It's fun to read this article about Rolling Stone Magazine, or rather, how their standard has become to give nearly every record at least three stars out of five possible.

A while back, Jim DeRogatis, journalist at said mag, got fired when he refused to give Hootie & The Blowfish more than 2/5. ((More about that here)) DeRogatis claims that Jann Wenner, founder, editor and publisher of Rolling Stone Magazine, told him that he couldn't give any band that's been on their cover less than 3/5. And there you go, DeRogatis left, as is described in his book "Milk It".

So, are critics viewed as necessary nowadays, when there are merely a handful of really big artists around? Of course. In the eyes of the record-companies, then? No.

In the 1970's, when the record-selling business became really big, some critics, e.g. Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus, but even others from different areas, such as Pauline Kael (film), were hailed as stars themselves. Record companies granted them plane trips, loads of free records, booze and riding with the band...just like in "Almost Famous", a film written and directed by Cameron Crowe, who in real life used to be Lester Bangs' protegé.

Nowadays, critics live in a different sphere. Sure, if you make an effort and start a fanzine you'll get tossed a few records. ((At the start of the 80's I remember starting a fanzine with a friend, that never ever amounted to a single copy being pressed, but we did make efforts! Anyway, I vividly remember the only bunch of records I was sent, which was from Sire Records, a sub-label at Warner Records; they included a heart-felt letter and I never stopped rapping about the good records I got, among them actually an Aphex Twin promo, a few Bigod20 albums and some by Armageddon Dildos.)), but if you're into interviewing Robbie Williams or even an artist that's semi-big, for instance The Darkness, you get the full Stasi treatment, e.g. extremely limited time with the subject, you can't ask just any questions, you should be nice, et.c.

Fuck that! Didn't Johnny Rotten say something like "Nice was boring. Anybody can be nice."? That's why I love the interviews that Lester Bangs did with Lou Reed ((More about their hatred for each-other is easily found through the web, but the best two books that include this are mentioned (and nicely summed up) here.)), apart from Bangs' monumental dissing, e.g. the following quote, from his "Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves, or How I Slugged it out with Lou Reed and Stayed Awake" 1975:

[...] Lou Reed is a completely depraved pervert and pathetic death dwarf and everything else you want to think he is. On top of that he's a liar, a wasted talent, an artist continually in flux, and a huckster selling pounds of his own flesh. A panderer . . . . Lou Reed is the guy that gave dignity and poetry and rock 'n' roll to smack, speed, homosexuality, sadomasochism, murder, misogyny, stumblebum passivity, and suicide, and then proceeded to belie all his achievements and return to the mire by turning the whole thing into a monumental bad joke with himself as the woozily insistent Henny Youngman in the center ring, mumbling punch lines that kept losing their punch.

I think what I am aiming for is saying that honesty rocks more than blandness. Remember what happens when turbulent, noisy garage music has been playing for too long? You switch to something gentle, but after a while - be it days or months - you pick up your MC5 or Atari Teenage Riot just for the sake of full on-ness. It's like making love, right? Sometimes caressing and cuddling is the thing, until you feel like you want to fuck that special someone's brains out. Little wonder do some jump through windows when the music is just right - or just enough to do that to you.

Which is why I'm not that keen on popular media right now. I do listen to pop - as in popular anmusic - but as the charts are currently reigned by clueless clones, there are times when those charts are inhabited by those who rock. I read magazines, but I tend to skip Mojo more often as, quite frankly, most of it says nothing to me. Sure, I understand how come the Brando-esque era in USA in the 50's made youths feel alive, why the clashes between teddies and mods on the Brighton beach happened in the 60's and why people cried cool when Hendrix burned his guitar in the 70's but fuck nostalgia. If looking back and shying the now were a disease there'd be a lot of victims on our streets. Bill Drummond, formerly of the KLF, was quite recently interviewed in Tidningen Sex and said he though it bizarre that a lot of middle-aged men such as himself only bought music by artists they favoured in their teens, as they can now finally afford it. So why not pick up new music?

As with a lot of things, people get stale in their ways. Why check out new stuff when you're perfectly content with the old, with what you've loved for ages and never get enough of - since you don't have to? Does honesty still rock more than blandness? No? Then I think you'd be perfectly off subscribing to Rolling Stone Magazine.