The Chicago Reader recently opened up its archives. I went hunting for one of my favorite Reader stories, written by Josh Goldfein a few years after I stopped working there, which I don’t think got enough attention when it came out. Perhaps not all that relevant today, it nonetheless functions as a sobering coda to the indie-rock era, whose idealism and discontents colored the debate of the time.

While the story is very nuanced, it basically details what happens when, after a label-band handshake relationship of many years standing, one of the parties figures out it can make a lot more money by abrogating the deal—which, as it turns out, wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.

A shorter follow-up article is here.