Rolling Stone: Ya had me, then you lost me

The BBQ Pit
1

Ahhh, I can remember when we first met, back when I was in 10th grade. Those were the good days, when you would do pieces on Springsteen, U2, etc, when Tom Wolfe was serializing Bonfire Of The Vanities, back when I was naive enough not to realize how much of an assknuckle David Fricke actually is, when I thought that Hunter S. Thompson still actually had some coherent things to say.

I asked my parents for a subscription and I had one for 10 years.

But I started to notice things, like how in the classifieds in the back there were starting to be ads for phone sex. Not a lot maybe 3 or 4. That’s cool, I can understand, hell I could even deal with the whole “illegal” term-paper ads that you ran.

After all, you seemed to be leaning more and more in the direction that college was mainly for smoking pot, dropping acid, doing ectasy, and shrooms, killing your liver with debauched levels of alcohol, fucking anything and everything in sight, going and pumping up the local music scene, and oh yeah, maybe occasionally attending classes as long as they didn’t interfere with any of the aforementioned actvities.

However, I started to get a bit annoyed with Peter Travers increasingly bizzare fixation and obsession for overly praising movies that involved someone getting fucked in the ass somewhere in them. That’s not what’s going to pull me in to a theater, in fact it may well pull me out.

Also, Travers relentless bleatings and screechings about how the major studios produce nothing but trash and that the only “worthwhile movies” are only made by independents.

Not to mention you’re calling Blair Witch Project “the scariest movie of all time.”

Dumbest and most annoying waste of 85 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back?

Yes.

Scariest movie of all time?

/Mr. Hand/

What are you people, on dope?!!?

At the same time I noticed that there weren’t 3 or 4 ads for phone sex in the clasifieds section, they now took up 2 pages, and those soon gave way to the ads for porn web-sites.

Oh yeah, the “illegal” term paper ads were still there.

Then I read that there was going to be a major format change and that Jann had decided that Rolling Stone was going to look more like Maxim and Stuff in format and content.

In other words it was going to be a magazine for people who’s intellectual level doesn’t quite make it past coloring books.

But, the latest issue with Dave Matthews Band on the cover has caused you to lose me at long last.

Why?

Because now, back in the classifieds, you now have ads for pornos.

Now, understand that I have nothing against porn, I’m a semi-frequent viewer, but I think that your readership skews a bit on the low side to have ads, none too subtle I might add, for porn.

So, adieu Rolling Stone. I will no doubt occasionally skip through you when I’m at the bookstore, but buy or subscribe?

/Mr. Hand/

What are you people, on dope?!?!

2

Sex ads? Illegal term paper ads? You’re getting bent out of shape about this stuff?

How about those of us who look back fondly at Rolling Stone as a music magazine and not a respository for crapola articles and reviews on manufactured pop entertainment?

For me, Rolling Stone really lost it when they put more entertainers on the cover than musicians. As much as I like the image of a half-naked Demi Moore, it doesn’t belong on the cover of Rolling Stone. I don’t even give a crap if they throw Britney or Christina or any of the boy bands on the cover, just spare me Jennifer Aniston or Jim Carrey.

I ditched my subscription to RS in 1986 or so. As I am in the ad business, I got on their comp list in about 1994 and noticed that the same things that bugged me about that mag eight years earlier had grown from minor annoyances into full-scale “Holy Shit! Who’s in charge of the editorial mission of this mag?” type problems. I haven’t read the magazine for pleasure reading since 1996 or so. Unfortunately, I have clients who have advertised there from time to time, so I’m exposed to RS on a regular basis.

Forget reading RS for insight into the music scene. It is pre-fab crap, like so many other media outlets servicing America’s need for cookie-cutter entertainment.

3

Um, Demi Moore appeared nude on Vanity Fair.

Or did she strip for Rolling Stone as well?

4

That rag is still around? (yes, I have seen it recently, just being rhetorical)

It should have died around 1974…

Jann likes money a little too much, methinks…

5

Last month’s Rolling Stone was a waste of money. Too many references to drugs and sex. I wanted to read about music. Though they did have an article on Entwhistle which wasn’t bad, that was about it.

6

I liked Blair Witch Project. I thought it was scary.

Scariest all time? Nope. But definately creepy. Brought back most of my childhood fears about the woods and unseen things chasing me.

RS is a piece of crap, though.

7

Yep. It was back in '95 or '96 or so.

8

Exactly. I used to read my older sibs’ RS back in the 70s, when it was still a real magazine, and I subscribed for a while in the 80s. I tried it again a few years back, one of those free trial deals. Yuck. After noticing that there didn’t seem to be a single issue without an article on Britney Spears or Puff Daddy, not to mention the crap that’s not even tangentially related to the music biz, I decided I wasn’t interested in paying for the subscription. It’s very sad what RS has become. It’s got nothing to do with the ads and everything to do with the fact that the magazine sucks now.

9

Whenever I hear “old-timers” cry out for the glory days of when "Rolling Stone was a real magazine, and “MTV actually showed music videos”, and when rock n’ roll really meant something, it makes my knees itch. I just wait for their eyes to glaze over and the “When I was your age…” spiels to begin. Then, as now, these were commercial enterprises, that existed for the sole purpose of making money. What’s changed is not the intent of Rolling Stone but what the public demands for its money. Today’s target demographic likes the sex, likes the drugs, likes the no-depth bios on their favorite fluffy entertainers, and music is merely a secondary concern. A garnish, if you will. If you don’t like these particular subjects, then don’t read the goddamn things. That’s what I do. And please, don’t read it in a quiet fashion, with no attached self-righteousness.

So for the love of god and variety, please stop bitching about the fallen icons of your idyllic youth. Maybe you can bitch about the slovenly and unappreciative nature of my generation.

Because we don’t get enough of that.

10

Oh, so when something used to have substance but now it doesn’t, we’re not allowed to complain about it because the young folks don’t like hearing it? Piss off.

11

Killed my subscription recently, also. Still getting the last few issues. The recent one with Ozzy on the cover is hilarious! He looks like a dark-haired Martha Ray! I’m expecting a pitch for paper towels!

RS makes me feel old and uncool now. I don’t know who about half of the “artists” are in the stories, but I do like the photos of the hot, young girls.

What gets me is the record reviews. Very rarely does anything get less than 3 stars, and I have heard some of this shit, and I wouldn’t rate it a one-star affair. The magizine offers me little at this point in my life.

How come a minor hit record/tv show allows you to drive drunk, get caught with cocaine and illeagle firearms and manage to stay out of jail?

How come a major hit record/tv show allows you to kill someone and not go to jail?

12

Yeah…what Geobabe said. Plus a little mini-rant of my own:

Making money is good, but lemme say a few words about “commercial enterprises” in the entertainment biz…

All publishers start out with an editorial mission. Rolling Stone was a music magazine. MTV wanted to be the first to bring a new format known as “music videos” to the public. At some point after achieving the editorial mission, the publishers start saying, “Okay, now what?”

This is where the marketing people typically step in and fuck things up. MTV brought music videos to the public. Then, some marketing guy raised his hand, “Screw this! Look at how we’re performing against the 12-17 and 18-24 segments. We could own the youth sector!” and that’s the direction in which things went. Great for advertisers, shitty for people who liked the music videos.

Rolling Stone did something similar. Why confine yourself to music reviews and in-depth articles on bands when you can be an entertainment powerhouse and wrap up the demographic? Once again, great for advertisers, shitty for people who looked to Rolling Stone to stick with its editorial mission and give us great insight into the world of music.

Oh, please cut the shit. There’s nothing wrong with lamenting the effects of capitalism and the least-common-denominator focus of the entertainment industry on things that once provided us with stuff we like.

Or maybe we should just all “go with the flow” and accept Britney Spears as our new idol…

:rolleyes:

13

It isn’t?

14

I think it reflects the state of mainstream music. Rolling Stone was sort of dull and full of itself in the early '90’s (hmmm another story about Axl Rose’s family, or what Skid Row listens to backstage) - then when it took notice of “grunge” it sort of became interesting for a couple of years. But now that mainstream music is sort of - well sterile - you are better off looking at the indy mags.

15

I love their exposes. From them, I learned that Rob Lowe didn’t rape anyone, that John Holmes was the perpetrator in a long-unsolved murder, and that Jerry Lee Lewis is not called “The Killer” in jest. I read about OJ’s pattern of abuse and arrogance, which was established long before Nicole’s murder. I saw that Robert Downey Jr. is no different from any other addict who crawls the seedy parts of LA in search of his next fix, and I mourned the anticlimatic deaths of David Strickland and River Phoenix. I read about a paraplegic(!) who robbed houses with his fully-abled brother, another middle-school teacher besides Mary Kay LeTourneaux who skipped town with a pubescent male student, a battered wife who almost made it, and a gang-rape victim who was redeemed. I’ve read enough about heroin, crack, crank and meth to give me a steadfast aversion to anything stronger than weed. Since 1986, when I got my first sub, I’ve traced patterns, upheavals, and shifts in American society through RS. So what if it’s not about music?

16

That is sooooo different from the good old days, huh?

17

<minor hijack>

Psssst . . .

Martha Raye : denture cleaner ::
Rosemary Clooney : paper towels

</minor hijack>

18

Extra value is what you get
when you buy Coronet!

19

Hey, I mentioned going to classes…ummmm, somewhere towards the end.

/Mr. Burns/

Yes, that should do nicely.

20

I ditched my subscription a couple of years ago. RS is a piece of shit.