Are There Any Decent MUSIC Magazines?!?

[Anderton]

I don't mean magazines for pro musicians, like Guitar Player. But I've been subscribing to Rolling Stone since forever, and if it weren't for PJ O'Rourke, David Fricke, and William Grieder, I'd let my subscription drop.

 

Tried Spin for a while, but it seemed way too self-conscious.

 

Revolution looks promising, a good culture mag with the CDs to back up the text so you know what they're talking about.

 

Urb - another up and comer. Not very deep sometimes, but cool.

 

What do you think? Any good mags about music out there? Any ones you look forward to getting in your mailbox? And is it just me, or has Rolling Stone lost its relevance?

 

Comments, please.

[alphajerk]

thats like asking if there are any good radio stations. they are all controlled by the same corporate conglomerates that tell the public what they should be thinking and listening to and wearing... so they shell out money for their product.

[the stranger]

Metal Maniacs isn't really too bad. For being a fairly mainstream publication, they tend to do a pretty good job of covering the underground.

Terrorizer is on the same level. (For those bloody englishmen) http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif

[Chip McDonald]

I remember Musician magazine.

 

I also know a Sign of the Apocalypse when I see it..

 

... See, I'm one of those weirdos who enjoys the experience of going to the bookstore and "browsing". Despite being dirt poor I seem to have an aversion to subscriptions.

I used to buy *all* of them... but I can't afford that now. Having said that, there is one magazine I buy religiously every month (and if I was intelligent - and had enough money at one time - I would get a subscription, BUT...) - and that one magazine would be _EQ_...

 

.. but I used to buy Musician. Until when was it, year before last and they went under?

 

So, I distinctly remember going to the local dealer of periodicals and walking to the same spot that held _Musician_ magazine for years and years...

 

.. and in it's place was... wait for it...

 

 

MURDER DOG MAGAZINE

 

Which I eventually discerned was a "hip hop culture" magazine (thanks to the cover which featured Insane Clown Posse) (people dressed as clowns, rapping? Another sign of the apocalypse...). Then I found out there *wasn't* a _Musician_ magazine anymore.

 

Which pretty much sums up today's society. _Murder Dog_ replaces _Musician_. Sigh... (and as I type this a car goes down the road outside with a resonant 82hz "boooommm.. bahbooooom")...

 

Hey you know, that's what EQ needs to do sort of an "expose'" article on: rap groups that mix explicitly to make car systems ring. They're out there, you know... for that matter, there's certain groups that the car stereo SPL competition bozos prefer to use; that's a curious (scary) phenomena.

[trick fall]

I'm with Alpha on this one, I used to read em all. Now the only music mag I read is Punk Planet.

[ST.Morigeaugte.net]

Same here I tend to agree with Alpha & Trick. I do get GP & BP cuz they were gifts. I only renewed the BP cuz the 2 fer (split it with a friend), like the reviews in BP. I also get Gig, it's okay.

 

Being an aging Blues Funk Rocker, the metal rags might not be what I'm looking for, but will definitely take a look.

[Guest]

I like Revolution too...subscribed when they sent me the first issue and it said something about 10 records that killed rock or something.

And so WHAT if someone mixes for car subs? motown used to mix for AM radio.

Spin--haven't read in years, same with RS.

[Anderton]

..And I was expecting to get a flood of responses saying "Hey, there's this great magazine, surprised you haven't heard of it..."

 

So I guess it is that bleak, eh?

 

Speaking of Musician magazine - I thought that was a great mag, too. I'm trying to get MusicPlayer.com to sort of fill in that hole. We have some great feature writers here, like Jon Weiderhorn, George Fletcher, and Britt Strickland who are responsible for all the pieces on bands and other artists, in the features section of this site.

 

Hey -- here's a wild thought. Should MP.com do record reviews, but from a musician's viewpoint (such as comments about production, engineering, songwriting, etc.)?

[alphajerk]

"Should MP.com do record reviews, but from a musician's viewpoint?"

 

hell fire yea! but ONE condition, you dont review all the commercial CRAP that gets publicity EVERYWHERE else!

[ST.Morigeaugte.net]

Originally posted by alphajerk:

"Should MP.com do record reviews, but from a musician's viewpoint?"

 

hell fire yea! but ONE condition, you dont review all the commercial CRAP that gets publicity EVERYWHERE else!

 

ditto that!!

[Tedster]

Some of the best music mags out there IMHO are the local sorta underground rags...who give reviews not only for local bands but also more national acts that come to town, either to the clubs (like Charlie Musselwhite at the Grand Emporium), or bigger acts at larger venues. Kansas City's "Pitch Weekly" is pretty good for that. And they're completely devoid of the "Britney meets Justin" apcray (but they do get a bit political, if you're not a political type). Support yer local rags...it's your music!!!

[Guest]

Alpha's got it right on. The main point of any magazine is to provide ad space for advertisers.

 

The internet COULD change this due to lower cost involved is putting up an "e-zine" but I haven't seen anything to shout over yet.

 

Still you have to ask yourself, how much latitude to the magazines give the writers on their reviews and stories.

 

How about you Craig? have you ever gotten any heat from above on something you have written? http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/wink.gif no offense intended.... http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

 

[This message has been edited by kf_gtr@hotmail.com (edited 12-14-2000).]

[Chip McDonald]

Originally posted by geoffk@foxinternet.com:

And so WHAT if someone mixes for car subs? motown used to mix for AM radio.

 

Motown mixed to make music sound as good as possible on AM radio; that's a different concept than mixing something so that someone's trunk will rattle more than another's person's mix. If that's what "good" is, I don't want it, sorry.

[Curve Dominant]

Keyboard is cool. Ya'll might think this is crazy at first, but check out The New Yorker. That magazine is a window to the world. If you want to be a playa in the true sense, yous gotta know the ways of the world.

[Anderton]

>>How about you Craig? have you ever gotten any heat from above on something you have written? no offense intended.... <<

 

I have gotten plenty of heat from advertisers, but in all my years of writing for magazines, I've never been told to tone down my reviews, or had a piece squelched for offending someone. Advertisers have canceled ad pages over things I've written, but the magazines always stood behind me.

 

The relationship with advertisers is more complex in a small industry such as ours. Most manufacturers are sincere and really try their best to produce good products. However, there isn't exactly a sea of capital floating around this part of the music industry, which makes it difficult for companies to do all they'd like to do.

 

I know for sure that unfavorable reviews can cause a company's sales to slide. Granted that's only fair, but it makes one very careful to be as responsible and fair as possible. Also, you don't want to look like an idiot if you diss a company big-time for some stupid mistake, but by the time the review appears, a new version has come out that fixes the problem.

 

As to whether mags exist as a vehicle for ads, subscriptions are not sufficient to make a magazine profitable. Those ads subsidize your subscriptions, which if ads didn't exist, would probably cost you $60 - $70 a year! Also, magazines have an ad-to-editorial ratio. If a mag loses 8 pages of ads, it's going to lose around 8 pages of editorial. So ultimately, when advertisers pull out, the readers get less for their money.

 

Thankfully, most manufacturers understand that negative comments are sometimes just part of the deal, and that by pulling out, they appear petty. But believe me, I've been on the receiving end of phone calls that have been anything but fun.

[Curve Dominant]

>>Advertisers have canceled ad pages over things I've written, but the magazines always stood behind me...by pulling out, they appear petty.<<

 

GrandMaster Kung-Fu in motion.

[alphajerk]

open a vibe, there is no editorial comment, its ALL ads. some with my wifes magazines like cosmo [but she likes the ads]

[Guest]

Maybe we should ask an additional question -

What do you want to see in a music magazine?

What sort of stories about musicians, engineers, producers? Are you mostly interested in their gear? or their motivations? or their experiences? or their opinions?

 

When I ask myself those questions I realize that I don't know what I want. I used to subscribe to Musician. Beside GIG or Electronic Musician, it was the last one I read regularly.

[David R.]

Reviewing music is a great idea. Maybe limited to people who participate in these forums and how they contributed to the recording. That way if the new Steely Dan cd was reviewed, Roger would be on the hot seat instead of Fagen.

 

Reviews tend to be a marketing tool for the artist, which is good for selling product but not what these forums are about.

 

BTW, I have a cd for sale with some really hot guest musicians on it...

 

Zines - I used to love reading Fact Sheet Five and Option. Is there anything like that still around? A decent read is Tape Op, a lower tech mag with a D.I.Y. feel, but it is getting slicker by the issue. Read it before it homoginizes.

 

-David R.

[kent_powellpalmercay.com]

Nope.

 

I miss Creem!

[Michael Riehle]

Well, this is more a local thing, but...

 

...I miss BAM. BAM when it was still Bay Area Music. It was exactly what a music magazine actually ought to be.

 

It had reviews on local acts. By people who actually went to see them. What a concept.

 

It had reviews of new records. Yes, alright.

 

It had a decent calendar of local music events. Okay, we still have Metro such as it is, but it isn't BAM.

 

It had real musician's classifieds.

 

In other words: it was aimed directly at local musicians. It did care at all about national stuff unless it somehow directly related to local music.

 

Then it became BAM aka Beats Attitude & Music.

 

Then it went out of business.

 

But I have to say that Gig is a pretty good rag. It isn't everything that I'd like, but it's darn good.

 

As soon as it becomes Gear Industry & Girls, though, I'm dropping my subscription. Maybe it won't come to that. We can hope.

 

 

------------------

Michael Riehle

Bass Player/Band Leader

fivespeed

[Tedster]

Well there ya go, the local thing. Like I said, our Kansas City Pitch Weekly isn't aimed solely at musicians, but a lot of it centers on music and pop culture with a local flavor.

 

As for asking us what we'd like to see in a music magazine, well, we're gonna say stuff that suits people who do what we do. We're not interested in how many dogs the guitar player from Creed has, or if he's married, or if he's excited about his success. We wanna know what kind of strings he uses, what's in his rack, what amps he used on a given song, etc. So, by nature, we can't really look at stuff from that perspective.

[Lee Flier]

I agree with the general consensus that music mags these days all suck. I also agree that BAM was great, Creem was REALLY great, and I loved Musician. Spin was good in the 80's but went WAY downhill since. Most of the decent rags these days seem to be coming out of Britain, e.g. Q. Rolling Stone... well, yeah, they're not too relevant anymore. They've become exactly the kind of "establishment" rag they used to claim to hate. I haven't seen a daring thought published in that magazine since I don't know when.

 

Craig, I think it's a great idea for mp.com to try and fill the void left by Musician's demise. So far, while I've seen some fine writing on the "gear review" and "musical techniques" side of things, I've been less than impressed with the feature articles and artist profiles. I think they could be longer and more in depth and I'd like to see some harder hitting, more controversial stuff on the issues that face the industry and music in general. I don't mind sidebar articles about gear, like Musician used to have, but I also like to know an artist's story - what they went through to "make it", what their take is on "hot" issues like Napster, what their advice is for musicians starting out, what inspires them, etc.

 

I also like to know musicians' personal techniques for doing things - not only how they did a particular guitar solo for example, but what kinds of exercises (physically or mentally) they do, how their work ethic is, etc. Musicians are a lot more than the sum of their gear, even if advertisers may tell you differently. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif In fact, I cracked up recently at an interview in Modern Drummer where the subject (can't remember who it was now unfortunately) refused to say what kind of drums or cymbals he used. His explanation went something like "What good would that do anybody? If I look in a magazine and see that my favorite drummer is telling everybody he uses XYZ ride cymbal, why would I want to then go out and buy the same cymbal that I now know 8,000 other cats will be playing?" And it's funny but kinda true.

 

Just my .02...

 

--Lee

 

 

[This message has been edited by Lee Flier (edited 12-15-2000).]

[Tim Walters]

Musician did a feature on bass players once. They were all listed with their brand of bass, amp, etc. Under "strings", Paul McCartney's response was, "I don't know, honestly. They come in a little bag."

 

I agree with Lee--I'm much more interested in musicians' artistic approach than in their gear. Gear is just gear, and by concentrating on it, magazines like Keyboard, EQ, etc. are wittingly or unwittingly propagating the myth that all you need is that one new gizmo and your music is going to magically improve. (Obviously, there's a lot of useful information as well, but when you get down to brass tacks, the whole industry is based on getting people to buy stuff.)

 

There are some specialized magazines that are quite interesting: Sound Collector, Experimental Musical Instrument Journal, etc. But I don't know of any current general-interest music magazine that matches, say, Option when it was at its best.

[alphajerk]

"I haven't seen a daring thought published in that magazine since I don't know when." [speaking of rolling stone]

 

well about a year ago, they had some fabulous articles about drugs. the hypocrisy of politicians calling for the death sentence for drug dealers only to get their sons off the hook for dealing. the general stupidity of the drug war. nad apparently this month [what a pussy he really is not the hes on the way out and does no use now] bill clinton apparently things drugs should be decriminalized [what an asshole for saying it now]

 

so its not all bad, it just isnt music.

[trick fall]

Ya know, I like the musician, recording type mags and think they do a good job.

 

What I totally miss though are the kind of magazines that knew how to hype a band. Get you excited about stuff you never heard of before.

 

When I was younger I couldn't wait to get NME and Melody Maker every week, Spin, Creem and Select too. I also feel like no ones drawing the line, telling us this sucks or this is great. I don't remember the last time I read a strong opinion. I also think bands are to blame too. I mean, the last few years most bands have been so bland and lame. It's totally pathetic. If you don't know what I'm talking about just read the book Please Kill Me.

[Anderton]

>>I also feel like no ones drawing the line, telling us this sucks or this is great. I don't remember the last time I read a strong opinion. <

 

That's why forums are so cool. I believe that journalists feel a responsibility NOT to say this is sucks or this is great, because it's one person's opinion. What I try to do in reviews is describe the gear as accurately as possible, and let people make up their own minds. Just look at the posts here...some will say the POD is the best thing in the world, some say they'd never use it. So who's right? How can a reviewer definitively say "this sucks" or "this is great" when there is such a diversity of opinion? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

I think Jim Aikin is an exceptionally good reviewer, but it's because he says "this feature sucks or this feature is great," and lets you decide which is important to you. When he does go so far as to say something is great, then you can be pretty sure it's great.

[trick fall]

Craig, everyone's just too dam nice these days! I believe a review is inherently biased to the reviewer and whether I agree with that reviewer or not if he/she gives me, over time insights into their particular viewpoints it helps me make a judgement against my own biases. If I tend not to agree, or agree with a reviewer's point of view on a consistent basis it'd actually give me more insight than just getting a sort of just the facts review.

[Anderton]

>>If I tend not to agree, or agree with a reviewer's point of view on a consistent basis it'd actually give me more insight than just getting a sort of just the facts review. <<

 

To me just listing facts isn't a review. There has to be some element of offering opinions. Hence the Jim Aikin reference - he gives you the facts, then what he thinks about those facts...it's sort of the best of both worlds. That's why I like his stuff.

 

And this gets into a gray area here, but personally speaking, I'd like to think my opinions have a very strong basis in fact...in other words, if I praise or diss something, I think it likely that most people would agree with my sentiments and say "yes, that is a cool feature" or "no, that is a bonehead move."

 

What I have a problem with are reviews where the reviewer is so obviously in love with a piece of gear that none of the faults are revealed, or has such a problem with the gear that the good points are ignored. Not to mention that some gear that's ideal for one application may be terrible for something else, so it depends on how the person uses it.

 

The issue boils down to what mix of subjectivity and objectivity works best, because you can't be just one or the other.