo” security checks so it knew i was not a “robot”. You have been warned. Cheers.
Greetings,
I am working on some liner notes for a reissue Nimbus West album by Horace Tapscott called “Dissent or Descent”. Towards that end, I am wondering if you can provide me with the specific date which Mr. Tapscott played a solo concert in early June of 1984 at Cobi Narita’s Jazz Center of New York on Lafayette Street.
I was Horace’s manager and booking agent at the time and believe that this date was right around June 9, 1984. If memory serves, Gary Giddins put this concert in the listings prior to this performance.
Please respond if you can with the clip of Giddins’ listing. I can’t quite figure out how to use this website to do this research.
Many thanks indeed for your help.
David Keller
I wrote many articles for the Village Voice in the late 70s and early 80s. Most famously my article about Scott Meredith and his rip-off literary agency would end up in a back and forth battle with Scott and a threat of $1 million lawsuit (which did not occur). I do have a photocopy of this but can’t find this article entitled The Big Bait anywhere on line. Where is it?
I am looking for The January 1997 Complete Village Voice Personals as this is an Anniversary Gift as that is how it is met and are married 25 yrs. Please text me or email me back. Thank you!
Looking for any New York Village Voice newspaper from 81 to 83 classified section. There was a prayer in the back somewhere in the classifieds looking for the prayer if I see it I’ll recognize it. Thank you 🙏 appreciate any and all assistance
This is David F. Sorry it may be in the Personals section not the classifieds section again Thank you 🙏 it’s important
Looking for a Feiffer cartoon from 1973 (possibly August 19). 2 guys in a bar and one says something about drinking causing brain damage.
Looking for Daniel Berrigan’s Letter to the Weathermen” that was sent to the Village Voice in August 1970, but perhaps not published until later in 1970 or the beginning of 1971.