Taking Sides : Spin Vs NME Vs Rolling Stone Vs Mojo Vs Blender Vs Uncut Vs Q

Spin, Rolling Stone, Blender, Uncut and Q are unbearable shite... Mojo still has it's moments of brilliance, but they're getting soft on those reviews.

However, Pete Fucking Yorn.

I know, I know, it's the publishers, blah, blah, but it's a fucking shame, because when Uncut is on (and it still is fairly frequently), it blows most everything away, simply b/c it has fantastic goddamned writers.

Sorry.

Genius t-shirt slogan.

Good Ralph Nader article a few years ago, .etc, .etc.

Spin has a fashion section, does it?

yes, and avoid those terribly opinionated food labels and street signs.

On the cover of the 27 October 1985 issue there's Neil Kinnock.

FORM YOUR OWN OPINIONS!! REFUSE TO LEARN TO READ in the FIRST PLACE!!

as for rolling stone i can't even bear to look at the cover, much less what's inside. spin was actually pretty good during the first 2 or 3 years of its existence; since then its various incarnations have been pretty awful. spin would be useful for time capsule purposes, as it seems to be obsessed with microtrends in the popular culture...a 'hipper' "entertainment weekly" with a little music thrown in now and then. otherwise like today's rs & nme it seems to consist of regurgitated press kits...ultimately of more value/service to the record companies than to curious music fans/seekers of interesting sounds.

mojo i enjoy and is very informative; uncut is nearly or just as good. these two have actual worthwhile content, as opposed to today's rs/spin/nme which are by and large vacuous. as folks have been complaining, the reviews in mojo & uncut do seem to be getting increasingly miniscule and unhelpful, which is a drag.

the nme stopped being worth even skimming through about 4 years back, which is a shame because it used to be a pretty good read & funny to boot.

magnet is crap. it's symptomatic of the crappiness of american music journalism (vintage creem excepted); no sense of humor & just plain boring.

i am too close-minded in my taste in music for absorbing much of the wire...but i enjoy the hidden jukebox or whatever-it's-called column...and the journalism is very good; almost making it worth reading about artists who operate in genres that i've never even heard of/don't comprehend. it would be great if they included cd's with the magazine like mojo/uncut do. maybe they sometimes do? i can't remember...

I like careless talk costs lives for similar reasons of enthusiasm and passion about the subject.

i quite like blender

lotsa boobage.

Some good stories in Spin lately--the Congolese music one, and the loser-band at SXSW one.

Tho plfft to Jonathan Ames for managing to ruin a Marilyn Manson profile.

I HATE Blender with a passion. How stupid is it to have an ethos that says that serious and / or poetic lyrics makes for bad rock music, and then calling out The Doors and Smashing Pumpkins for said infraction? Who are these people targeting?

Another thing I hate about Blender - whenever they make a list of the top bands or songs or whatever in whatever category, they always obviously put a real stinker way to high or a classic way too low, IMO just to get people onto their website or talking about the list. Pathetic.

I like Rolling Stone now that they hired Christgau.

xpost
I can't work up any sort of passion for Blender, hate or love. The whole shebang just feels so *considered* to me--as if every viewpoint has been carefully triangulated to present this facsimile of what it means to Love Pop Music.

Rolling Stone still has the best features. Blender has the best front of book. Spin has the best photos.

I just find it incredibly annoying. The asshole editor sitting around and saying to people, uh, sorry, around here we don't like poetic lyrics. Review denied. Go listen to some My Chemical Romance in penance.

what's sad about blender is that they have really talented people writing reviews for them, but they rarely get to write anything fun. or at least in the issues i've seen. every once in a while they will have one of those full-page klassik album things and people will get a chance to actually write something.

We got a free year of Blender with some offer.

ILM is much, much, much more informative, better written and engaging than anything I've ever seen in Blender. Even the damn polls here are more interesting than Blender lists.

Q>Mojo>>>Uncut>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Everything else

brit mags like mojo and uncut are so above and beyond any u.s. glossy that you can't even really compare them.

for what it's worth blender is the only mag in the us that can run articles about t.i., arcade fire and hinder in the same issue and it doesn't seem contrived.
(and some of us like to read articles about t.i., arcade fire and hinder in the same issue.)

Jordan, must we absolutely disagree on everything? However, I agree about Hinder - I really like his voice quite a bit. Very powerful. And coming from a guy who has the mic presence of a fairy, only that much sweeter.

i don't necessarily like hinder's or fergie's or scott weiland's music per se, but i like to read well-written articles about the most popular pop music and i think blender succeeds in that regard.
also, is it Q or mojo's that has like the who or sgt. peppers or pink fliyd on the cover every issue?

and sorry we can't even agree on the merits of hinder humansuit, but i do kinda like "lips of an angel"

Well I've only got as far as Lips of an Angel because I don't expect much beyond that, so I think we finally agree on something. As for Sgt. Pepper etc. - that would be Mojo. Which costs, what now, $15 stateside?

something crazy like that with a mix cd or something else wholly uninteresting/

Scott, do you think those mags are above and beyond U.S. ones because you're already familiar with a lot of what they write about (be it subject or genre), or because the writing is just plain better?

NME -- the enemy.

Spin -- just that.

Rolling Stone -- so old it's not even rolling, just limping.

Mojo -- lost it.

Blender -- yeah, like a mixed drink that makes you puke.

Uncut -- yeah, like my ugly, shriveled-up cock.

Q -- this ain't star trek, bitches

ILM -- more like, "ILStupid"

amirite

On at least one of those, yes.

RS for everything except the music. It does features (apart from music features) really well and actually gives articles room to stretch their legs a bit. Do any of these other mags ever allow 8,000 words for an article?

"Scott, do you think those mags are above and beyond U.S. ones because you're already familiar with a lot of what they write about (be it subject or genre), or because the writing is just plain better?"

I think everything about them is better. It really is a quality issue. The Brits here can rag on them all they want because it is their civic duty, but there is honestly nothing comparable in the U.S. to a magazine like Uncut or Mojo. Not even close. Not in a glossy mass-market zine anyway. The massive review sections. The photography. The in-depth stuff (20 pages on sly & the family stone or the history of fleetwood mac? why not!). are they perfect? no, of course not. are they too rockist or whatever and do they like oasis or whoever too much? yeah, of course. in a nutshell, they take music as seriously as i do, and i appreciate that. (jeezus, was it uncut that put out that special dylan issue some years back? my god that thing was massive! and just unbelievable that you could buy something like that at a newsstand. the amount of work involved...something like that will never exist in this country. it's probably just economics or something. i'm no expert.)

Uncut does a special Dylan issue every other goddamn month…or so it seems…

nah, this was a stand-alone issue. like UNCUT PRESENTS or something. it was its own thing. and very impressive.

All music mags are reader-sponsored travel bureaus.

I haven't read any of these in the last 8 or 10 years when most turned into style magazines. Magnet was the last subscription i had (1996). I went through a big stack of Rolling Stones last year to clip out cool photos before they went to the bin. Still have boxes of SPIN from the late 80s.

Classic Rock Magazine: White Guys With Guitars
Uncut: White Brit Guys With Guitars Who Wish They Were Americans
Kerrang: White Guys With Guitars, Long Hair And Halloween Costumes
Mixmag: Black And White Guys With Synths And Turntables
The Source: Black Guys With Two Turntables And a Microphone
NME: White Guys With Guitars Who Think They Are "Hip" And "Cool"
Mojo: Balding Guys (Largely White) With Guitars And Old Songs Only
Smash Hits etc.: Young White Guys With Makeup And No Facial Hair
The Wire: White Guys With a Serious Mental Problem
Downbeat: Black And White Guys With Dark Sunglasses, Trumpets and Trombones

Obviously, Q is superior because Q is the only generalist mag. :)

which ones do girls read

The ones about young white guys with makeup and no facial hair, what else? :)

The Wire: White Guys With a Serious Mental Problem

lol

Projection ftw.

All of these sound like hip-house groups

which ones do girls read

― thereminimum chips (electricsound), Wednesday, 3 December 2008 02:31 (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Clash?

Geir reasonably OTM, except Q.

Q: White guys w/ guitars who don't like music.

tku.

Most Q readers probably prefer "white guys with guitars", but Q don't discriminate about anything and cover everything.

Yeah, that Q article about Keak Da Sneak should make the Da Capo book thingy.

which ones do girls read

Kerrang. About 70% of it's readership is female.

source?

PFKAHGN is right, I think Kerrang is the only music magazine since the Smash Hits days to be read by more women than men.

are they putting a lot of women on the cover?

Emo dudes on the cover, mainly.

not even Georgina Baillie?

Kerrang! also includes a satirical comic strip called Pandora (originally Pandora Peroxide [5]), named for its main character, who is seen every week making fun of recent events in the rock world. The strip is written and drawn by Ray Zell. Other characters include Wek and Web. Wek, the "work experience kid" is a love interest who leaves Pandora and opens a tearoom. He is featured occasionally in strips. Web replaced Wek, and is a "work experience brat". Web has an obsession with Ville Valo of the band HIM. She even has a locket with one of Ville's discarded cigarette butts in it. Other minor characters included in the series are: Auntie P (the original Pandora Peroxide), Orgasm Girl, Billy and Bludwyn.

The strip is written and drawn by Ray Zell

This strip and The Roots? What a renaissance man.

Jeez, I didn't realise that it was the niece of the original Pandora. I thought she'd just stepped up her style.

"Orgasm Girl"

I remember when the niece appeared to take over as the old pandora wasn't really relevant in the new world of alt rock.

I think there is a lack of female readers of mags now in general. This because the anti girl/boy band backclash in the 00s made most of them go defunct. So here's me wondering what kind of mags will write about the Britneys, Christinas, Timberlakes, Avrils and Pinks of tomorrow, but I guess there will be some teenybopper pop mags showing up again soon. Because there will always be a market.

and ILM

lolol rolling stone referred to the santogold song as "L.E.S. Hipsters" in their year-end issue. how did that get past a copy editor?

^ Cuz the copy editor had probably never heard of the song. Rolling Stone is stuck in a boomer timewarp. I got a free subscription to Spin and it's not THAT bad. There's a lot of hype about bands with the right look that I'll never check out, but there's interesting articles sometimes, including a short piece in this month's about white power music being sold on iTunes and Amazon. I like most of the albums on their best of 2008 list.

Anybody know where I could read that Q Keak da Sneak article that's supposedly so good?

do blender's readers -- the beer/bong/babes set -- really want to read about and/or leer at katy perry? admittedly Im out of touch w/ pop music (and proud) but I looked at issue recently and content-wise it seems schizophrenic. the teenage kids i know who consume top 20 pop records 24/7 would volunteer to shampoo the carpet before they'd pick up blender or spin or nme or rolling stone or mojo or uncut or Q