Music Magazines

I think everybody likes Wax Poetics?

i'm actually thinking now that it makes more sense to use the web. i have the store website that i don't use for anything. i could use that space. i'll get around to it. i have more energy now that i have fixed my severe and crippling sleep apnea that i have suffered with for decades.

awesome! whatever it ends up being, I'm looking forward to it

I publish a zine. The new issue just came out yesterday, in fact.

yeah, I'd like to grab a copy of it sometime soon

using Lulu was a smart move, btw

I always feel like Filter can do better, but to their credit, they did have a cool, epic feature on Slayer in issue 35 with all four members contributing to an oral history. Tributes like that are the best thing that have going. Past ones include Merle Haggard, History of Northern Soul, Jesus Lizard, Dinosaur Jr., Morrissey, Tears for Fears, X, Patti Smith, The Replacements, Husker Du, XTC, etc.

Gotta plug The Big Takeover, comes out twice a year, chock full of intelligent interviews, commentary and reviews. Focused on rock but spins off in many directions.

Ozone, WaxPo, Vibe (they're had some pretty good pieces since the relaunch, I particularly liked the one on Diddy's father...), The Fader

those are the ones I check for... and I like RESPECT, it's a new photo mag...

I think things that come out like twice a year and have a ton of things in them are the way to go these days. I'll throw down for Galactic Zoo Dossier, its like the most passionate fanzine produced (all hand-lettered!) with a very unique voice/slant. Plus they put in trading cards of people like Tom Carter and Townes Van Zandt. There used to be a very cool little B & W fanzine a few years back called Bixobal. It was mainly focused on Sun City Girls and their associates. I don't know if its still around, but it was great. The Wire is well and truly indispensable.

blender RIP

I miss Skyscraper :(

paste RIP

blender was terrible. does anyone really miss it? i can't think of a bigger waste of good writers either.

blender was sooo much better than RS & spin

i don't agree. not that i've read spin in like a decade.

and, granted, i didn't see a ton of blender issues. but most of what i did see made me say blechhhhh more often than not.

Blender had better front-of-book, but Spin had better features

blender had a better voice & covered a more interesting array of artists

Christgau always loved the album review section in Blender (which I wrote for), but to be honest I never understood why. It was well-edited -- meticulously edited, at least -- but the tendency was to edit writers' personality right out of them.

I still do a monthly column in Spin, by the way. ("Essentials," eight old albums worth seeking out in a different genre every month -- I even did Gospel a couple months ago, no kidding! And then Cowpunk and Electro-funk in months after that.) But I don't get comp issues in the mail, and I'm too cheap to buy it, and don't even always see issues when they come out at CVS or Barnes & Noble, so I never really get a chance to read much else that's in there.

only music magazine available to me that i read consistently is the fader & i'll also flip thru various rap magazines & read what interests me

But I don't get comp issues in the mail, and I'm too cheap to buy it

i always buy the mags i'm in!

i pretty much read revolver, decibel, xxl, wax poetics and spin in varying degrees of frequency and intensity

Fader's worth it?

Decibel is the only music magazine I subscribe to -- it's the only one I've found that is worth it, tbh

although I'd love to subscribe to more if there was other compelling shit out there!

paste RIP

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, September 1, 2010 7:44 PM (19 minutes ago

it still exists?? what ever happened to everybody calling it boring, tho?

fader's front of book is pretty take it or leave it & their 'reviews' sort of section is oftentimes good but sometimes it carries over a bit too much of that voice that they have on their blog -- "we're listening to this in the office and talking to each other and don't know much about it but it's cool!!!!" -- but i usually find the feature writing to be really good & the artists they cover personally align w/ my own tastes so

Apparently people stopped calling it boring the same time they stopped buying it altogether. xp

well iirc they solicited reader donations not too long ago

"but the tendency was to edit writers' personality right out of them."

it definitely read like it!

I get sent Decibel in the mail, which is always fun. The new issue with Iron Maiden on the cover seems to be missing Scott's noise column, but looks like there a new columns about vinyl releases and about new albums my metal bands with women singers, ha. (Didn't get sent any issues for a year and a half since moving to Texas, but they mysteriously started coming again last month, weird.) And for some reason I also get Relix; I think what happened is that I was getting Paste sent to me because they wanted me to write for them (which I never did), and when they folded they started sending out Relix to subscribers instead. Relix is less horrible than I would have guessed, to be honest, but it definitely goes into the recylcying bin a lot quicker than, say, Texas Highways, much less Cooking Light. (Latter was an Xmas present from my inlaws, and always has a couple recipes worth trying.)

i always buy the mags i'm in!

I used to, but I am jaded now.

paste also stopped paying their freelancers in order to keep putting out new issues. always a smart business plan.

^ yeah, just heard about that. Shitty.

xp meant "there ARE new columns about vinyl releases and about new albums BY metal bands with women singers"

anyone ever read brn (beyond race...magazine? kinda bizarre title, no?)?? flipping thru it at barnes & nobz today and an advert says you can suscribe for...whatever you want! (a la radiohead's in rainbows). you gotta follow the link to the website... i go there, search for 20 minutes, and find no avail. WHO THEY TRYIN 2 FOOL

xhuxk, scott's column is in my copy of the Iron Maiden issue

paste also stopped paying their freelancers in order to keep putting out new issues. always a smart business plan.

― strongohulkingtonsghost, Wednesday, September 1, 2010 4:07 PM

looool that's an abomination

i'll have to flip through a Fader next time I'm in the bookstore -- at least to check out the features

xp Really? Excellent. I'll look closer for it, next time I'm in the bathroom.

i realize "free content" is the wave of the future when it comes to staying in business for another sad few months, but shouldn't you advertise it as such when you assign the pieces?

Apparently Paste is following the late-period Creem template, when it comes to freelancer pay.

But at least Creem back then had the courtesy to file Chapter 11 first, before they made not paying freelancers official.

in all honesty, does anyone here actually like paste? i have friends who recommend me the mag, but all i read online is that they veer heavily towards adult-folk-contemporary-alternative (bon iver, etc, bullshit). not big on metal, but that's far too down the spectrum for me tambien.

xhuxk: pg. 84

Paste = "Morning Becomes Eclectic" in print.

It's been a snore from day one.

Have all you Decibel subscribers already received the new issue (Iron Maiden cover)? I'm still looking for it.

yeah I got it a few days ago

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Paste-music-magazine-to-stop-apf-2828488648.html?x=0&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

thanks for the link to this important news article that provides information that we did not yet know

Sarge, always keeping it positive

Hi Pointy;

I'm bothering with the yearly format because contrary to what you might think, I do still enjoy doing this. It's also important to me to satisfy my obligations to the many STN subscribers still paid up for a few more issues. Sure, if money was no object I'd be announcing a bimonthly publication, not an annual, but this is simply a compromise I need to make due to rising production expenses and a shortfall of ad dollars. By consolidating everything into an annual publication that would very likely lean much more on long-form features than reviews, I think we're going to do very well. Almost without exception, STN's creative team and readership has been very understanding about this and fairly grateful that I'm not pulling thr plug entirely. C'mon, please, cut me some slack ... I've been doing this for 14 YEARS, constantly raising funds, gathering, editing, and laying out content, dealing with all the mundane business junk, reshipping packages lost by the USPS, and managing against all odds to outlast Arthur, Skyscraper, Copper Press, Your Flesh, E/I, Coda, Grooves, DIY, Magnet, Puncture, Resonance, No Depression and now Cadence and Art Lies. Anyway, thanks for presuming our future efforts will be a bland year-in-review rehash, but I'm confident that some of our best work is still to come (we've never been a "listy" magazine). This arrangement will also allow me to do some other things with my life. I have a family now that I didn't have when I started STN in 1997, and interests that lie outside the fields of music and publishing, et cetera.

Anyway, thanks for humoring my little rebuttal, and please check out past, current and future issues of our quaint, old-fashioned paper-and-ink magazine.

Yours in music;
pete gershon
publisher
SIGNAL to NOISE
1128 Waverly
Houston TX 77008
www.signaltonoisemagazine.org
signaltonoisemagazine.blogspot.com

"Zine of the Year"
PLUG Independent Music Awards: 2007, 2008 nominee

"Best Periodical Covering Jazz"
Jazz Journalists Association: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 nominee

"Best Arts and Creativity Coverage"
UTNE Independent Press Awards: 2004 nominee

yeah, pointy is, like, 15, so don't take it too seriously. keep doing what yer doing, man.

Seconded. Here's to many more years of STN wonderfulness.

Another new issue of The Sound Projector out now. Reviews of vinyl LPs and singles only this time, loads of photos, choice of colour and b&w editions, print-on-demand through lulu.

http://www.thesoundprojector.com/current-issue/

http://www.hymanarchive.com/

Wow. Do you think he wants some obscure 1982 US hardcore punk zines I am considering tossing (or should I try to sell them on ebay)?

haha that guy thinks very highly of his piles of old Q magazines doesn't he?

There's this "Ultimate Collector's Edition THE WHO from the publishers of Uncut" mag that had been staring me down at the checkout of my local CVS for the last few weeks. It seems really out of place. Like, say what you want about The Who, it would surprise me very much if someone would buy an entire print magazine about them in 2016. It really doesn't feel like it's their moment. It's really weird to see next to People and In Touch. Am I underestimating the selling power of The Who? Does this really make money for the publishers of Uncut?

Well they've done a load of other artists already. Would think the Who would be popular enough to sell a couple of copies of that in most areas.
They do seem to be pretty expensive though & that History of Rock reprint mag is even more so.

These kinds of things are p much the only music magazines I see in the average WHSmiths in the UK.

Most of these mags reuse interviews, features etc from old Melody Makers and NMEs, so the editorial costs are relatively low, and the mark-up pretty high - I don't suppose they have to sell more than 10,000 or so to turn some kind of profit, and while sales on a Who mag prob won't come near to sales on a equivalent Beatles/Floyd/Zep mag, I bet it's still a nice little earner.

Like, say what you want about The Who, it would surprise me very much if someone would buy an entire print magazine about them in 2016.

Hell, I didn't even buy a copy (it's been at my grocery store checkout for almost a month).

I got one.

It's pretty decent, as was the Dylan one. As you say, the 'classic' albums have been reviewed to death, but particularly with the Dylan one, each album gets no more or less than two pages, same amount of pics and text, which means that you can work out what the later albums were about and if they are worth bothering about.

Things like The Who, Beach Boys and Dylan would seem to have some sort of value, whereas the Pistols/Lydon, Oasis and such like don't, really. Oh, and they were giving the Foo Fighters one away with 'special' bagged copies of "Q" or some such, because who cares?

was flexipop the greatest music magazine ever? the scans on this page are all fantastic:

http://flexipop.com/

Paul Weller dressed as a scientist:

http://flexipop.com/Resources/Paul%20Weller%20cover%20no28%20web.jpg?15

Mari Wilson and the Wilsations re-enact Psycho as a photo story;

http://flexipop.com/Resources/Mari%20Wilson%20Psicko%2002a_web.jpg?316

etc

A strange magazine

http://i.imgur.com/SRndxTK.png

Kim Wilde admitted that her two heroes growing up were Gary Glitter (ouch!) and Elton John. She contracted meningitis as a toddler and had her first boyfriend, Ned, when she was nine.
She told us she was a moody adolescent who would constantly row with her mum. So pop stars really are like us after all…

hah, i suppose that could be taken the wrong way since gary glitter was mentioned, but trust me its not meant to be.

Jobs lost as rock music media firm Team Rock collapses

That sucks. Also Rock-A-Rolla has gone quiet since July - http://rock-a-rolla.com/main/

https://longreads.com/2018/12/27/where-have-all-the-music-magazines-gone/

Tyler, they could have at least plugged your blog!