Is SPIN really circling the drain?

SPIN's pimping of the Strokes has been totally embarrassing. I mean, does anyone at that place actually believe, as a sub-head read, that "Room On Fire" was "stunning"?

The only reason I hang onto my subscription is because I keep hoping it will get better. But it's just not.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if a non-fashion magazine has a fashion spread multiple times a year, the moral compass is long gone.

Except he doesn't like brits?

I fully understand that embracing "lifestyle" brings in the big advertising dollars (fashion), but in this case it has made the magazine much less enjoyable.

I feel old.

I agree with you Jeanne that the staff thing is getting annoying; Sia Michel's Letter From the Editor has been completely cloying from minute one (complete with all the "Look at me, I'm at the cool places with the cool people pictures") and the endless pimping of staff tomes is a chore. Spitz' gossip column is unbearable. But I still like the reviews quite a bit.

That would rule.

SPIN was a godsend for me in high school (1990-1994), living out on a farm in the middle of central Illinois. sure it wasn't all that subversive or underground, but to someone raised on country and Top 40 it was a whole new world. i still pick up an issue from time to time, mostly because it's more affordable than the import prices on the decent British mags. but i'm always wondering why.

While we're on the subject of Tracks, I can't believe how lifeless and personality-free it is.

The UltraGrrl thing is awful. I'd forgotten about that.

Gawker calls Details "The gay magazine for straight men" or something like that. Classic.

What? You mean the non-music journalism about the NYC guy with the biggest penis in the world or people who make living room speed and eat it until their teeth fall out?

I'd call it the white-trash beat for voyeurs but not hard-hitting or strong.

Yes, SPIN, supporter of whackos and rubbish science.

Remember when Foo Fighters and Dave Grohl were pushing this agenda, playing benefit shows for that wacko group "Alive and Well." That was insane... I wonder if they still support that cause.

That said, I think Spin is perfect. I expect nothing more. Each issue lasts me exactly one lunch break, once a month, where I look at the pretty pictures as I eat some soup.

Either way, Alex is right that SPIN was way better back then. Anyone remember the Michael O'Donohue columns? That guy was a scream, the best back page they've ever had. I've got a few of those columns on my hard drive if anyone wants a repost (SPIN used to keep them at their website, back when they first came online.)

Rolling Stone used to have better non-music writers, too. William Grieder I liked even though I never agreed with much of his stuff. PJ O'Rourke is better than anyone they've had in at least five years on staff there.

The more I think about it, the more I think I've been harsh on Sia for putting her mug all over her page. Bobby Jr. was more of a publicity whore, and she's better looking. But the direction of the magazine is still shit.

I moved recently and actually came across some of the fabled golden age pre'88 issues in a forgotten milk crate at the back of my closet. some of it was pretty great indeed - especially an article on cookie-puss era beastie boys, but a lot of it was pretty thin. there was really LESS in it - huge empty spaces on the pages, big fonts disguising 3 paragraph long stories, fan-ziney articles about nothing and only a couple of pages of record reviews. and legs mcneil was way past his prime by that point too - if you want to get all golden age-y about stuff. he mostly wrote about how shit everything was compared to 1978!

i was into spin more later because - before vibe & the source & rappages, maybe even before Word Up! - they were the only magazine I could find covering hip hop - albeit with a pretty big NYC Def Jam Beasties-PE-Run DMC slant to it but that was fine by me at that point.

I read it pretty much every issue up until the end of the grunge and the beginning of Electronica Fever in the summer of Trainspotting. I have no idea if it's good or bad anymore. Pretty much all music magazines bore me to tears now - but I think that might have as much to do with me as it does with it not being 1988 anymore ;)

that big sound-boy article in the year end round-up in 97 or 98 was a really great article though, and it made me feel like i wasn't the only one like that in the universe ;-)

lets not forget that they used to also have some great stories about electronic music. There was that one issue with Rage on the cover (ugh) in the mid-90s that had articles on Orbital/Underworld/Chem Brothers, a guide to underground electronic music (mentioning Spooky, Mouse on Mars, Jacob's Optical Stairway) and a list of some of america's best producers (everyone from RZA to Wink) and their best productions. Reynolds also used to write for them, and I would wager that his little sidebar on BC/CR/Maurizio is probably the only account of that music to appear in a major american magazine.

I had zine called sugarhigh! It came out twice, in the mid-Nineties. It also caused me to become employed (note passive
construction; it sure felt that way) by The Village Voice, which caused me to become employed by Spin, which caused me
to become a very predictable kind of boring writer and feel like a whore. Eventually I stopped; quitting is actually a
perturbing story which involves, in more and less obvious ways, a review of The Coup, backstage passes to a U2 concert,
September 11th, being threatened with a lawsuit by Sia Michel, and a shady helicopter rental in Rio. Anyway, I hope to
write some about music on this site, in a way that might be predictable and boring but not whoresque.

Blount otm, I think this was around time I stopped reading it. I don't know if it has improved much since then, but it still makes a bit sad that it won't be around anymore because it meant a lot to me back in the day.

the jane/josh '100 albums in 1000 words' thing seemed like spin house snarkpun style pushed to the snake eating tail absurdity. like a litmus test for their readers - 'if you can stomach this you can stomach spin'.

Here's an old favorite of mine.

--------------------------
Spin magazine presents…NOT MY FAULT!
By Michael O’Donoghue

HELLO FROM HOLLYWOOD
GREETINGS FROM THE LAND OF TWICE-KISSED ASS

"The only difference between an actress and a hooker is the hooker fakes orgasm a little better."

WHILE WAITING IN LINE AT THE BRIAN BOSWORTH FILM Festival, I chanced to overhear a heated discussion about acting and the truly great performances. After listening to the usual names tossed around -Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, Marion Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights, Bill Murray in Scrooged—I piped up to nominate two obscure yet electrifying performances that left me, frankly, trembling. The first was Michael Caine's work in a short promotional film for Jaws Ill. If you recall, this sequel to a sequel had only two elements left from the original Spielberg fear-jerker—the shark itself, by then revealed to be little more than a rubber duck with teeth, and Roy Schneider's wife. Presumably, the shark had eaten everyone else. However, consummate pro that he is, Caine looked directly into camera and swore that, in his opinion, Jaws III was actually better than the first one. Genius! Talk about acting!

You can have your Burton in Hamlet, your Murray in Scrooged, your De Niro, your Streep, this was the stuff of Oscars! Unfortunately, I've forgotten the specific names involved in my second example. It occurred on Entertainment Tonight with Leeza Gibbons or whomever interviewing the stars filing out of the premiere of Harlem Nights—a movie so bad it would have to be reshot to be thrown away—when, absolutely straightfaced, every one of them claimed not only to love the picture but went on to burble that Eddie Murphy had proven himself to be a fabulous actor, a talented director, and a wonderful writer. According to them, Eddie was a "triple threat." I get goose bumps just thinking about it.

Or, to put it another way, all actors are lying whores and Hollywood is the world's biggest whorehouse. Keep this in mind when they're yammering about genetically altered milk and the Haitian boat people and the Amanda Foundation and Alar in apples and freeing Tibet and saving the worms. I mean, don't you find it a touch scary that the only thing between us and the end of the oceans is Ted Denson? Think about it. And then think about this: No matter what actors say or do, no matter how many causes they champion, no matter how many ribbons they wear on their lapels, no matter how many Ramlosa bottles they recycle, no matter how quickly they volunteer to sweep up after the LA, riots, any one of them would fuck a trout farm to stay on top. You can test the depth of Hollywood with a blotter. And I'll be cornholed with a Garden-Weasel before I'll sit around and let some brain-damaged sunbunny with Gummy Bears for tits take the moral high ground with me. Or listen to some freak who makes $14 million a pic just because his cheekbones happen to slice the light in a certain way try to make me feel guilty because I'm not driving a goddamned solar car,

Here's a line I caught at Mortons recently "Alan doesn't care about what you and I care about, Alan cares about caring." Wrong. What Alan cares about is, in this order: money, drugs, his name above the title, buggering young boys, his beach house in Maui, his ranch in Ojai, his Lotus Elan, his quarter horses, his Navajo rugs, his hard-true tennis court, his retablo collection, his Patek Philippe wristwatch, about a million other things, and finally, last but least, Alan cares about caring, whatever the fuck that means!

I once heard with my own ears Mandy Patinkin stand up at a meeting of "concerned actors" and say he didn't want to be called an actor anymore. He preferred to be known as a "citizen-performer," Apparently, Mandy thinks he's living in some Greek city-state and not the big shithole I like to call "America." "On look! It's Plato, Pericles, and Mandy Patinkin, the citizen-performer. Let's all go to the marble courtyard and have a meaningful dialogue about Truth and Being." Oh, which reminds me—most of them are real stupid. Someone once wrote, I believe it was me, that "actors are like children, except dumber." How true, Mike. Take for example the dewy-eyed dimbulb I saw on Leno who, between pictures, was using the time to discover herself "as a person," As opposed to what?! Discovering herself "as a lawn chair"? Discovering herself "as a swag lamp"? Discovering herself "as a pen and pencil set"? It's a medical fact that the IQ of the average actress is lower than Dick Van Patten's sperm count.

You understand, of course, none of this applies to those immortals of the screen who gave us the really memorable performances such as Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath or Bill Murray in Scrooged. I'm speaking more of fly-by-night celebrities like Maria McKee who actually said to the audience at a benefit to save the Brazilian rain forest, "Thank you for your commitment to survival." I suppose she stands on river banks and thanks the salmon for swimming upstream. Or professional hand-wringers like Whoopi. Is there a cause on the planet she hasn't hitched a ride on? I think the only one she's missed is the Committee to Provide Massive Plastic Surgery for Whoopi Goldberg because she is one ugly bitch. Her face could stop Big Ben, a sundial, and a free digital watch. If the devil really takes pretty women from the front and ugly women from the back, he'd take Whoopi by airmail. She is so ugly that—uh oh. Gotta run. Late for Bible study.

NEXT MONTH: A Brief History of Urine Retention.

I hated Genius Lessons, btw

ahahahahahaha aha ahaaa hahaha aha a aha a ha. ha.

Me too. I think I kind of loved to hate it more than anything, at first I was intimidated 'cause it was all snotty and hip, and then when I got most of the references I was busy sneering back at them, but I kept reading it anyway. Wish I had a copy of the parody Sia Michel article written for our college radio zine, but then, only a college radio staffer would think it was clever or funny.

My favorite SPIN moment, besides the awesome cover story on Hole right when Live Through This came out, is a letters to the editor section from 93 (just found the excerpts I'd stuck on a tape case)..

On Juliana Hatfield:
"Is it because her mother is the fashion editor of the Boston Globe that we must be subjected to endless drivel about her angst-ridden and privileged upbringing? As far as her music goes - "high priestess of mind fuck"? You've got to be kidding! She wears her suburban hang-ups on her sleeve like some kind of corporate logo."

On a Breeders piece by Charles Aaron:
".. anyone who read this snot-nosed, self-obsessed band profile knew it could only have been directed at him. The real icing on the cake comes when Aaron describes the Breeders as 'acting out some postpunk version of a 40s George Cukor bitchfest" starring Katharine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, and Spencer Tracy. Attention SPIN editors: Nobody in your audience got that reference."

i think i became too cool for the magazine once i got into college. i never really came back to it once i got over hipsteritus, but it still remains a reason to go to the magazine rack at any bookstore. i usually flip through, see who is getting reviewed, in the top 20, or in the next 50 hot bands lists. if you're in spin, you've sort of made it in a way. (and that could be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective...) it's a handy way to gauge where a band is.

perhaps for that reason alone, i hope it doesn't go away.
m.

So yes, SPIN is most certainly circling the drain.

Holyshit, they really WERE circling the drain

"Ur criticism of 3 Dors Down was complete Bullsiht..."

In the near future every pop culture magazine will be so short and snarky it really *will* be like reading ILM the magazine.

Spin has been in trouble for a long time, but his hiring will only hasten its demise. It was Ap's second-in-command who did all the heavy lifting. AP has no interest in the international web (or at least he didn't when I worked for him)— if he thinks he can get young uns to add Spin to their diet of MYSpace, he is sorely mistaken.

check this out this interview with Mediabistro…he didn't get it then…

Do you think that the Internet is inhibiting the sale of CDs?
People don't want this stuff for free. There are a few people in colleges and stuff who get a thrill out of downloading stuff illegally, but most people will pay 60 cents for a song they download. It's only 60 cents, and most people are more than happy to pay for it. Before record labels endorsed music licensing, people were downloading music for free because there were no other options. It was a great piece of technology. I mean iTunes is successful, and that seems to be the way things are going, record companies are finally realizing that they can be involved in websites that charge for tunes and still be financially viable. Regardless, the CD will still exist, just in reduced circumstances. It will perhaps be similar to movies. You can experience a movie in a variety of formats—at the cinema, on DVD, or VHS.

http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a991.asp

I was shocked--shocked--that it went for $5M although given that it's bleeding $3M per year and the subscriber liability noted above, I had no idea things were this bad.

I don't find the Pemberton move at all unpredictable. I wouldn't want to work for him, either--thanks for chiming in Veronica, so I don't have to relay my own stories.

Who else got booted there today from the staff (other than the publisher and EIC yesterday)? I heard some names that were likely to be gone by the end of the week...

I'm sure that he will fire most Spinvolk— I predict he will attempt to staff it with Brits, altho' I doubt the new owners will be willing to spring for multiple green cards. he'll have to staff it with Americans—if they know of his rep, they would have to be masochists or truly desperate, and there sure are a lotta people like the latter these days. the freelance pool will be almost exclusively british.

he does need a consigliere, like Blender's CM, but one who will be loyal and not say to the owners "he does nothing; I do everything, fire him." he has been a consultant since being fired from Blender, so he may very well have learned something, altho I doubt it.

I can only assume that hiring AP is a huge signifier of the short term brand strategy of the new owners. Which is sad, because that mag needs some serious babying and given the long term outlook of music glossies, investors are probably not going to have much patience watching that thing bleed cash.

Is Blender doing 12 issues a year yet?

i can't think of anyone currently on-staff who would do well under ap. spin has definitely lost its way (really? another my chemical romance cover?) but ap is not the one to right it. yr right don about the long view. last fall they had an issue with two great travelogue pieces: simon on grime in london and caramanica on houston hip-hop. finally spin read like something other than How to Live in NYC on Drink Tickets. i really felt like that would be a good (if expensive) direction to go: the music travelogue. clearly that will not be the case.

I wouldn't be so sure they overpaid or that they got had; Hartle Media are not strangers to the magazine world at all and run the Northwest sales offices for SPIN and Popular Mechanics. It's just that hiring AP is not really a vote of confidence that they are going to nurture this thing into something special over the long haul. Hiring him makes it look more like a flip getting ready to happen.

SOLD.

So they paid $850,000 for the right to try to recoup $5 million in standing debt. E.g. "We can make it work." There hasn't been a full ad in SPIN in over a year - everything is either a co-brand tie-in or a huge discount. And I think I saw maybe three, four ads in that span that weren't explicitly music-related. Once upon a time SPIN had ads for clothes, food and movies. My question is, why do you throw the editorial staff in the blender when it's so clear that ad sales killed the mag?

Andy Pemberton, 2006: "I think the world could use a younger version of Rolling Stone."

But but but I said that already upthread! (It is nice to see you agreeing with me though. ;-) )

and all the articles would be 6,000 word travelogues with tons of photos. scott would do the 'scott page', which he could fill with whatever he wanted, and his baby rufus would do the DJ chart every month. jess would have a drum'n'bass column, and woebot would have a ten-page full-color laminated gatefold pullout every month to fill with whatever his heart desired. i would write the "berlin page" every issue, with lots of goofy photos of 6 am clubbing action. simon r. would have a column to enthuse about his favorite early ardkore records. matos would do a cdr-go column every month. and every issue would come with a mix-CD curated by optimo, encased in an edible sleeve printed on blotter.

BTW phil, check yr email...

(mark s will write the style guide, with special entries for "haha," "nu-god," and "roXoR")

ahahahahahaha

I don't know why I find this so funny. Future Art Brut song title?

Help help!

when ad sales and readership is down, people don't tend to start blaming the advertising sales force. People start looking at the product that is for sale. And that product is mostly the responsibility of the editorial staff. But if you want to make the case that the editorial staff was delivering a desired product Chris, go ahead and make that case.

oh, and Happy Birthday Ned.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I actually really like that idea! Good god it would be fun for the half an issue before we ran it into the ground.
-- Sterling Clover (s.clove...), February 19th, 2006 10:29 AM.

Thanks!

Even though I'm biased, I really do think Decibel is the best music mag being made in the U.S. But genre mags don't have to play by the same rules as normal mags. they can assume that people know a little bit about the subject and don't have to spoon feed. I still think someone could do this with a music mag aimed at a general audience. write intelligently and with a sense of humor and not play dumb. i really think people would be appreciative. spin started out that way.

http://www.popmatters.com/music/interviews/mudrian-albert-060228.shtml

"There's a new music magazine, Tracks, which is marketed to an older listening audience. Does this magazine affect you?
It is a totally different audience; however, we do cover album reissues. Before us, no other magazines did that. We like to maintain a wider presence, but I think that it would also be a good idea to do a Mojo-like magazine in America."

Is he really saying that Blender was the first magazine to review reissues? Why would he say that?

(second half 05 newsstand sales: rs - 129k, blender 82k, spin 52k)

http://www.visualwalkthroughs.com/doom3/administration/doom3-2004-08-23-16-05-25-2.jpg

http://www.gawker.com/news/spin/what-goes-up-must-come-down-spinnin-wheel-got-to-go-round-158054.php

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mag/2004/10/17/images/2004101700060501.jpg

TO

http://www.oscarworld.net/psycho1.jpg

that's pretty big news, I'd say! they had a bunch of them.

not ME personally. just my ilk, i guess.

I want an ilk.

roffle

harris owned Guitar World forever, and started Revolver as an american Mojo/Q right before Blender came along. So they changed it into a slightly more canny version of Hit Parader or Circus or…Rock Sound? is that what it's called? it has made money, apparently, on the backs of white dirtbags. the editor referenced above doesn't much care for the nu-metal/screamo stuff he must cover…

I think harris still owns King, which wags referred to as "Blaxim."

Goodbye Spin.

http://www.spin.com/reviews/magazine/2006/04/060323_gunsnroses/

I am not sure how producing material of this sort qualifies ms Angel to be a sex columnist? Unless the only questions they will be fielding will be from workers in the adult industry?

i met this girl on ilm and at first the sex was really great but now she thinks the first side of forever changes is better than the second wtf.

please help,
c/d my girlfriend

Both of them are out of the new Spin, though, or so I hear...

The sectional breakdown, so you never have to waste your money on this:

COVER: Dismal layout/design, pathetically cloying typeface, a thudding dumbing-down that simply could not have been imagined. Gag on this: "America's 101 Wildest Parties!" At least the new tagline is mediocre; it could have been outright bad.

MASTHEAD: Pemberton's name makes me anxious. Having Charles Aaron as music editor makes me feel like I'm 40.

FOB - SPIN OUT: awful, 2nd-rate VICE photo gag featuring the absolute worst NYC nightlife has to offer. I don't want to know these people, let alone read about them or hear their response to the inane question of "If you were a musical instrument, what kind of musical instrument would you be?" Seriously, who the fuck wrote this?

FOB - Editor's letter: Embarassingly unfunny. Predictably poorly written. Wow.

FOB - "The Download 20": ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

FOB - "Barometer": worst lead-off FOB article in a music mag, like, ever. This is how you introduce "music for life"? The second article is actualyl even LESS FUCKING RELEVANT; why is there an article on French rioters?

FOB - "The Joy of Text": this appears to be an unclever idea for a column...Ariane Marder (WTF?) interviews people by text messaging.

FOB - More "Barometer" featuring one of those really, really interesting updates on Pete Doherty. Somebody wake up the fucking editor there and tell them that there are at least 10,000 junkies more interesting than this guy, and probably several hundred who sell more records.'

FOB - "SPIN Looks": This is another VICE-ly stab at relevance where they take a picture of some fame-seeker in New York and then ask a bunch of fashion related questions. Not only dumb, but poorly executed. Several pages later, we have "My Brilliant Career", which is sort of the same thing except they have some editorial assistant's friend who doesn't even work in the music business playing "ten questions." Oh, and then to show how much Pemberton doesn't get it, he repeats the "SPIN Looks" sidebar a couple of pages later with someone who is even more uninteresting than the first.

FOB - "The Brain" : In yet another idea repurposed from Blender, Charles Aaron "answers your ticklish questions" about music. What's with everyone in the mag with even a partial column getting their picture by the header. I'm a fan of Aaron but dude seriously looks like he's got a physics class to teach. Nearby "The Brain" we have one of those advertorials called "SPIN Genius Thing", which tells us how great the $350 Pentax camera is.

FOB - "Send Me An Angel": Here we have the slut column. Words fail me.

Interview - LL COOL J: He was the coolest rapper when I was in high school. In 1986. The "buying guide" sidebar is handy, if pretty much ubiquitous (thanks to Pemberton's alma mater.)

Summer Concert Preview - Kind of better than I thought it might be, but it's nothing new to the magazine.

Feature - Kelis: Is she really going to be hot this year or yet another one-hit wonder?

Feature - "Welcome To Ghost Town": thousands of words on...Chernobyl?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Have these people lost their fucking minds?????????

Feature - Eddie Vedder: a decent Q&A, although since he's hitting all the major mags it's sort of seems...dated already. Hopefully they've got a Nirvana interview to run next month as a follow-up.

Feature - Parker Posey's picture scrapbook: kind of a good idea, although Posey seems like one of those celebs that only New Yorkers are in love with. That, and I kept wondering where the pics of Ryan Adams were.

Feature - Jack White and his backing band: Is this guy blowing someone at SPIN? Because they are on his jock like white on rice.

Reviews - now called "In & Out": The thing that happens when you slice reviews down to 100 or so words is that you pretty much make them stylishly indistinguishable. In other words, there's no need for bylines since every writer sounds exactly the same. Or, in this case, every review reads like it was lifted from Blender. The section is totally without personality. Same with the video reviews. Congrats, SPIN. You've really cooked this goose well.

BOB - "SPIN Out": Distressingly titled, but simply the absolute worst waste of copy space I've ever seen in a glossy. Ever. Worse than any events listing in any alterna-weekly. And as if listing over a hundred bar nights in a ploy to raise ad revenues wasn't bad enough, SPIN brings back the dingbat known as Ultragrrl as a feature events writer. There are SIX FULL PAGES OF THIS WITH NO ADS TO BREAK ANYTHING UP. It's worthless, unimaginative, and ugly in a way that I am stunned any graphic designer could tolerate.

BOB - "Navigator": Cribbed from CMJ Monthly, this is a city guide. CMJ did this much better. Terribly ugly to look at, so bad that you will never read one entry.

Backpage - "25 Questions For Bill Maher": The biggest question of course is, "Who gives a shit about Bill Maher?"

Admittedly, I had low expectations but this issue floored me. The design alone is so pathetic, so lifeless. The editorial direction has absolutely no focus and the execution is what I might expect from Parade magazine; I'd credit part of this to a new editor but there is no promise anywhere. Blender is ten times better than this.

These things were such a fucking pain in the ass to put together! They can have them!

Also, I don't know who this person is, but that's a totally fucking genius idea for an front-of-book feature.

Look under UPDATE

http://www.gawker.com/news/spin/andy-pemberton-nearly-sacked-again-177681.php is the one I meant to post.

response: "BUT PLAYBOY IS GOOD!!!!!!"

I can. It was a deep red cover with a picture of Flea jumping in the air with a flourescent green mohawk in the "Mother's Milk" era. I was in 9th grade and, actually, my girlfriend gave it to me. So, I guess I didn't even buy it.

Chuck Eddy IN ?

Is Chuck the only person that can save SPIN?

What about this as a "dream team" CHUCK & GEETA as a new management editor duo at Spin ?

Chuck ensuring METAL/ Rock coverage, GEETA ensuring the best ELECTRONIC coverage

Pemberton Exits Spin
http://tinyurl.com/lybuz
"A replacement has not yet been named."

Well it's time to pitch a new strategy / concept for SPIN?

WTF?

their coolest parties section and last night parties picture seciton is really just plain awful

Spin (online, I hope) conflates Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein:

CORIN TUCKER

Dates: October 7-29
Price:$16
Opening Acts: Golden Bears, Hungry Ghost
Why You Should Go: SPIN named Sleater-Kinney's 1997 release Dig Me Out one of the 125 Best Albums of the Past 25 Years—and it's not like all that talent just evaporated since the trio went on hiatus in 2006. The Portland, OR-based singer-guitarist—who has been moonlighting as an actor (she starred alongside the Shins' James Mercer in 2009's Some Days Are Better Than Others), comedienne (she performs with SNL's Fred Armisen as ThunderAnt), and blogger (for NPR's Monitor Mix)—will debut songs off her debut solo album, 1,000 Years (out October 5), which she has called her "middle-aged mom record." Yeah... if by "mom" you mean one of music's fiercest feminists and guitar goddesses who happens to have two kids.

http://www.spin.com/gallery/preview-25-best-fall-tours?page=15#main

chicks, man

that clause has been taken out btw

lol

In the old days it would have been in print, and Kathleen Hanna would have set fire to a copy on stage. I miss the old days.

In the old days there's no way it would have made it to print, because five editors would have looked it over before it reached the printers.

in the old days they would have gone 'wtf is a blogger?' and waited way too long to establish any kind of web presence by which point it was too late and some schmuck in chicago could run circles around them.

Oh no, according to google the Bikini Kill/Magazine Burning thing has vanished from history completely. How sad.

I want to say March 5, 2002. Stupid internet.

I mean 1992. Duh.

in the old days they would have gone 'wtf is a blogger?' and waited way too long to establish any kind of web presence by which point it was too late and some schmuck in chicago could run circles around them.
― balls, Thursday, September 2, 2010 1:32 AM

Touche!

I hate these reviews where the writer presumes the audience is some fifty year old ignoramus. Like some fat suburban guy is going to get off his butt to see Corin Tucker.

I have nothing against feminism but this preview tells me nothing about the music. I don't go to a show to get a political lecture.

http://www.adweek.com/news/press/spin-magazine-going-bimonthly-135459

Yeah, I quit buying this a long time ago, but recently subscribed to it via my Nook because of a deal for 50 cents an issue. But, tbh, after the awful Skrillex cover this week, its not even worth the 13 seconds to download anymore.

this could be cool

i'm not sure if SPIN will ever have much if any presence on the web tho

"if any"? They do have a fairly frequently updated site now, but its a nightmare because of all the damn click-through listicle shit.

SPIN has done a horrible job preserving its history. You gotta go to Google Books to read an old story.

sorry, i didn't mean "presence" as in, like, they literally have a web site that is updated. i mean in terms of hits and/or people going "i read this thing on spin.com today..."

oh yeah, thats totally otm

'will ever'? i mean i dont read spin & havent ever really but i dont see what's stopping them from having a web presence

like, just hire ppl that draw traffic. there's no big trick to it

I've never written for Spin, and I can't even remember the last time I read it (10 years ago, maybe?) but this is bad news for a lot of writer friends of mine

i just started writing for them so i'm sure they'll fold any day now

(that's what happened to blender)

Ha, yeah--I wrote some reviews for Blender, a while back, and forgot to invoice so I could get paid. Then they folded, so I never did get paid for them.

where are the taxpayer bailouts for print music mags

http://www.theonion.com/articles/failing-us-economy-no-reason-at-all-to-stop-invest,21251/

like, just hire ppl that draw traffic. there's no big trick to it

― dangobro (D-40), Wednesday, October 5, 2011 3:38 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol -- carles already works for grantland

the idea of having 'the right traffic-attracting writers' to keep a mag/site afloat is kind of laughable tbh

yeah it is -- it was mostly about getting there first, and SPIN.com did not get there first or second or third or fourth or fifth etc IMO

??? im not talking about people attracting readers by name recognition (although the Atlantic has proved that is a viable model at some level) but hiring people who ... know how to draw traffic. I mean, there are websites that do this. You don't have to 'be there first'!

obviously who's writing and what they're writing about is important, but i kinda feel like a site has to do a bunch of other things right in order for that writing to actually generate traffic, and Spin pretty much did all of those things wrong, so the quality of the writing barely enters into it

i mean sure, you can do something like firing the whole idolator staff and hiring some SEO robots, but i'm not sure if that's what SPIN is aiming for w/ their website

altho maybe it is idk -- if so, good luck to them

its not an either/or thing

1000TimesYes 11:39am via Web As of today, I'm the new Senior Editor at @SPINmagazine. Big shit poppin, little shit stoppin: bit.ly/oaEFMc
2 retweets

ILX FEATURES NOW

congrats! now give me work haha

beatles features now

beatles features now

Caryn Ganz will replace online editor Mark Bautz, who is leaving the company.
Ganz, who has worked at Rollingstone.com and Yahoo, is joined by two other new hires, senior editor Christopher Weingarten and associate editor David Bevan. They’ll work on print and online, supporting Spin’s digital emphasis, said editorial director Charles Aaron.
“With the magazine going bimonthly,” Aaron said, “the website has to be of the same caliber and depth of the magazine. I think we’ve struggled with that in the past

http://www.adweek.com/news/press/spin-replaces-online-editor-135710

Charles Aaron's still there? Wow!

He's been writing for them since at least 1994.

congrats chris! i'm sure spin won't be circling the drain as long as our boy is drowning the competition

Whiny, you're in charge of ladling soup at the ILX Rock Critics homeless shelter.

congrats whiney! \(^o^)/ \(^o^)/

lol @ al

congrats whiney! \(^o^)/ \(^o^)/

― markers, Tuesday, October 11, 2011 2:42 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol @ al

― The boyboy young jess (D-40), Tuesday, October 11, 2011 2:45 PM Bookmark

is there gonna be a regular Whiney rant feature?

its called ilm

In the next SPIN: "Who The Fuck Are These 'Beatles,' Anyway?"

there needs to be a DR WHINEY PHD CULTURAL STUDY in each issue

congrats 2 the big whinester

may u live 2 see the dawn

there needs to be a DR WHINEY PHD CULTURAL STUDY in each issue

^^^

grats whiney

Congratulations Whiney.

Thanks guys :D

I looked upthread and totally forgot to say congrats

CONGRATS

Break a leg!

Can you afford to move out to the suburbs now?

whoa congrats dude!

congrats whiney! i will totally start asking my local news agents why they dont have spin now

also believe that yes we need dr whiney phd in each issue

I dont have time to post on ILX anymore u_u

congratulations!

i know estela's post probably wasn't a mean zing but it's really really funny to read it that way

spin succeeds where ilx mods failed

my initial intention was pure but then the resultant ambiguity pleased me.

congrats & fare thee well WGW

markers needs to post that youtube

congrats chris! i'm sure spin won't be circling the drain as long as our boy is drowning the competition

― some dude, Tuesday, October 11, 2011 11:40 AM (Yesterday)

looooooool

just got a call about my spin subscription offering me a rebate for a resubscription "since they have been losing readers, because of the internet"

killer marketing campaign angle there

Spin Van Winkle.

Winkly G. Spingarten

last time i had a subscription to Spin i was in high school, ultragrrrl, klosterman, andy greenwald, sia michel were the crew.

can we make whiney write a column as 'ultracrrrmudgeon'?

last time i had a subscription to Spin i was in high school, ultragrrrl, klosterman, andy greenwald, sia michel were the crew.

― Mordy, Friday, January 6, 2012 10:57 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^ reads like my kind of mag. Although Saecco, Vanzetti, Passantino and Winegarten sounds even better.

SPIN's been mailed to my mom's house for free since prolly 3 years ago. No one knows why.

My mom's house has been getting Complex for similarly mysterious reasons for about the same amount of time. Are these magazines related?

Sometimes my mom visits my house and shows up with a paper bag, and that's when I know that I'm getting a stack of these:

http://www.dailystab.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/marisa-miller-complex.jpg

http://s11.lucyphotos.com/images/orig/f/e/fed5a1qe8r415d11.jpg
http://s11.lucyphotos.com/images/orig/e/0/e0n1f78jl58f858.jpg

^^ reads like my kind of mag. Although Saecco, Vanzetti, Passantino and Winegarten sounds even better.

― I certainly wouldn't have, but hey. (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, 6 January 2012 22:05 (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wait has whiney hired dom?

hee hee, i got complex in the mail for free for about four years. i think it's stopped now. but i always wanted to tell my postman: "i don't really read this mag, seriously! don't judge!"

a friend of mine gets three free subscriptions of time out ny

complex smells gross

zooey d smells gross

you have a free subscription to zooey d?

i'll forward it to your address

zooey's last breath, circling the drain

Is Ultragrrrl doing anything of note these days?

complex's content exists almost entirely online. the magazine itself usually seems to have pretty bare bones content

everything seems bare about it judging by the covers

do you think when they are blocking out the cover design for guy magazines they have placeholders that are just like [SOMETHING PENILE]

are even the eyes actually Katy Perry's in that "Katy Perry" photo?

Who's looking at her eyes?

ultragrrrl is doing those crappy VH1 countdown/best-of shows last I checked

last heard about her when she was getting joan of arced on village voice's cover

rip 2006

I see Whiney has put his foot down

!

Magazines Killed The Twitter Star

As long as it's an augmentation rather than a replacement, then yeah, I don't see what's wrong with that. Though I like incredibly negative reviews as well as incredibly positive ones.

140 words? That's a novel. These guys do it in almost half the number of words.

Um, tweets are 140 *characters*, not words.

"character" is a word, emil.y, get it together.

Ah, a mere Tweet. My bad.

It is an agumentation, they say they will still do 20 long form reviews a month on the website, but that seems like a hugely reduced number from what their print mag was hitting per month before they went to bimonthly. I don't know, I love Whiney and I enjoyed his original project and I know this is inevitable, but I find this turn depressing as fuck. I like to read well thought-out longform criticism. I also know that will still exist other places, just disappointed that this is a step in the wrong direction.

i guess i have no idea what anyone here means by "longform" but spin certainly wasn't publishing any long form criticism in its magazine

Well, thats true, but still.

I just pulled the "longform" quote from Whiney's release. Problem is that I don't see many people to be as creative and clever with tweet reviews as Whiney was.

honestly i think that pulling out 20 of the most important records a month for "longform review" treatment (that is a lot of records, btw) while just lumping everything else into a grab bag of bite sized blurbs makes as much sense as one 500 word review and twenty 80 word blurbs

Like I said, it was inevitable, but I'd still rather read those 80 word blurbs than 140 characters. Minor point, but keep in mind these 140 characters will need to convey artist and title, those 80 word blurbs were at least free of that limitation.

I know I'm getting old man yells at clouds here, but I really hate this massive rush to abbreviate our exposure to culture.

Love that line about "under-covered genres" like hip-hop, metal and chart pop.

BY SPIN was i think the implication there

But, lets also remember that cokemachineglow proves that longer reviews are by no means inherently better.

lol

It just makes it feel like Spin in running on fumes in the ideas department. Like, that's the best thing you could come up with? An idea that's already been done, was fun for five minutes in 2009, but is well past its sell-by date at this point?

you don't spend a lot of time around here do you

It will give Whiney more time to complain about hipsters on ilx.

Makes me feel like Position Position was running on fumes in the criticism department.

Fart fumes.

lol

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/That_Makes_Me_Angry.jpg

anything that makes people mention/talk about/think about spin magazine can only be a good thing. at this late date.

I didn't know whiney even had a job tbh

if it were possible to discuss this decision without Whiney getting super-aggro, it's an interesting and "important" decision with much to say about it, but lol at anybody who thinks Whiney didn't go into this with an "oh boy, lemme scrap with some people about this, I love to argue" attitude

I have the impression Whiney does everything with that attitude - ordering coffee, picking out socks, changing the channel on the TV

it's an interesting and "important" decision with much to say about it

i will be very surprised if anyone is thinking about this feed by 01/13.

(bc the mayans will have destroyed the world)

this is a weird/sad concession to the fact that cultural discourse has become largely truncated and economically worthless... is that what's interesting about it?

isnt the trade-off that there will now be actual long-form criticism in spin? (am i reading this right?) seems like a net positive

its sort of a switcheroo, people think that they're taking a step towards twitter but really they're taking a step towards critical essays

Bring back Joshua Clover!

I wish magazines had much larger reviews sections. More music is made than ever and I'd quite like to read about some of it. I hate the NME style of a couple of reviews over 2 pages with most of the page taken up by a photo.

wait the NME is still being printed

yup

i guess selling 20,000 copies a week will still make more money than being the uk's answer to pitchfork

its sort of a switcheroo, people think that they're taking a step towards twitter but really they're taking a step towards critical essays

if that were true, it would be a decision of remarkable courage, but here's what looks to be the case; first

Thankfully, this new plan also means no more overwrought 80-word blurbs on middling, nobody-cares bands where a grade of "6" or a "7" ultimately translates to "Hey, this exists; and it doesn't totally blow!"

this is otm. Review space in Spin and elsewhere is now so trimmed, and the per-review word count so short, that there's really no point in the reviews at all. Like, no point. They're only there because music magazines, historically, have had record reviews. But this (emphasis added):

We will still be posting about 20 longform reviews a month on SPIN.com. The very best records of the year will be given special consideration and placement, notated by the tag "SPIN Essentials." You can read our first Essential review, a celebration of Guided By Voices' triumphant return, Let's Go Eat The Factory, written by SPIN magazine's editor-in-chief Steve Kandell.

links to a 700-word piece, only "long form" by the most easily-distracted reader. I mean - the decision is half-right; there's no point in running 100-word reviews. Anything under 500 words is kind of a joke, in terms of actually offering critical insight; I'm more likely to buy and read Spin if it doesn't have a "here's where the reviews go, these aren't really reviews though" section. Tweets are fun to read & are a great exercise in concision, but the idea that they're of actual critical value (or that, since the object of criticism can be easily heard by the reader, the function of criticism is somehow diminished) is dubious, to put it mildly.

But more than anything, and this I think is healthy and good, this seems like a decision by the new editor to do something restoring a little vitality to the magazine. The actual idea, I think, is full of holes, and the editor couldn't really defend it without resorting to a lot of questionable assumptions - about readers, about how things got to where they are, about what might be done about that. But as a gesture, it indicates a willingness to think big, to get attention, which like...I don't like that you gotta do things that get attention, it makes me sad, but you do, and so you should at least do things that get attention that open up some discussion because that's a net good. So, good decision, stupid rationale, kinda, is my take

To me it sounds like 1500 opportunities per year to drive traffic to the website and that's about it.

My friend's band recently got a 6 or a 7 in Spin and was super thrilled about it. I doubt he would've been as pumped to add a tweet to his press kit.

No, polyphonic, I think you're wrong about that; I think the editor has passionate opinions about music coverage, I don't think we have any evidence that his general curmudgeonliness is actually cynicism.

x-post

I think actually that tweets attributable to Spin will be just as good as # ratings from the magazine as far as the press kit goes. And honestly as a guy who has hated numerical ratings systems since he was a kid I'd be pretty happy to see them dispensed with by @SPINreviews.

I don't think we have any evidence that his general curmudgeonliness is actually cynicism.

I definitely don't think Whiney is cynical about the music he cares about, and I'm sure lots of bands that wouldn't normally be highlighted by Spin will appear for the first time via the tweets, but I don't think Twitter reviews are very effective. I didn't care for Whiney's 1000 or @Discographies or any similar projects. Might as well just link to a YouTube at that point.

eh numbers are the only thing that make one sentence reviews a 'viable form of criticism'

I would prefer the SF Chronicle rating system tbh

http://kookykitsch.com/Portals/0/productimages/294_2298e.jpg

I don't know - I thought 1000timesyes occasionally achieved a sort of condensed ideal. (I totally love @discographies.) The first several @SPINreviews are up, though, and the shortcomings are pretty immediately clear - a lot of things (Ladysmith Black Mambazo, for example) can't really be usefully reviewed without first placing them in a context. Sure: readers can Google to get the context, but the critical value of the tweet review is nil. Plus, most businesses want favorites & retweets bad, so the probable tendency will be toward zingy lines and colorful similes. This, like I need to say it, is neither a service to music nor criticism.

isnt the trade-off that there will now be actual long-form criticism in spin? (am i reading this right?) seems like a net positive

― Sh1pley Gohard (D-40), Wednesday, January 11, 2012 7:09 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^^^^

LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO/And Friends: Two disks of South African a cappella suggest you CAN have too many friends, e.g., Josh Groban. #RG#6

good zing, but needs a simile. #PP#5

can i somehow add this twitter to my rss feed? only possible way i'll actually read it

soon

is this a cost cutting measure in the long-term?

good zing, but needs a simile. #PP#5

I don't know, I dislike that one on so many grounds. "This is South African a cappella lol who doesn't hate Josh Groban" - you sort of want to know: what else does the writer know about African music? About the group? as I say, given the state of Spin reviews in recent years, it's not much of a loss, but that particular tweet sort of suggests that the feed's platonic ideal of reviewing is handing somebody a record in a genre about which he knows nothing and asking him to say something clever. Which is like...why bother at all, you know? It's a drag; it's like an attempt at the last line of a good Xgau dismissal without the important groundwork that goes into that last line

esp since no one is going to listen to that album for the groban song. paul simon, tho!

(The thing about the long-form claim is: this is where that claim is made:

Obviously, we wouldn't want to do this to the complete exclusion of longform music criticism, a viable and under-appreciated medium in any year. We will still be posting about 20 longform reviews a month on SPIN.com.

The pretty clear implication of the one sentence following on the next is "longform criticism will now be on the website" - you'd have to detain & torture the paragraph to make it read otherwise - and as I say, the link demonstrating this is to a 700-word review of GBV, which isn't really "longform" - until 2001 free weekly reviews pushed 750 words routinely.)

Richard Gehr has been writing about african music forever, dude

Also, I hate to tell you this, but it's not 2001 anymore

Like the Village Voice doesn't even run record reviews of any size any more, so I think having a budget for what is becoming an outdated medium is pretty swell.

Also, I hate to tell you this, but it's not 2001 anymore

^^^exactly why there's no point attempting to discuss this in a room where Whiney's present

dude, you're being snarky too!

you said "until 2001 free weekly reviews pushed 750 words routinely" and I'm just saying, yes, the climate has changed and we're trying to bring some of this back in what little way we can

by helping destroy it?

dude, you're being snarky too!

I'm not, really - I'm trying to discuss what I feel is an important decision, and an interesting one, as I said from the outset; prior to that post, which amounts to a throwing-up of the hands on my part, I'd been posting rather long thoughts airing out what I think's in play. I can dig that in your shoes you're probably already very defensive here, but I also know from having posted on the same board as you for what ten years that there is no way you're going to be able to have a discussion about this without zinging constantly, and when there's something actually interesting to be discussed, either the participants have to agree to talk like grownups or there's no point in having the discussion at all. That this preference for/love of snark & drama informs your stylistic preferences here rather more than high concerns about what the age calls for, what's "pertinent," etc, seems self-evident to me, but again, that'd require some unpacking

The only point of the 2001 reference was that what constitutes a long form piece didn't change just because publications no longer allot decent space to reviews. 1000 words isn't "long form" - 1500 would really be the absolute minimum in my mind, and that's really being generous. A long piece takes up ten or more printed pages. The goalposts really haven't moved in that respect.

Some of them are going to be 1500

I think it will really depend on what the 20 long reviews per month actually are. I'd be thrilled to read a 1500-word review by Richard Gehr on African music in Spin, but I worry that what will actually happen is that the stuff that doesn't drive advertising will largely be left to Twitter, and no amount of expertise that Richard has can be conveyed there, as the LBM tweet shows quite clearly.

Yeah man look - I get what you're up against, in many ways editing a music magazine is like being a politician: you elect to settle for doing what good you can, maybe get people to think about things that are important to you & that you think are in some way important to have out there in the general discourse. And while the opening salvo talks about the last days of the music industry, it's no secret that magazines have suffered a similar fate as recording artists have, and getting people to buy magazine, like getting people to buy records, at all is a fucking chore - if it weren't for airport newsstands a magazine-lover like me would be pretty fucked. I think this is a pretty ballsy choice to make, and I'm keenly interested in how the magazine reads in the absence of reviews; I'm into finding out about that. But as I say, I think a lot of the rationale expressed is kinda bogus & involves some uninterrogated assumptions about the causes of shortened review sections (which we all know was "either we allot more space for ads or we're dead" industry-wide), etc

I mean obviously if we had zillions of dollars in a flush advertising climate we're run pages of reviews out the ass; but even if we did it would sort of feel like a vanity project to some extent just because I think THE RECORD REVIEW means something totally different now than it did in 1976 or 1996 or even 2006. I remember in the 90s when people would talk about record reviews (Anthony and I remember SPIN's lead review on Timbaland's first record very fondly) and honestly the last time someone talked to me about a record review due to what was WRITTEN in it and not the crazy/unlikely/grand score attached was when J0rdan went in on Mac Mille. I think by narrowing the field of reviews, I'm HOPING that people will spend more time with them instead of just glancing at the score and moving on.

the 80-word reviews were always especially unsatisfying to me so i'm cool with the idea of just going to the extreme in both directions at once

otm

I can actually fathom buying spin at the airport again if the review section isn't just a blender barrage.

that said shouldn't there be an author-key in the twitter description or at least a link to it?

workinonit

the 80-word reviews were always especially unsatisfying to me so i'm cool with the idea of just going to the extreme in both directions at once

― some dude, Wednesday, January 11, 2012 7:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 11, 2012 8:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bingo

basically

this is a good conversation

http://necktomace.tumblr.com/post/15715900419/sit-down-spin

That dude--most ppl criticizing it actually--seems to be missing the fact that were still doing long reviews. Even one on the OMG CLOUD NOTHINGS RECORD HE'S LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW (so plugged in, guy)

I will cop to burying that fact in the story tho...

May or may not be of interest that the big quote at the start of that tumblr is from a ranty Everett True blog post:

http://www.collapseboard.com/everett-true/why-music-criticism-still-matters-so-go-fuck-yourselves-spin-magazine/

Yeah, I had some words with him about that. Def LOLs at Everett True calling anyone a "tarnished brand."

And then he’d have to find some real work , writing scripts for Family Guy say

he knows you too well

Of course, none of this matters to Chris, up there in his ivory tower.

lol what

an ivory tower constructed thanks to the royalties from the Public Enemy book?

criticising someone for writing to make. a. name. for. themselves = irony explosion

EVERETT TRUE criticising someone for writing to make. a. name. for. themselves

someone was definitely on. their. period.

lmfaoooooo @ a$ap rizzley

it is kind of s tarnished brand. or maybe that's not the best way to describe it. but that doesn't mean that someone couldn't make it better. should change the name to Spin 2.0. Spin XXXXtreme!

Def LOLs at Everett True calling anyone a "tarnished brand."

just sorta gotta point out that this sort of "you're one to talk!" line is transparently a way of not responding to the actual content of the post - I mean the kind of elephant in the room here is don't we assume there've got a be several in-house reasons for this decision that it wouldn't be cricket* to talk about in public? however I gotta say when E.T. puts "so fuck you Spin magazine" in the title of the post it kinda doesn't help matters, that's red meat for the Whineys on the block

*I chose this over "kosher" & several others especially for you man so recognize the love

and again we are all talking about spin. so there you go. its a step in the right direction.

What is funny to me about the Everett Truie thing is that quite a lot of the reviews in Careless Talk Costs Lives looked just like this:

http://www.songdog.co.uk/carelesstalk-haiku.jpg

Not going to count the characters there but, um...

when was the last time someone here actually bought a physical copy of the magazine? i honestly can't remember the last time i did.

feel bad cuz i always forget that chuck has stuff in it every month! but i forget about it in general. don't even see it anywhere to buy.

missed opportunities in short reviews about albums called 'haiku'

aero where did you find that high horse

just like walkabouts
country noir only stripped back
songdog co uk

i bought a subscription a couple years ago, brought the most recent issue to work w/ me today to read. i posted about my annoying call about resubscribing upthread, though, i'm gonna try to just find it at newsstands in the future.

What is funny to me about the Everett Truie thing is that quite a lot of the reviews in Careless Talk Costs Lives looked just like this:

yeah lol I wrote for them a couple times and the word counts on the reviews were ridiculous - but they had bigger reviews every few pages - pretty ahead of the curve on just the thing he's complaining about

when was the last time someone here actually bought a physical copy of the magazine? i honestly can't remember the last time i did.

to be 100% real it was when they did an aerosmith story

i really thought that 9/10 review of Nine Lives was just payback for the interview tbh

lol getting an interview w/aerosmith is not exactly the impossible dream

For all the posturing and bloviating and incorrect sky-is-falling doomsaying that I've seen regarding this move, I'm most curious about two things: 1, how the Spin "authority" will translate to Twitter; and 2, how the Twitter reviews are going to be a self-sustaining business, since from my understanding the reviewers are being compensated. Ads/sponsored tweets? Syndication (and if so, to whom, and why would those syndicatees pick it up)?

my guess there's just going to be a chunk of budget dedicated to it as a loss leader or part of the mag's general 'be more web savvy' game plan?

Not to be all "I worked for Nick Denton and might be a bit traumatized about it still," but loss leaders and web-savviness generally do not go hand-in-hand on balance sheets.

well Gawker is the king of 'there is a direct relationship between how much a piece of writing profits us and how much we pay the writer for it,' wouldn't what i'm describing, if accurate, be the opposite of that?

I'm guessing the tweets will form the content for some sort of album review online database and as well as the advertising revenue from that, maybe you could licence that stuff out like a bite-size AMG?

^^ not a bad idea if they haven't thought of it already tbh

But doesn't that go back to the idea of authority?

I don't know, the idea of where people get their news now is just something I've been puzzling out in my head a lot lately. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if say BuzzFeed (ugh) started a music section (although I get tripped up trying to figure out if they'd ever think it worth their time-slash-money)... would it have a lot of authority/influence? Already the sort of LOL-culture bullshit from the music world that it passes around has a lot more staying power outside the obsessive bubble than even, like, Kreayshawn and her memetic ilk.

I had an offer to get a year of Spin for like $5 but I didn't and I feel kind of bad, because... Whiney and stuff

denying whiney a five dollar footlong, shame on you

haha

for better or worse i do think that brands that have been around since the print media days (spin, xxl, rolling stone, etc.) still have more 'authority' tied up in their names than a lot of places that get way more hits these days, i don't think getting a 8/10 on @spinreviews instead of in the pages of Spin will really stop people from putting that in their press package or referencing it as a signifier of an album's success/acclaim

tbf, I think Whiney probably gets less than a nickel per new subscription

But what does that mean outside of the world of people who get one-sheets? Things have become a lot more Darwinistic in this respect, much moreso over the past 18 months I'd say.

But what does that mean outside of the world of people who get one-sheets?

it was never really as important as bands thought it was, though in the early 90s a good Spin superlative could literally open doors that were otherwise shut - I namedropped our first Spin mention to a southern California booker 94 after he'd just told me "no openings for a month" and bingo suddenly a space opened up

people more connected now, you could have three consecutive 10/10s from anyplace and the person being asked to book you would still just look at what your actual draw is on data readily available to him & base his offer on that, not on "these guys must be big & I just haven't heard of them"

aerosmith otm, although lately i've been thinking about whether in some ways media/online buzz is becoming MORE important for at least some kinds of artists just because a lot of times people can be a pretty big deal (or at least seem so) w/o having impressive sales figures or even have a single record available through any kind of retailer. like do those acts just book one show, sell it out, and then use those figures to book a whole tour, or are they totally just basing their whole existence off of what sites they've been mentioned on?

i think the immediacy would work in an artist's favor. they can re-tweet a positive spin tweet and the whole world will be tweeting about it. it makes sense.

Underrated aerosmith spin stories I have bought

http://s11.bdbphotos.com/images/orig/t/e/tedtfjbccou2tdj2.jpg

Hey here's a daft idea for what to do with these tweets (maybe someone already does something like this anyhow, i dunno): having a smartphone app that could read the barcode on the back of CDs and bring up the relevant review. If you were in a record store or somewhere, you probably wouldn't want to read something that was more than 140 characters long anyway.

mr. tyler how does it feel to be on the cover of one of spin's infamous 'hiv denier' issues

nickb's making me think of that classic jaymc post about the dorks he saw in a record store picking up CDs and recite from memory what their pitchfork rating was

WR that issue

man SPIN was obsessed with Getting The Facts Straight About AIDS wasn't it

xp that was why I was screaming, I was like "no you guys that's poor science wtf" and the photographer kept spinning out the conspiracy theories and I was like "no no no aaaaaauuuuuughhhh" and then they snapped the pic

true story

nickb's making me think of that classic jaymc post about the dorks he saw in a record store picking up CDs and recite from memory what their pitchfork rating was

it is also dumb because who buys CDs anyway right?

nickb's making me think of that classic jaymc post about the dorks he saw in a record store picking up CDs and recite from memory what their pitchfork rating was

― something may go drown tonight but it ain't gonna be jobs Weingarten (some dude), Thursday, 12 January 2012 15:43 (30 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

p sure these were pfork writers trying to get as close as they could to the "author in a bookstore" moment

pretty sure CD stores don't exist anymore???

there is one across the street from me! it sucks!

Well, online

i did buy two CDs there a month ago though. despite my distaste for the place.

Really, if they're going to have reviews that short they might as well try to sell the content to a company like Amazon, emusic, or spotify to show in extended album info or in genre/new music roundups.

that classic jaymc post about the dorks he saw in a record store picking up CDs and recite from memory what their pitchfork rating was

I have no memory of this! Are you sure it was me?

yeah maybe it was someone else? thought it was you though, this was probably well over 5 years ago

i have more than one friend who does that. parent-out-with-teenager level of public embarrassment.

Reviews custom printed on coffee mugs, underpants, t-shirts

More long form music crit is good, hooray.

The success of 1000TimesYes year of tweet criticisms was rooted in the fun/preposterousness of it, tho, tiny take-downs and tiny celebrations etc. Whiney's one voice. I don't think it will translate to an ecumenical context.

I don't know, the idea of where people get their news now is just something I've been puzzling out in my head a lot lately.

Me too

Facebook probably

This guy, that guy and this girl posted about Coachella.

i'm facebook friends with lots of people i have written about, and this is a new development for me. i don't know if its a good thing or a bad thing. they seem nice...

i mean i don't really worry about journalistic LINES being crossed or whatever, i'm no journalist, but it still seems weird.

yeah in a weird way the whole web 2.0 'everyone is accessible' thing puts you face to virtual face with the people you're writing about way more often now. it's helpful if you like doing interviews and stuff, doesn't seem to be a problem too often if you don't.

this was probably well over 5 years ago

Oh well, then I suppose it's possible.

oh man I had that Steven Tyler issue - in the HIV/AIDS community that story ref'd on the cover is infamous (and not in a good way)

sorry I see some dude's already made that point carry on

was dave grohl in that issue?

nah spin was about 10 years ahead of the nate mendel curve on that one

i'm facebook friends with lots of people i have written about, and this is a new development for me. i don't know if its a good thing or a bad thing. they seem nice...

In terms of jazz at least, it's helped me out tremendously - I don't have to try and remember who someone's publicist is when I want an interview, I can just message them and see if they're interested. (Jazz musicians very rarely turn down interview requests, btw.)

yeah, the people i've written about are in the noise/weird/whatever camp, and most of them are happy to get a mention anywhere. and are genuinely appreciative of kind words. i just don't want to ever censor myself anywhere cuz so and so is friends with this label or that guy...that kind of thing. i've never had to worry about that at all, cuz i never go anywhere and don't know anybody. but now my, uh, circle has expanded.

http://twitter.com/#!/1000TimesYes/status/157527382905978881

the ivory tower quip obv stupid, but dude makes some salient points imho best of which is that music criticism as consumer guide has been a bankrupt idea for a long time.

xpost loooool

yeah it'd be hard to imagine, say, a publication branding their favorite records as the "best new music" and consumers rushing en masse to check out those records (xpost)

i don't think it's necessarily fiscally bankrupt. i think it's intellectually bankrupt. has criticism ever been quite as explicitly linked to purchasing product as music crit?

I was gonna say, I've heard from more than one record store owner about how they immediately double their stock whenever a Pfork drops a BnM.

::shrugs:: a big part of music writing will ALWAYS be "here is something new that you may not have heard yet, and here is why it is or isn't worth hearing." for better or worse i don't know if there's any getting away from that.

xpost

that's the dominant paradigm of music writing in 2012 but it's not the only kind of music criticism that is done and it's far from the only kind of criticism that is done. like he mentions in his post - you don't read art criticism to decide what art to buy. sometimes you read book reviews to decide what books to buy but often you read the review bc you want to get a survey of the field, or a discussion of the book's themes and you never even intend to buy the book. not to mention all the critical writing about books that you can only really read after you've read the book. film criticism often takes popular form as consumer guide, but that's dying off too and tons of film crit still survives. etc

so it's the dominant paradigm AND a bankrupt idea. got it.

r u just snarking now? i don't see the contradiction. lots of intellectually bankrupt shit is dominant paradigm.

i can't even tell if you disagree with me or what your argument is.

we're in the same boat, then!

"has criticism ever been quite as explicitly linked to purchasing product as music crit?"

uh, film crit? book crit? theatre crit? food crit?

except not is my point

i dunno i guess i thought by "bankrupt idea" you meant that it isn't still being practiced by many many people or is trending downward at the moment.

I was gonna say, I've heard from more than one record store owner about how they immediately double their stock whenever a Pfork drops a BnM.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0,

but not metal albums, eh? ;)

that's the dominant paradigm of music writing in 2012 but it's not the only kind of music criticism that is done and it's far from the only kind of criticism that is done.

It is the only music criticism worth reading

i disagree. i wish there was more music crit like this:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/09/15/030915fa_fact_baum

so you would never read something about an older record you are already familiar with that is unconcerned with good/bad verdicts? (xpost)

Well, criticism about old stuff I haven't yet heard is also worth reading; generally speaking, if I have heard something and made up my mind on what I think of it, a critic's opinion is not going to change my mind.

lol xposts

Criticism, by its very nature, is about good/bad verdicts btw

A music critic could easily change my opinion of something I've heard if she points out something I didn't notice about it.

u say btw so matter-of-factly but i think most critics would contest that description of what they do xp

That's why there are so many terrible critics out there!

i'm thinking primarily literary critics here

there's actually a whole interesting history of the words "critique/criticize" and how they've apparently over time developed a connotation of qualitative good/bad (especially negative) judgments, whereas before it meant more neutrally analysis or commentary than evaluation

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/030403/critical-inquiry1.jpg

Criticism, by its very nature, is about good/bad verdicts btw

couldn't disagree more - criticism is about ways of thinking about art/literature/music - sorting through one's responses - the "verdict" is always the least interesting part afaic

Critique of Pure Reason
by Immanuel Kant

Pure Reason is pretty good, a distinct improvement on last year's Impure Reason. Reliability is obviously much higher and the usage value is off the charts. I expect to be using Pure Reason for many years to come. 9.2

lol

Criticism, by its very nature, is about good/bad verdicts btw

is this for real

hahaha aerosmith plz start that twitter

The verdict is always there, though. Something has to drive the analysis otherwise you are looking at aimless, directionless meandering with no thesis.

I dunno; I read the NY Review of Books & I'm not looking for a "good/bad verdict", I'm looking to learn what the book's like; what're its topics, its way of doing what it does (I'm thinking most of nonfiction but the same's mostly true for fiction too). I'll decide "good/bad" on my own.

hahaha aerosmith plz start that twitter

v. tempted

or not, actually; I rarely read the full books being reviewed there; I just like reading the crit tbh

xp

btw Bandwagonesque 4eva (to keep w/ the thread's topic)

it's possible to have a thesis besides "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" iirc

post one and I will show you how it can be reduced to "thumbs up"/"thumbs down"

Something has to drive the analysis otherwise you are looking at aimless, directionless meandering with no thesis.

lol I am saying this in a friendly way so don't take it wrong but a critical theory class would drive you completely bonkers. the whole point of critical theory is to table verdicts in favor of competing truth-claims & seeing how they work together, what the assumptions that go into them are, etc. what drives the analysis is sort of quasi-scientific: an interest in the workings of things, which are assumed/shown to be very complicated and capable of sustaining multiple readings. However, it is also the case that reading this stuff one picks & prods to figure out whether the author (sorry, "author") is harboring some verdict to which he/she doesn't cop

I had more to say here but I could actually hear the sound of you scratching at your eyeballs to make it stop + it made me feel bad

lol

Agreed re Twitter request.

Aerosmith OTM here. I was going to say, DJP, nobody is saying that criticism doesn't often reduce to a good/bad verdict, what they (and I) say is that it doesn't have to be that way, and there are numerous field where in fact the good/bad duality is almost non-existent.

*fields

whenever someone claims a "reduction" or that X "reduces" to Y, I'm suspicious & recommend the same.

I can attest that writing reviews is more fun than student discussions in lit theory courses.

setting the bar high there

whenever someone claims a "reduction" or that X "reduces" to Y, I'm suspicious & recommend the same.

I feel it's fair to remind the thread here that Euler "does" philosophy and is required by the terms of his contract to suspect all claims of reduction

I studied computer science; reduction is the foundation of everything.

that seems a rather reductive claim to me - Euler, back me up here

i agree w aero too

i wouldnt have said anything except that rarely happens

how many box sets of his tweet reviews did Whiney sell, besides the one to Markers?

iirc he sold all of them

proof that print media can be saved by tweviews, then

fuck, I missed the alley oop due to spending half the day driving across Midwestern tundra

Good grief it's cold, I have been reduced to shivers

important h1pster puppy info within: http://blog.omusicawards.com/2012/01/spin-reviews/

way to work around my "no mentions of h1pster puppies" filter that I spent hours coding

dudes, whiney deserves a raise, people on my facebook talking about spin! in 2012!

antipodean counterclockwise unSpinning out the drain

whiney can u post your handbook on how to write twitter reviews?

1. find some music that you hate

2. cut a hole in the box

lol this is exactly the sort of thread direction that our whiney haaaaaaaates

3. three three for my heartache

4. I can give you more

5. #neversellnocrackwhereyourestat

i hope to see a "thom yorkie" joke in this new column

and all english bands albums done in a mockney style mentioning blood sausage

Oh right http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Sausage_%28band%29

whiney's theme song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfm6ZkDeltM

its whiney's world, the rest of us just live in it!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/01/13/145107490/are-140-character-reviews-the-future-of-music-criticism

good call to drop the reviewer name and score hashtags, that shit was superfluous/ugly

Ann's thing is so good

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/1351/pokinsperpetuate1.jpg

perpetual lolz

http://i.imgur.com/IOOFN.png

hey weingarten, somebody told me to tell you, you're killing it, bro

knowledge, i mean

dudes, whiney deserves a raise, people on my facebook talking about spin! in 2012!

Yes, an old high-school friend posted the news on my Wall yesterday!

six months from now: whiney instates a new "full issue reviews only" policy

yeah but will more people buy Spin because of it? Or is it all about online clicks now?

maybe whiney could attest otherwise but i think most magazines are trying to think about how to survive beyond the quickly ending 'paper circulation era' and these changes are all about that

like maybe they'd like to keep readership of the physical magazine from dropping more quickly to make the transition easier and more gradual, but nobody can possibly expect the number of sales/subscribers to ever go up again

I will always prefer print mags myself but if everyone does go online eventually I really hope it's not in a half-arsed way like nme.com.
Mags like Spin,Rolling Stone,NME etc have a fantastic archive of old reviews and articles that I all hope end up online, and if they do that along with the same amount of reviews Pitchfork puts up each day, then they could have the best sites on the internet. No doubt if that were to happen they would want some silly amount of subscription money though :(

isn't the full Spin archive on Google Books? or was that only for a minute

It's still there. Yesterday I was nosing around the 1998 issue with Natalie Imbruglia on the cover.

its the gift that keeps on giving:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/01/12/spin_magazine_to_review_albums_on_twitter_is_this_the_death_of_music_criticism_.html

"but such responses can largely be blamed on Spin senior editor and avowed troll Christopher Weingarten."

hi forrest wickman, didn't know you read ilx

"Weingarten aims to be the watchdog of music criticdom, but his fierce contrarianism and bullshit-calling seem better suited for a freelancer or a voice on Twitter than a senior editor writing on the behalf of a major magazine"

trololo

wow, that slate piece COMPLETELY misses the point

you can just post that every day and reliably be right more often than wrong

I don't do display names but I hope somebody takes "you got us again, Weingarten!" while it's still hot

like maybe they'd like to keep readership of the physical magazine from dropping more quickly to make the transition easier and more gradual, but nobody can possibly expect the number of sales/subscribers to ever go up again

― Jean-Luc Gohard (some dude), Friday, January 13, 2012 4:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i have to say the look/feel/attitude of new bimonthly print edition is pretty fucking #swag and unique, and, i'm not nastradamus or anything, but I'd like to believe that we could ultimately improve our sub base with it

was having this discussion with robin today and we both determined we'd be willing to buy an issue to see what it looks like
but after that if i'm not on a comp sub i'm gonna be MIGHTY BUTTHURT

two year sub is like 15 bones u cheapskate

When does Issue #1 of the WGW Era hit newsstands?

god whiney don't u know PAYING FOR THINGS is for people NOT IN THE INDUSTRY no wonder slate hates u

lol @ the WGW era

the first bimonthly ish hits stands in late Feb

i wish music mags would publish essays instead of reviews