After we received numerous emails and phone calls telling us that we should have the Radiators on the cover of our Jazz Fest issue, we poked around and found the campaign to try and make that happen. The good news is that the Radiators will be on an upcoming cover of OffBeat; the bad news is that it will be June, not May. We felt that because that’s the month of The Last Watusi, that’s the month to cover their swan song.

We appreciate your desire to see the Rads on the cover of the Jazz Fest issue and are pleased that the issue means enough to many of you that you consider it an accolade that the band deserves. We thought about putting them on the Jazz Fest issue, but you don’t write about a baseball game when it’s in the eighth inning or a football game with five minutes to go. I expect them to go out in impressive style, and should that happen, I’d like it to be possible for us to incorporate into our coverage.

You were definitely heard, though. We generally don’t reveal our cover subjects in advance, but we don’t want the band or its fans to think we forgot the Radiators or – worse – snubbed them. They’ve been a part of our plans since they announced their retirement, and we intend to do right by them – just not in the Jazz Fest issue.