BOB GUCCIONE, JR VS BLENDER MAGAZINE - THE POLL?

lol @ this poll

My only real memory of Blender was that I needed to get some print media examples of something or other for an art project in college and an issue of that had a good example. I will never forget the withering look of disdain the really cute clerk at the bookstore gave me when I walked up to pay for my copy of Blender and my copy of Punk Planet.

I don't remember Blender. Was it like Ray Gun / Bikini?

It was basically Maxim with slightly more focus on music, iirc.

it was more like the more liberal-ish version of Stuff magazine without as much misogyny or skin-pics, and primarily music-focused.

LOL xpost

I mean, American version of the lad mags. A typical cover:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51iZeuWriiL._SX379_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Nah, there were a lot of skin pics.

whoa

guess I'd forgotten that aspect.

idk why I got Stuff magazine, I feel like I was gifted a subscription or something, but man, if a magazine could be the spiritual embodiment of a person who would later become a Trump voter, that one was it.

Blender was like a mashup of Maxim and Q, lots of listicles, discography overviews, capsule reviews, contests (I actually won a pair of Sennheiser headphones for answering the back page mystery lyric), 'what are you listening to' things w/celebrities and yeah, loads of coverage of hot music ladies.

Fame. Betrayal.>>>>>>>Cowboy Chaps.

"WE WANT TO BE THE METAL U2"

narrator: "They in fact, never did become the metal U2."

I worked there for 1 1/2 years… being a salaried fulltime staffer for an american version of Q was the best job I could have imagined at the time that I got it…and then within a couple of weeks it was clear that it was going to be the worst professional experience of my life. Which it turned out to be.

was it a toxic work environment, or was it more a content based objection

I do say that I wish more publications, print or digital, did more with discography overviews. I know The Wire still does them occasionally for the single-artist primers (thinking of the recent Fugazi one) and UNCUT does them as voted on by readers, iirc, but I'd be into more deep dives into larger careers.

Were Blender and Maxim under the same umbrella or did all of those just look so similar they might as well have been?

corporate umbrella*

nobody has comments on the Gooch?

def the same, it was originally billed as "Maxim presents..."

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71zbNZZC6uL._AC_SL1000_.jpg

that explains a lot!

WTF @ Jewel pic. I forgot about that phase of her career.

xpost - I mean, you already mentioned the Axl Rose thing, which is about all I got for him

haha the Jewel cover was going to be my original example, but I thought the Leann Rimes one was grosser with the "all grown up!" part.

But, jfc, "drool it's the new Jewel" is pretty damn gross in its own right.

The Jewel/Liz Phair sexy pop pivot felt like a huge departure deep in their careers - at a point where they had been known at all for less than a decade each. Nothing happens in a decade now.

I was gonna object that Liz had been known for significantly more than a decade, but I guess it really was only 10 years (’93-’03).

it was determined by Felix Dennis (the potentate of the lad mag category in the UK and who had great success with Maxin right before the Internet would have rendered such a thing impossible) and at least one american music magazine bigshot that there was a market that Rolling stone and Spin was neglecting…which is to say, the two publications were seen to be too high-minded and not "fun" enough…and for sure, in the early 2000s, Jann Wenner's priority was to have his mag complain about Bush II and kiss his friend's and hero's asses… and Spin seen as too concerned with buttering up the Real rock is back movement…

So Blender, which is a name Dennis Publishing had rights to —it was a CD-ROM in the mid 90s, they tried to secure a more suitable name to no avail— was positioned to unambiguously celebrate pop music. To be poptimist. That was !00% the intention of the top American staffers. But being that Maxim was set up to highlight cheesy picture of women for guys too stupid or timid to figure out how to get real pornography, they had to get very famous lady singers to pose provocatively. It was a huge huge success initially.

Noble intentions, if questionable execution.

I believe Blender was the magazine that vaulted Rob Sheffield to prominence. For that alone it should be stricken from history and people should spit on the ground like Italian great-grandmas any time its name is mentioned.

I never met Bob Jr., but I was distressed to learn that he and I had the same sexual partner at one time…I had not been safe with her and he had a reputation for having a shit ton of STDs, and in any case this was also at the time that he was being sued for sexual harassment at Spin… but I gotta say that I've also heard from many people, including our mutual partner, that apart from his indiscretions as such, he's a really swell guy… I have been fascinated with his dad for years (Bob Sr. had the best basso profundo voice I've ever heard) and Bob Jr is really funny and sweet in the Bob Sr. doc…the people I've known who didn't like Bob Jr. are people I strongly dislike…

No, Rob Sheffield was prominent in Details, the Voice and RS for many many years before he defected from RS to Blender with Joe Levy…

Yeah, Music Crit at RS for awhile was basically Sheffield/DeCurtis/Fricke.

Blender seemed like the obvious endpoint for trying to do an American Q/Mojo/Uncut-style mag (notable prior casualties including the original Revolver and whatever the hell that mag was that Alan Light started) (and maybe Paste?).

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

did we ever get this sordid?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Jfc