What mags are y'all reading?

and there's FACT when i can find it. oh and despite recent misgivings from ilm i still like blowback.

Clash magazine anyone ? i look each month and it seems to be getting pretty good...

As for webzines: Perfect Sound Forever and Blastitude. Oh, and the Village Voice's music section.

that's pretty much it.

And then there are zines. Still some good print zines going:
Chica (very funny bad girl mag by Lucy Sweet), Stereo Sanctity (music, mondo filmarama, cartoons), Cheery Bananas (a Scottish Onion), Pussy Rock (post riot-grrl), and my own Beard (shameless plug).

It's great fun doing a zine, especially once you get to know other zine editors and writers.

http://www.emapfanzineawards.co.uk/shortlist.html

I read The Beat more for what it covers (not so much the reggae, but the coverage of Latin and North African/Middle Eastern music) than the writing. Sometimes it's just nice to be able to say, "No, I'm not imagining things. This music really does exist. Here is someone writing about it," even if they aren't writing anything particularly illuminating.

I sometimes read Songlines, which is maybe better written that The Beat overall, but isn't that easy to get hold of in the U.S. (and it's handling of U.S. subscriptions has been very poor, judging by my experience and the experience of the library where I work). Also, it's scope is broader that The Beat's, and a lot of issues just won't cover that much of the music that interests me most.

Global Rhythms covers similar territory, but I think it's really awful in a lot of different ways. Latin Beat would seem like an obvious choice, but I don't like the writing much, and it just ends up disappointing me much of the time. It doesn't review enough CDs, and the reviews themselves seem pretty generic. (I might as well just read the descarga.com "reviews," which clearly aren't real reviews, but at least they are free.) I still take a look at it, but there's nothing much there.

Well, I don't know yr taste dude, but Arthur covers a lot of weird folk stuff, psych, underground rock and has a quite strong political side to it. Their Devendra curated Golden Apples Of The Sun comp is pretty definitive as far as new weird folky stuff goes. Jello Biafra is on the cover of the current issue. They tend to go for arists with something to say - very good Le Tigre piece in the one I read.
Unlike Punk Planet though, it has plenty of humour, with an advice column by T Model Ford and indie celeb recipe column called Come On In My Kitchen. Comics too.
Thurston Moore is one of the reviews editors.
Only seen a couple of issues, but hopefully a batch is going to be coming into Monorail in Glagsow, with punters paying 20p towards the postage.

not previously mentioned: horoscopes written by Ian Svenonius (or Steve Aylett), really great capsule reviews, contributions/interviews w/ lots of great non-muso folks (Arthur C. Clarke, J.G. Ballard, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, etc.)

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Remix Magazine always looks disgusting but is actually fairly impressive. Tiesto on the cover, but Oliveros on the inside back page.

but i read the sound projector cover to cover when it comes out every year. because it's priceless... and it's essentially one man. and that's always good. i can't recommend it enough...

i can't remember how but I got free subscriptions to Blender and Rolling Stone. I really really hate Blender.

speaking of which, Halana Magazine No. 5, due out any year now...

can anyone explain the pro's and cons of these magazines? I have never read any of those, am I missing out?

I a completely aware that Q and I drifted irreconcileably apart several years ago and I have absolutely no idea why I keep buying the damned thing other than a combination of boredom and force of habit.

Now that all three seem to be hitting the news stands almost simultaneously though (rather than at least a week apart like they used to be) I imagine I'll baulk at forking out for all three at once and end up putting Q back on the shelf....

.... and then getting it back down again and buying it a week or two later when I've exhausted the other two and am bored again.

Actually Wire isn't distributed in my (part of the) country so I add a "d" to the title and gawk at overpriced gadgets. Music magazines are embarrassing generally, to write for/read/carry around. Let's roll all of them into one and call it Nerdy Promotion. Subscription-only and free.

I don't read webzines but maybe this is a description of one of them ?

also Private Eye, Big Issue, Vanity Fair if Tom Junod's got a big feature...

Once I've got a postal address I expect to be at for a year, I'll subscribe to The Wire.

I bought an issue of Mojo once (the Smiths one, a few years ago), though it seemed too oriented towards a baby-boomer audience.

Does it get a hammering? I'm yet to meet anyone who's actually bought a copy, but I've been tempted recently, due mainly to the above reason, but also due to Uncut/Mojo/Q's dogged insistence on never featuring a single (new) band I'm interested in reading about.

Wire (mostly in stores lately, buy it less than I'd like to because it's just so damn expensive)

Rolling Stone (mostly for the non-feature stories and politics these days, buy it on occasion only after letting the subscription lapse)

Blender (sometimes, brother-in-law's copies)

Time, Newsweek, and EW (because my wife gets free copies at work)

Giant (subscription is cheap, and even though most of it's not worth a toss, the 10 pages in each issue that are good are fascinating)

Details and GQ -- I'm frighteningly finding these magazines more interesting than just about anything I read of late, which must mean that I'm getting old. I love it when Details slags trends, i.e. sportcoats over hoodies, t-shirts with ironic slogans, ski caps in hot weather, partial tucks, etc., in part because my fashion sense is so boring that I never commit any of the perceived faux-paus (sp).

I wish they did cover more obscure or rarely covered bands rather than the same old stuff all the bloody time.

Then I would buy it again.

Theres never been a parliament/funkadelic cover.
There should be a whole damn magazine dedicated to the full story!

umm - Mojo Specials ?

so, no-one else reads Hip Hop connection ? tis one of my regulars these days alongside Mojo.

I demand a Mojo special on the entire pfunk story now!

There's a whole thread battering it somewhere in here.