Is SPIN really circling the drain?

Either way, Alex is right that SPIN was way better back then. Anyone remember the Michael O'Donohue columns? That guy was a scream, the best back page they've ever had. I've got a few of those columns on my hard drive if anyone wants a repost (SPIN used to keep them at their website, back when they first came online.)

Rolling Stone used to have better non-music writers, too. William Grieder I liked even though I never agreed with much of his stuff. PJ O'Rourke is better than anyone they've had in at least five years on staff there.

The more I think about it, the more I think I've been harsh on Sia for putting her mug all over her page. Bobby Jr. was more of a publicity whore, and she's better looking. But the direction of the magazine is still shit.

I moved recently and actually came across some of the fabled golden age pre'88 issues in a forgotten milk crate at the back of my closet. some of it was pretty great indeed - especially an article on cookie-puss era beastie boys, but a lot of it was pretty thin. there was really LESS in it - huge empty spaces on the pages, big fonts disguising 3 paragraph long stories, fan-ziney articles about nothing and only a couple of pages of record reviews. and legs mcneil was way past his prime by that point too - if you want to get all golden age-y about stuff. he mostly wrote about how shit everything was compared to 1978!

i was into spin more later because - before vibe & the source & rappages, maybe even before Word Up! - they were the only magazine I could find covering hip hop - albeit with a pretty big NYC Def Jam Beasties-PE-Run DMC slant to it but that was fine by me at that point.

I read it pretty much every issue up until the end of the grunge and the beginning of Electronica Fever in the summer of Trainspotting. I have no idea if it's good or bad anymore. Pretty much all music magazines bore me to tears now - but I think that might have as much to do with me as it does with it not being 1988 anymore ;)

that big sound-boy article in the year end round-up in 97 or 98 was a really great article though, and it made me feel like i wasn't the only one like that in the universe ;-)

lets not forget that they used to also have some great stories about electronic music. There was that one issue with Rage on the cover (ugh) in the mid-90s that had articles on Orbital/Underworld/Chem Brothers, a guide to underground electronic music (mentioning Spooky, Mouse on Mars, Jacob's Optical Stairway) and a list of some of america's best producers (everyone from RZA to Wink) and their best productions. Reynolds also used to write for them, and I would wager that his little sidebar on BC/CR/Maurizio is probably the only account of that music to appear in a major american magazine.

I had zine called sugarhigh! It came out twice, in the mid-Nineties. It also caused me to become employed (note passive
construction; it sure felt that way) by The Village Voice, which caused me to become employed by Spin, which caused me
to become a very predictable kind of boring writer and feel like a whore. Eventually I stopped; quitting is actually a
perturbing story which involves, in more and less obvious ways, a review of The Coup, backstage passes to a U2 concert,
September 11th, being threatened with a lawsuit by Sia Michel, and a shady helicopter rental in Rio. Anyway, I hope to
write some about music on this site, in a way that might be predictable and boring but not whoresque.

Blount otm, I think this was around time I stopped reading it. I don't know if it has improved much since then, but it still makes a bit sad that it won't be around anymore because it meant a lot to me back in the day.

the jane/josh '100 albums in 1000 words' thing seemed like spin house snarkpun style pushed to the snake eating tail absurdity. like a litmus test for their readers - 'if you can stomach this you can stomach spin'.

Here's an old favorite of mine.

--------------------------
Spin magazine presents…NOT MY FAULT!
By Michael O’Donoghue

HELLO FROM HOLLYWOOD
GREETINGS FROM THE LAND OF TWICE-KISSED ASS

"The only difference between an actress and a hooker is the hooker fakes orgasm a little better."

WHILE WAITING IN LINE AT THE BRIAN BOSWORTH FILM Festival, I chanced to overhear a heated discussion about acting and the truly great performances. After listening to the usual names tossed around -Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, Marion Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights, Bill Murray in Scrooged—I piped up to nominate two obscure yet electrifying performances that left me, frankly, trembling. The first was Michael Caine's work in a short promotional film for Jaws Ill. If you recall, this sequel to a sequel had only two elements left from the original Spielberg fear-jerker—the shark itself, by then revealed to be little more than a rubber duck with teeth, and Roy Schneider's wife. Presumably, the shark had eaten everyone else. However, consummate pro that he is, Caine looked directly into camera and swore that, in his opinion, Jaws III was actually better than the first one. Genius! Talk about acting!

You can have your Burton in Hamlet, your Murray in Scrooged, your De Niro, your Streep, this was the stuff of Oscars! Unfortunately, I've forgotten the specific names involved in my second example. It occurred on Entertainment Tonight with Leeza Gibbons or whomever interviewing the stars filing out of the premiere of Harlem Nights—a movie so bad it would have to be reshot to be thrown away—when, absolutely straightfaced, every one of them claimed not only to love the picture but went on to burble that Eddie Murphy had proven himself to be a fabulous actor, a talented director, and a wonderful writer. According to them, Eddie was a "triple threat." I get goose bumps just thinking about it.

Or, to put it another way, all actors are lying whores and Hollywood is the world's biggest whorehouse. Keep this in mind when they're yammering about genetically altered milk and the Haitian boat people and the Amanda Foundation and Alar in apples and freeing Tibet and saving the worms. I mean, don't you find it a touch scary that the only thing between us and the end of the oceans is Ted Denson? Think about it. And then think about this: No matter what actors say or do, no matter how many causes they champion, no matter how many ribbons they wear on their lapels, no matter how many Ramlosa bottles they recycle, no matter how quickly they volunteer to sweep up after the LA, riots, any one of them would fuck a trout farm to stay on top. You can test the depth of Hollywood with a blotter. And I'll be cornholed with a Garden-Weasel before I'll sit around and let some brain-damaged sunbunny with Gummy Bears for tits take the moral high ground with me. Or listen to some freak who makes $14 million a pic just because his cheekbones happen to slice the light in a certain way try to make me feel guilty because I'm not driving a goddamned solar car,

Here's a line I caught at Mortons recently "Alan doesn't care about what you and I care about, Alan cares about caring." Wrong. What Alan cares about is, in this order: money, drugs, his name above the title, buggering young boys, his beach house in Maui, his ranch in Ojai, his Lotus Elan, his quarter horses, his Navajo rugs, his hard-true tennis court, his retablo collection, his Patek Philippe wristwatch, about a million other things, and finally, last but least, Alan cares about caring, whatever the fuck that means!

I once heard with my own ears Mandy Patinkin stand up at a meeting of "concerned actors" and say he didn't want to be called an actor anymore. He preferred to be known as a "citizen-performer," Apparently, Mandy thinks he's living in some Greek city-state and not the big shithole I like to call "America." "On look! It's Plato, Pericles, and Mandy Patinkin, the citizen-performer. Let's all go to the marble courtyard and have a meaningful dialogue about Truth and Being." Oh, which reminds me—most of them are real stupid. Someone once wrote, I believe it was me, that "actors are like children, except dumber." How true, Mike. Take for example the dewy-eyed dimbulb I saw on Leno who, between pictures, was using the time to discover herself "as a person," As opposed to what?! Discovering herself "as a lawn chair"? Discovering herself "as a swag lamp"? Discovering herself "as a pen and pencil set"? It's a medical fact that the IQ of the average actress is lower than Dick Van Patten's sperm count.

You understand, of course, none of this applies to those immortals of the screen who gave us the really memorable performances such as Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath or Bill Murray in Scrooged. I'm speaking more of fly-by-night celebrities like Maria McKee who actually said to the audience at a benefit to save the Brazilian rain forest, "Thank you for your commitment to survival." I suppose she stands on river banks and thanks the salmon for swimming upstream. Or professional hand-wringers like Whoopi. Is there a cause on the planet she hasn't hitched a ride on? I think the only one she's missed is the Committee to Provide Massive Plastic Surgery for Whoopi Goldberg because she is one ugly bitch. Her face could stop Big Ben, a sundial, and a free digital watch. If the devil really takes pretty women from the front and ugly women from the back, he'd take Whoopi by airmail. She is so ugly that—uh oh. Gotta run. Late for Bible study.

NEXT MONTH: A Brief History of Urine Retention.

I hated Genius Lessons, btw

ahahahahahaha aha ahaaa hahaha aha a aha a ha. ha.

Me too. I think I kind of loved to hate it more than anything, at first I was intimidated 'cause it was all snotty and hip, and then when I got most of the references I was busy sneering back at them, but I kept reading it anyway. Wish I had a copy of the parody Sia Michel article written for our college radio zine, but then, only a college radio staffer would think it was clever or funny.

My favorite SPIN moment, besides the awesome cover story on Hole right when Live Through This came out, is a letters to the editor section from 93 (just found the excerpts I'd stuck on a tape case)..

On Juliana Hatfield:
"Is it because her mother is the fashion editor of the Boston Globe that we must be subjected to endless drivel about her angst-ridden and privileged upbringing? As far as her music goes - "high priestess of mind fuck"? You've got to be kidding! She wears her suburban hang-ups on her sleeve like some kind of corporate logo."

On a Breeders piece by Charles Aaron:
".. anyone who read this snot-nosed, self-obsessed band profile knew it could only have been directed at him. The real icing on the cake comes when Aaron describes the Breeders as 'acting out some postpunk version of a 40s George Cukor bitchfest" starring Katharine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, and Spencer Tracy. Attention SPIN editors: Nobody in your audience got that reference."