Magnet Magazine: "Black people do not exist"

I'll forgive 'em cuz they put in Urge Overkill's Saturation. Which I've been listening to all day.

Who would you have had them include? Cody Chesnutt? Fishbone? (Fishbone had already started to suck before MAGNET started publishing, but still, as long as we're going for tokenism...)

Question: Did they include the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and if so, does that count?

Agreed that there's something to be said for the lack of tokenism (though I think Play and Endtroducing might be just that), but the mag's uniformity in taste is frightening. Best thing in the whole mag: Carlos from Interpol saying "Credible music is overrated." That, and the Thom Yorke interview, where the interviewer is totally baffled by Thom's assertion that the move away from the album format is a good thing.

Frightening how? What should they be talking about that they're not, and why? It's a little niche magazine. Do you have the same complaint about, say, Relix?

Phil: I don't read Relix, but does it treat every genre of music that it doesn't cover with a snobbish disdain? Does it define its subject not by what it is, but what it isn't?

The Tom Petty interview was actually really interesting. Petty proved himself worthy of the adulation they heaped (hept???) upon him by sort of not getting what they were trying to say about him. Like he's really not interested in ANY of the bizz, indie OR corporate.

*HOLDING TONGUE*

They were still good live (they probably still are), but their last good album was released in 1991.

>I don't read Relix, but does it treat every genre of music that it doesn't cover with a snobbish disdain? Does it define its subject not by what it is, but what it isn't?

I don't know, because like yourself, I don't read it. But I don't read MAGNET, either. I was just pointing to them as another example of a small rag, influential or at least notable in a very tight circle, with a pretty restricted range of subject matter.

PS

I dont like the move away from album format. I dont want to have to switch CDs after every 3 minutes, that's annoying.

the Thom Yorke interview, where the interviewer is totally baffled by Thom's assertion that the move away from the album format is a good thing.

"B-b-but the album is what makes it ART!!!"

This is a mischaracterization, but I guess for the interviewer to have brought it up at all, imagining for a second that it might be an interesting question to explore must mean that he's a clued-out white alt./indie rock guy whose failure to mention Ludacris in the Radiohead piece means he hates all hiphop

yeah and then Yorke was like "ooh, yeahrr, I mean there can only be one or the other of the two types of music, they are trying to DESTROY OUR WAY OF EXPRESSING OUR PASSION, the bastids" and then they both listened to Neutral Milk Hotel

NB in my heart I believe that a fair percentage of ilx0r would find this scenario believable

what seems upsetting about the magnet thing is the general ignorance of these other genres. it seems like other types of niche mags would at least acknowledge (implicitly or explicitly) the influence of other genres / artists whereas the magnet cannon begins with whatever the first guided by voices album was...

PS I predict that this is the new trucker hat thread

xpost: jaymc pretty OTM, though I'm the guy that wrote Magnet's Enon sidebar and I stand by it ;)

and jaymc otm re the mag's overreliance on geezer indie

yeah, and didn't vibe run a really positive hootie and the blowfish review by daniel smith once? that took a lot of guts, i thought (a lot more than derogatis wanting to slam them in rolling stone did.)

also, maybe i'm wrong about this, but wouldn't the hip-hop magazines stipulate "Top 60 HIP-HOP albums" if they made such a list, at least acknowledging that they're just part of the world, not all of it?

(though maybe magnet DID say "Top 60 whitebread arhythmic indie wimp albums". I haven't actually looked at the list, so i have no idea.)

also, "kill whitey!"

It's about time... I mean, they have columns on free jazz & metal I can't see why they've ignored electronic music for so long.

Ashbery fans do not exist.

(that's what I get for trying to be funny)

Malkmus fans walk quite softly, and carry a micro stick.

So, black men don't like Malkmus. </ObDickJoke>

This list : best of lists :: wacking off to Victoria's Secret : head

Finally, one steps forward to be counted, tripod, first.

from my own experiences with indie rock, it's just a bunch of records with music and lyrics on 'em. almost everyone i know who listens to, say, enon or the white stripes or sgt. robert pollard's lonely hearts club band, also listens to hip-hop and classic rock and r&b and country and experimental weird shit and catchy-as-hell bubblegum music, in various degrees. because, at the end of the day, it's not "indie-rock" that most of these people are fans of. it's records with music and lyrics that they're fans of.

there is nothing even remotely indie or rock about moby's "play." that's not a judgment; it's a simple fact. to include him in your list of indie-rock or alternative rock or just plain rock or whatever kind of albums magnet claims to be listing is to basically admit that you are a corporate tool who has bought into the "identity" of indie rock that the industry wants to sell to you. maybe it means you're racist, too, i have no idea. or maybe it just means you're an idiot. either way, it makes it pretty clear to me that you're not listening for music; you're looking for a certain kind of identity and fashion.

if you want to make a best-of-powerpop list, then fine, but get moby and shadow and GYBE and JSBX and tortoise off of it., because there's not an ounce of power-pop in any of 'em. if you want to make a best-of-indie-rock list, then fine, but get pj harvey and the smashy pumpkys and rem and the verve off it. if you want to make the exact list of 60 albums magnet came up with, i dare you to tell me what exactly it's a list of.

TOO MUCH PRESSURE

i would say that it was a list of 60 indie albums.

i dont really see what is wrong with the list, its 60 indie albums in an indie mag for indie people. it does what it says on the tin, i just dont really want this tin

* I am somewhat indie.

(Worst indie poet = Bukowski)

x-post, well, indie is of course a nebuluos term, ie, has taken on a meaning other than 'independent' (whatever that meant), i think we are talking about a bunch of records that fit within a fairly tight set of parameters (i mean, does moby really sound any different to flaming lips?), and its identifiable through both sound and also audience, or to put it another way, are you surprised by any of the inclusions in this list? i am not, but this is not necessarily the bad thing people here are suggesting. there is nothing wrong with a tight aesthetic.

Also, Moby might be considered "indie" because a) Play was on V2, b) he espouses "indie ideals" (he's vegan = just like emo kids!). And he might be considered rock because c) he's played on rock radio, and d) his samples are of blues singers (not house divas) (more connected to the rock lineage). This is actually a perfect album to include on an "indie rock" list as a token electronic record, because it doesn't really stray THAT far.

so my question comes down to: what exactly are these fairly tight set of parameters?

to answer your last question, no i'm not surprised by any of the names on the list but that's just because i know magnet is a magazine published by clueless corporate tools with lousy ears.

if (c) is magnet's justification, then they should have called the list the 60 best albums of the past 10 years played on rock radio. that would be a dumb-ass list, but at least it would make a tiny bit of sense.

if (d) is magnet's justification, then i'm not sure how they would explain the inclusion of "69 love songs," whose roots are closer to cabaret, broadway and house divas than they are to most blues singers.

Not really. I've had this argument with people since 1986. Really, the problem is that "indie" has become a banner for kids who don't fit into the dominant/traditional (delete as applicable) paradigm to define someplace that they "fit in" but the parameters are based on things they are AGAINST rather than things they are FOR, and the way they define themselves against these things (normalcy/the median, making money, lack of introspection/heart/integrity, the popular, the "other") have high potential for a scene rife with irritatingly po-faced seriousness and carbon-copy drones who confuse narcissism for intelligence and sneer at others for not sharing their patently superior taste.

That's the "indie" stereotype I grew up with, anyway.

of course i can imagine someone who owns all of these records. but if they don't own a lot of *other* records, too, i don't think they're doing anyone any good by putting out a music magazine.

it's lifestyle marketing, straight up.

and, racist or not, it's a horrible way to run anything that purports to be a magazine about good music.

another value, musical and otherwise, that they have in common is that they're heavily influenced by marketing decisions, even more than by actual music. if a marketer tells them moby and dj shadow are "rock" artists and green velvet and carl craig are not, they believe them.

and instead of pushing and challenging them, the way a good magazine might, magnet has chosen to simply reinforce that perception.

Another question: In what sort of supermarket does one find Magnet? Washington, DC is possibly the stodgiest place in the western hemisphere, but I've never found this mag in so accessible a place.

Also, record labels don't "wield" power on consumers--consumers are free to reflect their interest with their purchase. To the extent that labels restrict what gets released--that's really not been a factor for at least 10 years and actually, closer to 20. In fact, the reason a label is cool or not is the result of free will by consumers. Marketing is extremely complicated, and not simply a dimension of race or instrumentation or meter or any one thing. But hell, rather than just accept the fact that Magnet picked out 60 albums that meant the most to *their editors* and assumedly, 60 albums that their longtime readers would probably agree with, let's chew the fat over wishing Magnet was something that it never has been and doesn't aspire to.

And to whomever validated Vibe's inclusion of white people by tossing out names like Eminem et al, none of those whiteys operate outside the worldview of Vibe. That's a red herring.However, Magnet's list, judging from their editorial scope of the ten years I've read it, is totally predictable. AS IT SHOULD BE.