Friday, July 23, 2004
I've been reading a lot of music magazines lately, for the first time in some years.
I picked up Filter recently, drawn in by not only the great cover shot of Robert Smith, but the promise of articles on Digital Underground, New York Dolls, and Franz Ferdinand. [For the record: have only heard two FF songs, like 'em both fine, now shut up.] Filter strikes me as an attempt to mate Spin and Magnet, kinda pushing the commercial edge of genuine alt.rock, and seems to do a decent job at it. The articles were mostly well-written, the reviews are rather fine, and it's a good-looking mag. Keep drawing me in with articles on artists I like, and I'll keep reading.
Just what the world needs, another hiphop mag? But wait; Scratch promises to be different, covering "The Science of Hip-Hop." This is one for the turntable geeks and Timbo wannabes/strivers. Does it succeed? Well, their interview with Lil' Jon focuses on his studio gear, not ATL skrippaz. The one-pager with Jadakiss previewing his new Kiss of Death talks about the knob-twiddlers behind each track. And with cover star Dr. Dre, it's his lab that's of main concern. The puff pieces are kept to a minimum, and there's plenty of meat here - including DJ battle "transcriptions" (no joke!), and in their "Remix" column, Easy Mo Bee imagining a contempo, remixed version of no less a classic than Ready to Die (great reading, too). Scratch is starting out as a quarterly, so you should still be able to peep the Summer '04 issue, and if you've any interest in the minds behind hiphop, I'd suggest you do so. Let's hope it can keep it up; hell, if there's room for Guitar World and all its children, there's definitely room for Scratch.
And then there's Rolling Stone, which seems to be in the midst of a bit of a renaissance, artistically speaking. Coming on the heels of their "50 moments that changed rock" issue (while I didn't agree with all of their choices, the writing was fine) and the fact that they rolled the dice and threw, last-minute, the late Ray Charles on the cover of their summer double ish (respek due!), their latest cover includes (for subscribers, at least) absolutely no mention of music whatsoever. [On the newsstand, the mentions are just in small type in the lower right-hand corner.] The cover's "Doonesbury at War," along with a Garry Trudeau illustration. Also mentioned are an excerpt from Tom Wolfe's new novel, and an interview with Bill Clinton. Save for some of the names, this cover could've popped up in the late '70s, and you're damned right I see that as a good thing. Their political and world-affairs coverage has gone back up (after that unfortunate "we wanna be Blender" period which the eds seem to be leaving behind them), and there's a solid (sometimes stellar) team of reviewers working the back of the mag: Rob Sheffield, Jon Caramanica, Barry Walters, and Douglas Wolk foremost among them, plus the irascible David Fricke, who never fails to delight me. Could it be that RS is working hard(er) to become a must-read once again, like it's not been in nearly two decades? One can only hope.
I picked up Filter recently, drawn in by not only the great cover shot of Robert Smith, but the promise of articles on Digital Underground, New York Dolls, and Franz Ferdinand. [For the record: have only heard two FF songs, like 'em both fine, now shut up.] Filter strikes me as an attempt to mate Spin and Magnet, kinda pushing the commercial edge of genuine alt.rock, and seems to do a decent job at it. The articles were mostly well-written, the reviews are rather fine, and it's a good-looking mag. Keep drawing me in with articles on artists I like, and I'll keep reading.
Just what the world needs, another hiphop mag? But wait; Scratch promises to be different, covering "The Science of Hip-Hop." This is one for the turntable geeks and Timbo wannabes/strivers. Does it succeed? Well, their interview with Lil' Jon focuses on his studio gear, not ATL skrippaz. The one-pager with Jadakiss previewing his new Kiss of Death talks about the knob-twiddlers behind each track. And with cover star Dr. Dre, it's his lab that's of main concern. The puff pieces are kept to a minimum, and there's plenty of meat here - including DJ battle "transcriptions" (no joke!), and in their "Remix" column, Easy Mo Bee imagining a contempo, remixed version of no less a classic than Ready to Die (great reading, too). Scratch is starting out as a quarterly, so you should still be able to peep the Summer '04 issue, and if you've any interest in the minds behind hiphop, I'd suggest you do so. Let's hope it can keep it up; hell, if there's room for Guitar World and all its children, there's definitely room for Scratch.
And then there's Rolling Stone, which seems to be in the midst of a bit of a renaissance, artistically speaking. Coming on the heels of their "50 moments that changed rock" issue (while I didn't agree with all of their choices, the writing was fine) and the fact that they rolled the dice and threw, last-minute, the late Ray Charles on the cover of their summer double ish (respek due!), their latest cover includes (for subscribers, at least) absolutely no mention of music whatsoever. [On the newsstand, the mentions are just in small type in the lower right-hand corner.] The cover's "Doonesbury at War," along with a Garry Trudeau illustration. Also mentioned are an excerpt from Tom Wolfe's new novel, and an interview with Bill Clinton. Save for some of the names, this cover could've popped up in the late '70s, and you're damned right I see that as a good thing. Their political and world-affairs coverage has gone back up (after that unfortunate "we wanna be Blender" period which the eds seem to be leaving behind them), and there's a solid (sometimes stellar) team of reviewers working the back of the mag: Rob Sheffield, Jon Caramanica, Barry Walters, and Douglas Wolk foremost among them, plus the irascible David Fricke, who never fails to delight me. Could it be that RS is working hard(er) to become a must-read once again, like it's not been in nearly two decades? One can only hope.
# posted by Thomas : 9:38 AM
