RANT: Those pretentious scenesters...

[timmae]

over at Magnet magazine ("Real Music Alternatives" as they state) have no value whatsoever.

The story starts last night when I was at a local book store. I was looking for Punk Planet since it's a local rag and has some decent insight in every issue. They also splash the rag with various non-music stories that relate to the punk community as well. Overall a very good to great product. But, PP have had huge troubles with their distributor and money issues... long story short I don't kow if they'll ever be a true bi-monthly again. That's a story for a different thread altogether though.

I decide to look for an alternate magazine to read for some insight into punk/alt music. I fully realize going in that whatever is sitting on the shelf in front of me is going to have the usual mainstream biased opinion, etc but this is a known value so I figure wtf. I take a quick spin paging through Magnet and there seems to be a few ads for bands I like, a story on Sleater-Kinney and a few band reviews that look interesting (Broken Social Scene and Stars). I fork out the 4 dollars and change and there I've done it.

I get home and start reading the mag... 4 pages in I get to the "reader's mailbag" section and see that they are a wopping 10 for 10 in; whining, "I know more than all of y'all", your reviews are crap, these bands don't deserve the credit, and on and on... Then a few pages after that, the next few paragraphs that I read mind you, their in-house "critic" decides to write a full page article on which bands sucked, shouldn't have but did suck, didn't achieve his expected lofty status and thus sucked, have gotten massive airplay and thus suck, are so damn good they have to suck... you get the picture.

Completely turned e off for the rest of the mag. The article on Sleater-Kinney was good (and they had some interesting things to say about the music industry in general which i wish the damn magazine contributors would say) and some cd reviews were worthwhile but honestly, how much negative reaction can these guys stomach? Has the music industry gotten worse with even more negativity and ripping on bands, music tastes and such? If I wanted a dour look on life I'd go to DC...

Sorry for the lengthy rant. I am done.

[albionmoonlight]

Those who can, do. Those who can't, become critics.