Come Out & Play: Welcome to NO RECESS! Magazine

April 13, 2017 | by Jocelyn Hoppa

You are looking at the first pages of NO RECESS! Magazine.

We will feature neither mindless gossip, clickbait listicles, nor endless briefs on the near-constant churn of typical industry news bits. We are here to write intelligently about music and culture, and we learned these values from the very best.

In the spirit of the Nirvana anthem — we recognize there’s no relief, that life is going to steal away valuables of time, of certain rights, and of self-congratulating possession. Life does not care about your need to “have fun” and “play rock ‘n’ roll” in the towering suck of adult-fueled crisis and prevailing discord.

We know this. It’s why we’re here.

In an age of destruction, it’s especially amplified — there’s seemingly almost nothing we care so deeply about that won’t get a banal, perfunctory toss in the metaphorical trash heap of existence. Relationships, reputations, facts, hard-won laws protecting people and environments, an entire magazine archive, one’s own mind...

There is trying, and yet bullshit is often the reward.

To build again, what would it take? Only risking a bit of that time and rights and attachment to possession we hold on to so tight — which will be stolen away eventually anyway — to produce once again with heart.

There is the counterpoint. If nothing else, that’s NO RECESS! — stoking the spark of rebellion, camaraderie and resiliency found all right there in the music. Get in line and step inside the box, or get up off yer bum and get free.

As for the music and culture coverage, you can expect long-form journalism on a wide-range of music and ideals we think you should know more about. Subjective, objective and laced with personal experience. That’s the simple explanation.

We’ll keep a toe in the crowded pool of the present-day, but we’re also here to write about the stuff we care about. Each writer and editor here cares about different stuff from different genres and eras, and we’ve built a collective based on that very fact. We will, forever until doom, egg on the notion that a music magazine should be, by turns and varying degrees, both bizarre and unpredictable. That’s the best explanation.

We aren’t backed by investors or businessmen. We are 100% independent. You’ll also notice this is an ad-free site.

While we may incorporate some ads in the future, we remain tied to the goal of providing you media that’s not bogged down by pop-ups and long page load times. That being said, we are currently using the reader-support model, where you may contribute funds to help us publish this magazine, which invariably has overhead costs, not to mention we’d like to pay the writers, editors and illustrators who's passion and hard work make this happen.

Sign up for our newsletter and we’ll drop some special stuff in your ear or provide other clubhouse incentives.

Here’s to being as resilient and stubborn as rock ‘n’ roll ever was.