In 1972, when Doctor Hook and the Medicine Show sang "The Cover of the Rolling Stone," they cast rock critics as arbiters of stardom. By the time Cameron Crowe used th is song in his 2000 film Almost Famous, it held little irony. Sex and drugs were good but they just couldn't compare to joining the magazine's anointed. Currently, some alternative country aspirant could sing the same tune about No Depression. The magazine, now in its eighth year, invariably uses its cover to showcase an alt.country artist. It has sponsored alt.country package tours (in which the editors indulge the fan's dream of per· forming with their heroes); it produces a syndicated No Depression radio show; and it publishes a longstanding top 40 chart, all of which clearly mark partici· pants and confer status in the genre. In short, No Depression presides at the gates of alt.country heaven. Its surprisingly gushy feature articles break no new ground in the field of music journalism, but at the same time the magazine may be the only one to ever play such a crucial role in the formation of a popular music genre. Rolling Stone and its ilk covered relatively well-established genres; No Depression helped establish alternative country as an alternative to mainstream, Nashville-produced "hot new country." At the same time, the way in which it has depicted the genre and its audience and the way this depiction has moved through the culture indicates that alt.country is in many ways not alternative at all. In particular, I will argue that No Depression uses a macho nostalgia to distinguish alt.country from both rock music and contemporary country music. While sociologists Richard A. Peterson and Bruce A. Beal note that allcountry fans evince a generalized "antimodernist" politics, they do not emphasize the way the fight against modernity is associated with masculine valor and feminine corruption.1 Alt.country discourse separates the men, not only from the women, but also from the guys in cowboy hats, now a sartorial symbol of Nashville's domination rather than wild-west independence.