Spin sucks, but then you already knew that
Go ahead and pick up the new Skyscraper magazine where my buddy (and frequent Yalestar.com commentater) Thick Rick Stoddart has an interview with Last of the Juanitas. This issue also features an ad I did for Wäntage Records on page 146, I think. And you'll even find a review of the Volumen's "Cries From Space" CD in which the reviewer says something like "their songs are only half serious; how can the listener be expected to take it seriously?"
Now I'm not on the Volumen payroll or anything, but what the fuck kinda thing is that to say in a review? Thank god most bands don't take their craft very seriously&emdash; that's why it's rock and fucking roll! It's supposed to be fun and irreverent! Celebrating the inane and banal and whatnot is part and parcel of everything rock'n'roll stands for! I hate serious music (for the most part) and I hate being around people who take it overly seriously. Who the hell wants all bands to be self-serious music scholars that fastidiously cogitate on each and every note and its greater importance in the grand scheme of things?
But that's par for the course for a review that appears in Skyscraper. I dig the shit out of this particular periodical and mucho admiration for the gargantuan effort that goes into each issue. But there is glaring self-seriousness about it that has bugged me since the first time I picked up an issue. Dig this: In my more pensive, solitary moments, I often like to entertain myself with a little game I picked up from Radio Zero called "Theatre of the Mind", in which you try to speculate on the nature of things you haven't witnessed first-hand. And when I read Skyscraper, I imagine the contributors to be those gangly indie-rock geeks wearing tight thrift-store t-shirts and those oval glasses that go to shows and stand around, arms folded, studying the bands' every move, making on-the-fly calculations about their significance and taking notes.
Yo! Music is bacchanalia! Getcha a beer, bullshit with folks at the bar! Piss all over the toilet seat! Help the bands load out and ask them retarded questions!
But hell, Skyscraper is still an exponentially better publication than shit like Spin. Fuck man, Ol' Rusty Smetanka wrote something about Missoula in the last issue of Spin, so I had to suffer the grievous indignity of carrying that issue up to the counter and actually paying money for it. (Turns out Rusty's thing was like six sentences long, so I could have feasibly just read it in the store and skipped buying it, but that is, as they say in the midwest, "besides the point.") And so now I have an issue of Spin cluttering up the house. Man, that magazine gets me riled up. It's like they can't conceive of a band that operates independently of some pre-existing scene or movement. Like they can't just write about the White Stripes; it has to be part of some Detroit retro resurgence thing, replete with sartorial advice and some dick telling you which old albums you need to have heard to have a proper contextual appreciation of the White Stripes. They can't just review a record; it's like "you need to get this record for this this and this reason, and it is part of such-and-such scene and has the following historical precedents which you need to be aware of." And of course all the stuff is written in that insufferable cheese-dick hipster patois. Goddamn I hate Spin.
Shit, now I'm all worked up. Sweet serenity, rain down on me from on high.
Yale Von Animal Beer, you complete me. Everyone who isnt either an artist or a fan, please fuck straight off. Pass the mustard. Noone likes sychophants and parasites.
- steff jetson November 04, 2002 13:43But guys, what about the "art of criticism?" (he asked ironically)
- haze November 04, 2002 13:51Thank you for ending the suffering by removing the Chicken Fried Steak. It's been a long time coming.
- Lo November 04, 2002 14:10Who woulda thunk cowboys drove Kias. Perplexing......
- hop along November 04, 2002 14:19Thank you for ending the suffering by removing the Chicken Fried Steak. It's been a long time coming.
That's right- you were having a hard time coping with that photo before lunch, as I recall.
But guys, what about the "art of criticism?" (he asked ironically)
I bet if a Spin staffer asked that at an editorial meeting, he'd be ritualistically buggered, pilloried, and burned at the stake. And fired.
- Yale Shtupp November 04, 2002 14:22Does that cowboy always look like he's ready for the ol' reach around, or is it some kind of hot air balloon that happened to be partially deflated when you snapped the photo?
Anyone who calls the Volumen out for not taking music seriously enough should be locked in a heatless, lightless room for 48 hours and forced to listen to nothing but the Counting Crows on a tinny, equalizer-less cassette player. Bastard.
- Laura Bush November 04, 2002 16:54Does that cowboy always look like he's ready for the ol' reach around, or is it some kind of hot air balloon that happened to be partially deflated when you snapped the photo?
You guessed it exactly. It was real windy that day, and the sight of that cowboy bent over like that was too much to pass up. I never caught on to the fact that it's a Kia dealership (as hop along pointed out above), but that makes it even funnier.
Anyone who calls the Volumen out for not taking music seriously enough should be locked in a heatless, lightless room for 48 hours and forced to listen to nothing but the Counting Crows on a tinny, equalizer-less cassette player
...while Phil Collins pees on him.
- Small Ball Yale Kaul November 04, 2002 17:18I forgot the gayest thing about Spin: that deal where they review bands by capping on other bands that they were apeshit about not long ago. Like one week they'll be gushing about The Strokes, then the next issue they're basing their review of a record on the fact that it's "not like that stupid Strokes bullshit."
That style of writing is the hallmark of people that are incapable of forming original opinions they can only appraise albums relative to other albums.
- Yell Kaul November 04, 2002 20:37Id'nt that Skyscaper mag out of The Peoples Republic Of Bo-owlder(Boulder,CO). I never can remember recieving a visual confirmation of that mag anywhere but Vaneks "Coiling Cabana". And I went to plenty of record stores during my tenure in Boulder. Maybe its out a Des Moines for all I know. Cause I can remember Rick"Hamper-Piss" Stoddard blowing quite a bit of sunshine up it's arse. And if it's got an article penned by Equate Lotions number one stockholder than I must get an issue by all means neccesary. As for that Volumen comment. When Collins zips up, have the bastard's eylids held open like in Clockwork Orange and send in the husky feller from the Blues Traveler singing showtunes nekkid for an hour or ten.
- Kitt November 04, 2002 20:38Hopefully Jefferson Davis Vanek will elucidate as to the HQ location of Skyscraper. Whenever I've mailed Wantage ads, it was to Boulder, but they list NYC as their mailing address in the inside cover, so I'm a bit corn-fused about it.
have the bastard's eylids held open like in Clockwork Orange and send in the husky feller from the Blues Traveler singing showtunes nekkid for an hour or ten
I wish there was a single English word for "that comment made me hork coffee up my nose and then I had to leave my cubicle so as not to disturb my co-workers with my chortling."
- Yale Sudsmith November 05, 2002 10:19Kitt, I saw on the great glowing box recently that the guy from Blues Traveler had his stomach stitched up. It's just like that Carne Wilson chick who you always see on the cover of magazines in the grocery store checkout, when you're trying to hit on the 40 year old with her coupons and obnoxious kids? Anyway, he's f'n way skinny now, rendering him a poor device of torture.
Yale, I've always refered to blowing liquid through my nose as snarfing.
- Longduck November 05, 2002 12:49Yep, it's HQ'd in Boulder. The Bottomley bro's, Pete and Andrew, do Skyscraper. One lives in new york, where he handles reviews, presumably by giving them to the most annoying of serious indie-sensy diddlers. That kid just ganged up on Volumen. But being defensive about something I know is good, honest music isn't gonna matter in the long run.
I think they also have a promotion company or something like that as well. Like Yale says, kudos for the heft of the thing, its layout, depth of coverage, inclusion of hip hop reviews, photography... and plenty more. Good magazine in general, and I have bought each issue over the last several years. The damning flaw is the seriousness of the thing. Irreverance, satire... and that just seem harder and harder to find. Look to Georgia's Chunklet for your heapin' helpin' of rock dumbfoolery.
Just got back from yon Eastern Coast and I'd like to hereby proclaim Asheville N.C. the coolest town East of the Mississippi. Rick'll weigh in on that, I wager.
- Wanek, Jedd November 05, 2002 12:57