"ROCK AND ROLL CAN CHANGE THE WORLD"? "THE CHICKS ARE GREAT"? I SOUND LIKE A DICK! The political impact of quotes unfortunately provided to Rolling Stone is of course beyond the purview of this blog, but that it happened in Rolling Stone is not.
Because there was a time for me that Rolling Stone did matter to define and reify That Which Is Hot, when its awarding of five stars to an album like Neil Young's Freedom was something which mattered (so much that I don't even have to google "five stars in Rolling Stone" to remember it), when its telling me that some album named Shoot Out The Lights by some duo I'd never heard of was one of the top ten albums of the 1980s (and, really, the "Rock The Casbah" band had something better than Purple Rain?) made me want to seek it out -- all before the whole thing felt like, as one critic called it, "unrepentant rockist fogeyism".
And there was the politics then too -- P.J. O'Rourke made me laugh, and Bill Greider said Important Things which seemed boring.
I guess I broke up with Rolling Stone once in college when I found and fell into alternative rock before the magazine itself did, and once it started playing catch-up to where I already was it no longer mattered. Spin did for a little bit, but by then I didn't even need then any more -- I had my friends and fellow disc jockeys in college, and that was all the cultural consensus I'd need.
Today, [blah blah blah "immediacy of the Internet," "atomization," "death of print media," etc. You know the drill.]
That Rolling Stone's list of albums of the 80's has some quite good selections on it (I had the little book it was in and there were some very interesting essays on the albums). It introduced me to Joe Jackson, made me probe deeper into Was (Not Was) past "Walk The Dinosaur," and they made a convincing argument for just how damn good Richard Thompson is (check out his soundtrack for "Grizzly Man" some time).
ReplyDeleteBut then the Rolling Stone worship by Wenner turned into a sad joke and I moved on.
I think the biggest problem with Rolling Stone is that it can't figure out what it is--it's trying to be at least three or four different things now, and not doing any of them particularly well:
ReplyDelete1. A magazine about contemporary music. Admittedly, it's doing better than it was 10-15 years ago on this front, actually embracing something beyond traditional "rock," but still, rather retrograde.
2. A general pop cultural magazine--sort of an "Entertainment Bi-Weekly." Sometimes this works out OK, but often just seems to be straying from its roots.
3. Sort of a variant of Maxim, with cheesecake photos of young female celebrities.
4. A rage-driven left-leaning/populist political magazine driven by Matt Taibbi.
FWIW, looking at the 2009 covers (24 of them), they break down as follows:
Musical artists--17
TV/Movies--5 (Taylor Lautner, Megan Fox, Stephen Colbert, Blake Lively/Leighton Meester, Sean Penn)
Female Cheesecake--4 (Shakira, Megan Fox, Lady Gaga, Lively/Meester)
Male Cheesecake--2 (Taylor Lautner, Jonas Brothers)
Politics--2 (George W. Bush, Barack Obama)
Some fall into multiple categories, as you can see, and some are tougher calls (I deemed last year's Adam Lambert cover solely "musical artist," though it could fall into "TV/Movies" or "Male Cheesecake").
Thus far in 2010, we've had 1 politics cover, 2 movie covers (Russell Brand and RDJ), a TV cover ("Glee"), a sports cover (Shawn White), and the rest music. (4 shirtless men, though.)
I contributed a few movie-related articles to RS in the 1980s. I remember first reading it in 1970 (before Adam, right?) and felt that Ben Fong-Torres was writing to me and for me. I stopped reading about 1985 (around the time of the RS perception/reality ads) when Wenner announced something to the effect that it made more economic sense for the magazine to follow a trend (i.e., put Prince on the cover once his album started selling) rather than discover new artists.
ReplyDeleteAnd I only know of Ben Fong-Torres as the guy who has the joke about the "mojo" in Almost Famous.
ReplyDelete"<span>it made more economic sense for the magazine to follow a trend (i.e., put Prince on the cover once his album started selling) rather than discover new artists." Fascinating. I had never heard about this statement, but it expresses exactly the thought that I had---when RS decided that it would glorify the Jonas Brothers and similar acts just because they were "in" for that moment, it lost me. Maybe it gained enough other people to make up for the people who stopped reading for this reason---hence, the "economic sense" part of the statement. But it definitely lost something.
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<span>they made a convincing argument for just how damn good Richard Thompson is</span>
ReplyDeleteWait, has anyone ever argued otherwise?
Bill, as someone who was born in 1973 I came to the Richard Thompson party very late.
ReplyDelete"The 'Rock The Casbah' band" ... heh.
ReplyDeleteI have a fantasy that someday a celebrity asked a particularly bad question by a Rolling Stone reporter will respond that the question is so stupid that the old Jann Wenner would be rolling over in his grave if the new Jann Wenner hadn't had him pickled in acid.
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