Musical Fragment #1

I'd read about Sloan or maybe heard a song by them so stopped at the CD store and bought Between The Bridges. I walked down the street to a retro shop and went in to browse. The owner, a young woman, nice-looking in a slightly geeky kind of way, said - in a mmmmboy! Southern accent - "Is that Sloan? Bless your heart!"

I felt I'd made a good purchase.

Took it home, played it, it sucked. The retro store went out of business maybe six months later. I still have the CD. It's yours for a quarter.

Being hip - I give up!

I've been subscribing to Spin for years and years, and Blender for a long time too. Every year I'd think about letting one or the other lapse. I finally let them both go. To steal somebody's joke, I got tired of leafing through them vainly looking for something about rock and roll. The pictured cover shows Tila Tequila, who has little or nothing to do with music... well, Wikipedia lists her as "singer/songwriter" but last of seven or eight pastimes. Even when there is a band in one of these mags, they dress them in designer clothes and there's fine print telling you the makers and the prices of each article of clothing. Holy jumping jesus, if somebody would have tried that on the MC5 in 1968 they'd have been maimed by the band. And every artist/group fawned upon by these mags that I've checked out sucks beyond belief: The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Hives, Fall Out Boy, Outkast, Of Montreal, The Arcade Fire, and on and on. Well, Flaming Lips are okay but we knew about them before reading Spin articles.
So in a faltering economy, I guess I don't need magazines that in effect tell me who to avoid listening to.