Tuesday, November 28, 2006
spin magazine
Has anyone read Spin magazine lately? It is so bad that I get secondhand embarrassment for anyone involved in it. All I can think of as I'm flipping through it (there is nothing to read anymore, it is mostly just pictures and blurbs) are the endless focus groups and meetings that got it where it is today. It is now like a hybrid of US magazine and a music mag. And I'm not even saying this because of the bands they cover. Just because I don't know anything about bands like Panic! At the disco and My Chemical Romance doesn't mean that I think they shouldn't write about them. But everything is so snarky and dumbed down. I guess that mainstream music mags will be the next to go now that Tower is dead. Everything is so fractured that I think that mags like that are obsolete. And I won't even mention Rolling Stone.
rolling stone probably isn't worth much on the music front (i don't read it, however, so i really can't say), but they did publish that jfk jr. article about election fraud in 2004 which was incredibly well-researched. that kinda made me like them again, if only because they published a very good piece on politics.
ReplyDeleteYeah, to put on my snob hat ... is Spin still even around? Ever since Legs McNeil left as one of the editors, what's been the point? Plus, I also associate reading their 10th anniversary issue (shows you how long ago that was) with my worst flying-through-a-storm experience ever, in which I read the same paragraph about grunge over and over again, distracted by my own fear of dying while reading Spin.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't get me started on Rolling Stone -- it's in checkout lanes next to InStyle, f'r chrissakes. I'd rather read Jane ...
Didn't Spin get its start as a side project just to keep Bob Guccione's (Penthouse magazine) layabout son busy because he didn't have initiative to do anything on his own?
ReplyDeleteLove,
Juggs McNair