SPIN on Google Books

Looks like every issue through most of 2009: http://books.google.com/books/serial/ISSN:08863032?rview=1&rview=1&source=gbs_navlinks_s

itt: link to good articles

finally i can map out the entire story arc of my one-sided complicated adolescent relationship with ultragrrrrl

also cute pictures of paul banks.

Search: all the John Leland Singles columns. Cannot stress this enough.

HATE

ALT-ROCK WIGGER DJS

http://books.google.com/books?id=Ogux2DAvNU0C&lpg=PP1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA92#v=onepage&q=&f=false

i used to get so mad at the sexual interest spin writers had in karen o when i should have just been thinking of html tricks to make the ilm joanna newsom thread unusable seven years in the future

daaaaaaaamn

this 1993 list of the Reader's Poll "100 Greatest Songs Of Our Time" was essential reading for me when I was 13.

http://books.google.com/books?id=VuuGvMBRrYAC&lpg=PP1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA76#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Parts are totally predictable, parts are totally befuddling. So much Porno For Pyros! Meat Loaf?

But what always stuck with me was "Brothers Cup" by the Chili Peppers at number 49? Brothers Cup wasn't even a single! Why did so many people in 1993 like Brothers Cup? I've never heard anyone play that song on ANY OCCASSION. It;s a mystery thats literally haunted me for almosyt 20 years.

I'm gonna try to find the girl in one the fashion spread i had a crush on when i was 13. One of my earliest crushes!

HERE! Sigh.

http://books.google.com/books?id=1XjH458f108C&lpg=PP1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA52#v=onepage&q=&f=false

This TouchTones thing (Dec 1992) sounds like a great idea for the time:

http://books.google.com/books?id=uZFqiGmZIPAC&lpg=PT73&lr=&as_pt=MAGAZINES&rview=1&pg=PT73#v=onepage&q=&f=false

So much Porno For Pyros! Meat Loaf?

I believe this is a Zen koan.

there was a free version of that I used to use circa 1995-996

"Vedder's fans make an emotional connection with him that Kurt Cobain simply will not allow."

I'm not sure why this is so funny to me...do people write this way about rock stars anymore? Like, about Nickelback or whatever?

"Chad Kroeger's fans get drunk. Again!"

whoa, there's a note on swine flu in the December 1993 issue Whiney linked to..."Bryan Ellison exposes how this elite, semi-secret wing of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has managed to stifle debate about everything from swine flu to AIDS."

Man, good old health-care conspiracy-theory Spin.

and in that article there's an for "Oxford, England's rowdiest new band", Radiohead, featuring "the self-loathing anthem Creep". "Radiohead. Better Than Butthead", it reads.

this 1993 list of the Reader's Poll "100 Greatest Songs Of Our Time" was essential reading for me when I was 13.
http://books.google.com/books?id=VuuGvMBRrYAC&lpg=PP1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA76#v=onepage&q=&f=false

I can't believe I never saw this before! I think I by habit looked over readers' polls. I figured the critics knew more and I wanted to find out things I didn't already know.

John Leland: "How dare they call this wet rag 'Eternal Flame'?" http://books.google.com/books?id=TZaFMCee5HQC&lpg=PA1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA36#v=onepage&q=&f=false

xpost, there's still like 1 or 2 songs on that list I haven't heard!

^ maybe my favorite rockcrit one-liner ever

guess it should be ^^^

Hahaha, how did i go 20 years without hearing apparantly epochal gen x staple "the sweater" by maryn cadell

hahaha start a tumblr called "apparently epochal"

I'm pretty amazed that a single off the B-52s' Whammy made the list.

also that's a lot of Jane's Addiction!

man, the 90s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFfy0dMKIi8

MOST IMPORTANT PERFORMER OF OUR GENERATION
1. Perry Farrell
2. Madonna
3. Michael Jackson
4. Michael Stipe
5. Henry Rollins

That about sums the 1993 readership up, right?

Most important performer of our generation:
1. Perry Farrell
2. Madonna

xp fuck, haha

actually I find the classic rock picks on that list kinda fascinating, like they share some conceptual core if you know what I mean: "Purple Haze", "White Room", "Kashmir", "Comfortably Numb"...like they're all songs it would have made sense for the Cure to cover in 1992 (whatever kind of classic rock that means).

JESUS GOD STOP MAKING ME RELIVE MY PAST

Wait I've been talking about all the shows I saw in 1992 on my blog, never mind. So much of this stuff just makes my head spin now. (Pun not intended.) And I did remember that Mervyn Cadell single...

OK, I did it myself: http://apparentlyepochal.tumblr.com/

Hahahaha

Hero.

Fucking Porno for Pyros though. Who I saw, WILLINGLY, in 1992 (if as part of a festival benefit lineup). So glad I never actually bought that first album.

Matos, in the same vein, you could add this gem from Spin's Top 100 Alternative Albums Of All Time from the 1995 guide:

82. Barbara Manning - Lately I Keep Scissors

haha that's a really good album! sorry, it's not crit-obscure enough.

of course now that I say that I start wondering if I'm wrong

i dunno, i haven't heard that name mentioned in any capacity BUT the Spin Alternative Record Guide, but who knows

Barbara rules! Put on a great show at Terrastock 5, last time I saw her.

Oh holy hell!!! This is research HEAVEN! Thanx billions Matos!! xoxoxoxo

I suppose this can double as a John Leland thread too.

This John Leland singles column is my vote for the greatest piece of music criticism ever written.

Here's Frank Owen's top ten singles of the 1980s with Touch: "Without You" at #1!!

And you can search all issues!!!

And then right on the very next page, you get Byron Coley's 80 Excellent Records of the 1980s,a list I've been DYING to talk about on here.

Think of the polling opportunities!!

Here's another absolutely genius John Leland Singles column, prolly my fave after "Temporary Music." Damn these years were so heady!!!!

And here's the issue that changed my life: It's Only Rock 'n' Roll, Spin's list of the greatest albums, books, movies, fetishes (who wrote the New Order entry?!?!?) and, of course, singles with Rob Base and D.J. E-Z Rock's 'It Takes Two' notoriously at number one.

Brilliant entries on Fresh, Low Life, and Faith.

Here's Leland's 100 favorite funk singles.

"From the concert stage to the dressing room, from the recording studio to the digital realm, SPIN surveys the modern musical landscape and the culture around it with authoritative reporting, provocative interviews, and a discerning critical ear. With dynamic photography, bold graphic design, and informed irreverence, the pages of SPIN pulsate with the energy of today's most innovative sounds. Whether covering what's new or what's next, SPIN is your monthly VIP pass to all that rocks."

A lot of interesting stuff on Celia Farber on Wikipedia, guess I'd forgotten that she was still going, & that her ideas hadn't changed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celia_Farber

As I remember it, getting information on AIDS wasn't easy in the late 80s, and SPIN had a monthly column about it which was amazing in itself. So if you were a young, into music, & didn't read a lot of newspapers, this might be your primary source of information. And yet every month, the column focused almost exclusively on fringe theories (no connection between HIV and AIDS, HIV is harmless, maybe AZT actually causes AIDS, etc.) and suggested that the real truth was being covered up.

from an observer article linked to on that wikipedia page

Ms. Farber said in an e-mail that after she wrote a piece for the New York Press about Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harassment case in 2004, the founder of American Apparel, Dov Charney, called her up “yelling about the whole fake feminism ordeal.” Mr. Charney had been dealing with his own harassment accusations, and he hired her as a “consultant and writer.” Ms. Farber referred to Mr. Charney as her “secret benefactor.”

Note: I had totally forgotten that Meryn Cadell's "The Sweater" ever existed, but as soon as I started playing the YouTube, I immediately remembered pretty much every single word, complete with cadence and enunciation -- clearly I had this on some sort of much-listened-to mixtape.

Since then I've learned that Cadell is now a college professor and a man

"They're like a species evolved on an island without natural predators. They never learned how to be shrewd."

they also got the last laff tbh

?

xpost -- wait, what?

http://books.google.com/books?id=3AHtQNYRR9YC&lpg=PP1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA40#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Check out this very early reference to child-actor Elijah Wood, then click forward two pages.

Looking at this makes me wish I had an iPad.

i never realized that i had so many "lost years" until RIP mark linkous + spin archives reminded me. memory flood is a little much, tbh.

http://books.google.com/books?id=3AHtQNYRR9YC&lpg=PP1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA40#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Check out this very early reference to child-actor Elijah Wood, then click forward two pages.

― kingkongvsgodzilla

awesome

So how come whenever I put "Sa-Fire" into the Spin search thing I just get non-Spin articles about William Safire, instead of that infamous cover story (by Leland I think?) about the Latin freestyle singer? (Infamous for being a somewhat odd cover for a national rock magazine, not for anything specifically said in the piece, as far I remember.)

Probably because Google's search algorithm parses out the hyphen.

And the commonality of Safire. Seems to be one of those things that coincidentally gets masked without a more elaborate search string.

Not sure. You did it with quotes, right? Here are the search results with quotes. Turns up nine issues including your 1994 review of Tommy Boy's ace freestyle collection. Sadly, however, one of those pesky bingo cards got in the way of the scan obscuring a huge chunk of your review. :(

Oooh according to Sia Michel's editorial, the 2004 Pixies cover was REVENGE for the 1988 Sa-Fire cover!!

Ha...found a letter of mine they published, too! Oh, man. Did I take some stuff too seriously.

Also, their best-music-you-didn't-hear lists were full of good stuff.

1991:
http://books.google.com/books?id=5zrzfgLFgUYC&lpg=RA1-PT20&dq=jim%20greer%20u2%20john&rview=1&pg=RA1-PT20#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Turned me on to Jimmie Dale Gilmore (still love that album) before I bothered w/ Pavement or Royal Trux, but also was the first I'd heard of Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn. And, Chuck, a friend of mine bought that Apollo Smile disc because of your review there. As I remember he only listened half of it before selling it back.

Reading that Kim Gordon/LL Cool J interview above. This is the fucking narcissism of small differences defined

Kim: Are you familiar with the early hardcore scene
LL: Uh-uh, what is that? Is it like heavy metal?
Kim: No, not at all! It was basically kids talking to other kids.

You know, Kim, "sort of" would have sufficed.

Haha, that's great. Sonic Youth's entire universe is basically the narcissism of small differences defined.

Looks like Spin was all up on Barbara Manning in '95. One of their album picks from that year--SF Seals' The Truth Walks in Sleepy Shadows--was one of Manning's bands.

http://books.google.com/books?id=b9_qs_-pof8C&lpg=PP1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA82#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Classic Steven Daly-Jonathan Bernstein dialogue Singles column on the rise of acid house.

That Sa-Fire cover was beautiful. Had no recollection you wrote that great Scratch Acid piece. Two writers I regularly think about down the years without ever seeing anywhere are John Leland and Byron Coley.

Sa-Fire cover:
http://books.google.com/books?id=PdiXT9xoRXQC&pg=PA45&dq=Latin+Hip-Hop&lr=&as_pt=MAGAZINES&ei=l5OWS8HbLouwMo_J5MwH&rview=1&cd=3#v=onepage&q=Latin%20Hip-Hop&f=false

OH MY GOD, so much more interesting than the articles is the youth-targeted 90's ads (which I find rly fascinating)

Ha, me in a letter in 1991: "I see a magazine becoming increasingly trend-conscious and less and less art conscious."

I see a nation of millions strong, listening to Robyn Hitchcock photos.

I see mixed-and-(un)matched typefaces, angles, and crazy colors!

http://books.google.com/books?id=fsi_VCMy0tQC&lpg=PP1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA6#v=onepage&q=&f=false

um

hey al good news you can now search the spin archives

Two writers I regularly think about down the years without ever seeing anywhere are John Leland and Byron Coley.

Leland is on staff at NYT; Coley writes regularly for The Wire.

And Leland went to Newsweek in 1990. Where, yup, he was equally genius, e.g. Mariah vs. NWA generation piece.

byron and chuck were the only two people i trusted in old spin days. i would actually go out and buy things that they liked. i got a lot of good records that way. thanks guys! i talk to chuck via the internet every day and i had a nice chat with byron a couple weeks ago in my record store. so, i still think of them. i don't think about john leland much. he should stop in my store! but, you know, i dug his column.

Leland wrote that History of Hip book a few years ago (which was the first time I'd ever heard of him).

xpost Thanks, Matos, I had no idea Coley wrote there, and I now remember seeing something in Arthur too. But Leland is a news reporter, right? I did pick up Newsweek for a while just for Leland, and remember that story--was it the Sister Souljah cover? Loved Hip: The History too. But I miss having these guys comment on albums I actually hear and buy.

Scott Poulson-Bryant brings the pain in '91:

In the immortal words of the Details cover star, Ice-T, I think Leyland played himself.

http://books.google.com/books?id=b4qmcLhXEsYC&pg=PA80&dq=%22dreaming+america%22&lr=&as_pt=MAGAZINES&cd=26#v=onepage&q=%22dreaming%20america%22&f=false

I miss Four on the Floor.

Haha LELAND.

Leyland plays himself on a daily basis, March-September.

Poulson-Bryant was always a big favorite of mine in Spin, I recall reading this but didn't know anything about Leland at that point.

Did y'all happen to notice that they have a bunch of old CMJs up, too? Like from when it didn't totally suck?

No!

I remember Leland's Details column and this response, two guys in the dark with the same elephant. Hard to imagine this kind of exchange happening now.

I don't know, there's bound to be a website about that very thing.

Yeah, but not with the same "fine, white boy, go home" tone, just because the sentiment that hip hop used to be more fun and less self-conscious isn't confined to white folks, if it ever was, and the question of cultural ownership has gotten more complicated, if it ever wasn't.

I did a search on Leland, and came up with this Jay Smooth description of a 2005 Public Enemy conference panel at NYU. Really cool to discover that Chuck D was in the audience at one of the Clash's Bonds shows:
http://www.hiphopmusic.com/archives/000829.html

Looking at this makes me wish I had an iPad.

― Mark, Sunday, March 7, 2010 12:23 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is pretty genius:
http://andrewhearst.com/blog/2012/03/spy_magazine_ipad_archive

"Our Readers Picks The Top 100 Songs Of Our Time"
Does anyone have input on what's going on with this thing? There's no way that's an accurately tallied list based on actual votes from readers with zero input from promotion companies and record labels who were trying to push shit onto consumers. No one actually listened to "The Sweater" by Meryn Cadell in 1993.. SPIN was paid to include that song at #100. I can't think of any other reasonable explanation why that song would've been included here because there's no way anyone actually included that in their votes for "The top songs of our time."

I love this...it really stands the test of time of relevence!!!!

I would've been too young at the time to care if I had actually seen this but looking at it now the whole thing just looks strange.

first time i've ever seen the thing. pretty entertaining tho. the smell of goat boys...