SPIN on Google Books

the letters page from the June 94 issue

they're hilarious!

"At least the Deal sisters come by their attitude honestly. How much did Juliana Hatfield have to pay for hers?"

Can someone summarize the magazine's AIDS coverage? What was so awful? (I honestly don't know)

http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/cfmbeki.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/26/aids-south-africa

oh, aren't the letters great? i still have that issue on my bookshelf right now but chopped out a bunch of those letters w/x-acto knife to paste onto mixtape covers, because they were just so funny. The Breeders "acting out some postpunk version of a George Cukor bitchfest" - this made NO sense to me at the time, but then, about 75% of the content made no sense to me at the time, all the allusions to artists/films/stories of which I'd never heard.

I also had no idea about the AIDS coverage, I skipped reading all the news articles in every issue, and (sheltered conservative small town) had no idea what AIDS even was, it just didn't register to me. that's really strange that they covered it that way..

i wrote one of those letters. in it, 17 year old me invited the late bob stinson to live in my parents' attic with me. it's pretty hilarious. (to me at least)
i called him a "fallen rock star"
hahahaha

dnw to post here b/c of irl name fyi

<3
that's awesome

i never wrote them any letters. thank god, because i'd have written something so overwrought and mean-spirited that they'd have printed it just to laugh at. i mean the crazier everyone around me irl got at the time, the more exaggerated became the importance of issues like "is it REALLY ok to still like this band if they're in the buzz bin now?"

"Your full-page photo of Vanilla Ice ('The Iceman Cometh Back,' May '94) reminded me of a quote by Oscar Wilde."
"Your taste sucks. If Jim Gr33r can't grasp Counting Crows songs, maybe he should stick to something he understands."

<3<3<3
i can't tell if these letters are serious, but i can't tell if the original articles are serious either, i wonder if the people writing them even knew for sure?

http://books.google.com/books?id=8X17JjiXfYYC&lpg=PP1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA44#v=onepage&q=&f=false

"Any indie scenester knows it's not kill your idols, it's kill yr idols. Yr, Axl, yr."

"scenester" was a much better term than "hipster" imo

I'm still desperately trying to find the Kim Gordon/Chuck D interview where Chuck sees Thurston's Necros albums on the wall and misreads a "c" as a "g"...

i don't think i fit in to yr indie scene..

I'm still desperately trying to find the Kim Gordon/Chuck D interview where Chuck sees Thurston's Necros albums on the wall and misreads a "c" as a "g"...

Sep '89, page 50

(And it was LL Cool J.)

The original interview between Kim Gordon and LL Cool J that served as the inspiration for "Kool Thing":

http://books.google.com/books?id=PK1uLUXpAzoC&lpg=PA50&lr=&as_pt=MAGAZINES&rview=1&pg=PA50#v=onepage

Ah! That's why I couldn't find it.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZURL7ud3IwsC&lpg=PP1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA56#v=onepage&q=&f=false

"I'm trying, really. But everybody except me seems to get it when Billy Corgan croons, 'I used to be a little boy, so (garble) in my shoes.'"

John Leland's Terence Trent D'Arby feature:

http://books.google.com/books?id=O5KWH9rNuE4C&lpg=PP1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA54#v=onepage&q=&f=false

i love looking at the ads

http://books.google.com/books?id=gJX3jzxQYbMC&lpg=PA1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q=&f=false

The article that turned a wee lad onto Philip K. Dick (& Sonic Youth.)

i'm weirdly pissed off about this whole thing. like the internet wasn't enough of a time suck.

http://books.google.com/books?id=5zrzfgLFgUYC&pg=RA1-PT48&dq=jim+greer+loveless&rview=1&cd=1#v=onepage&q=jim%20greer%20loveless&f=false

first thing i looked for

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPw-3e_pzqU

It's a lonely ol' night.

i found the letter that i wrote about bob stinson when he died in 1993
omg

― figgy pudding (La Lechera), Saturday, March 6, 2010 7:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha i found my letter that was published, too! all these years i've been paranoid about it resurfacing, but it's not nearly as embarrassing as I remember, mainly because I think they edited it down to a coherent point (still not linking to it, though).

how do you think this kid would feel about SEO?

http://books.google.com/books?id=FD4jKFVQOhMC&pg=PA38&dq=spin+%22al+shipley%22&cd=1#v=onepage&q=spin%20%22al%20shipley%22&f=false

haha i was asking for that, i know ::shakes fist::

You should name your band Staggering Hypocrisy.

You're from Delaware.

</ Dooley>

iirc i wrote a far worse letter to Rolling Stone a couple years beforehand that thank god wasn't published

RS published a letter I wrote in August or September '95, bitching about the Ann Rice cover story.

You can tell I was about to start grad school. Ugh.

found an amazing Relativity Records ad from a 1996 issue trumpeting Dayton Family, Fat Joe and 8Ball & MJG as "rap music for alternageeks"

Thank you, SPIN and Rob Sheffield, for forcing me to excavate my closet archives for 14 Songs.

"From the concert stage to the dressing room, from the recording studio to the digital realm, SPIN surveys the modern musical landscape and the culture around it with authoritative reporting, provocative interviews, and a discerning critical ear. With dynamic photography, bold graphic design, and informed irreverence, the pages of SPIN pulsate with the energy of today's most innovative sounds. Whether covering what's new or what's next, SPIN is your monthly VIP pass to all that rocks."

A lot of interesting stuff on Celia Farber on Wikipedia, guess I'd forgotten that she was still going, & that her ideas hadn't changed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celia_Farber

As I remember it, getting information on AIDS wasn't easy in the late 80s, and SPIN had a monthly column about it which was amazing in itself. So if you were a young, into music, & didn't read a lot of newspapers, this might be your primary source of information. And yet every month, the column focused almost exclusively on fringe theories (no connection between HIV and AIDS, HIV is harmless, maybe AZT actually causes AIDS, etc.) and suggested that the real truth was being covered up.

from an observer article linked to on that wikipedia page

Ms. Farber said in an e-mail that after she wrote a piece for the New York Press about Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harassment case in 2004, the founder of American Apparel, Dov Charney, called her up “yelling about the whole fake feminism ordeal.” Mr. Charney had been dealing with his own harassment accusations, and he hired her as a “consultant and writer.” Ms. Farber referred to Mr. Charney as her “secret benefactor.”

Note: I had totally forgotten that Meryn Cadell's "The Sweater" ever existed, but as soon as I started playing the YouTube, I immediately remembered pretty much every single word, complete with cadence and enunciation -- clearly I had this on some sort of much-listened-to mixtape.

Since then I've learned that Cadell is now a college professor and a man

"They're like a species evolved on an island without natural predators. They never learned how to be shrewd."

they also got the last laff tbh

?

xpost -- wait, what?

http://books.google.com/books?id=3AHtQNYRR9YC&lpg=PP1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA40#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Check out this very early reference to child-actor Elijah Wood, then click forward two pages.

Looking at this makes me wish I had an iPad.

i never realized that i had so many "lost years" until RIP mark linkous + spin archives reminded me. memory flood is a little much, tbh.

http://books.google.com/books?id=3AHtQNYRR9YC&lpg=PP1&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA40#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Check out this very early reference to child-actor Elijah Wood, then click forward two pages.

― kingkongvsgodzilla

awesome

So how come whenever I put "Sa-Fire" into the Spin search thing I just get non-Spin articles about William Safire, instead of that infamous cover story (by Leland I think?) about the Latin freestyle singer? (Infamous for being a somewhat odd cover for a national rock magazine, not for anything specifically said in the piece, as far I remember.)

Probably because Google's search algorithm parses out the hyphen.

And the commonality of Safire. Seems to be one of those things that coincidentally gets masked without a more elaborate search string.

Not sure. You did it with quotes, right? Here are the search results with quotes. Turns up nine issues including your 1994 review of Tommy Boy's ace freestyle collection. Sadly, however, one of those pesky bingo cards got in the way of the scan obscuring a huge chunk of your review. :(