The last good rock mag was Blender – it couldn't survive because it didn't have a niche, it was comfortable with all popular music genres, but what it had was attitude to burn. An attitude with the snarky, saucy, irreverance that always used to be the calling card of great rock and roll.
It is an attitude sadly missing from music mags today. All you have is Rolling Stone's sycophancy, Pitchforks self-impormance and Spin's irrelevance. Put the three together and it is no wonder that the days when the writers were part of the stories they covered are completely and irrevocably over. Insight into music is fine but not the expense of aa certain cynicism, . It is a wild world out there in rock and roll land, and as a guy who follows it, I just can't see anybody to get even slightly excited about. There is no modern day Creem, there is nobody willing to tilt windows.
Certainly, there is no sense of a Blender like willingness to piss off PR companies. Or record labels. Pitchfork think they are being daring when they dis a MIA album (they were wrong as well), if they were daring they'd cover country and jazz and get a handle on hip hop (raving about Kanye ain't doing anyone any favors)… or pop.
Actually, the indie King makers are so busy putting together festivals, they tetter and then fall into the same conflicts of interests that infect everybody else.
If I write a lot about rock criticism, it is because I love writing and I love rock and I just wish I could scare up some new guys to flip me out the way Julie Burchill dd when I was 18 years old.Or Bart Bull did 20 years ago.And all i see is Rolling Stones bland sycophancy and PF's egocentric intellectual vapidness.
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