The Phoenix music scene may not be a nonstop fountain of rock like some of its metropolitan peers, but the Phoenix New Times' new Music Editor seems to be taking its perceived "deadness" to an extreme. By which I mean he's apparently put aside covering all those pesky bands and venues in favor of working the haunted-house beat this month.
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If you've ever wondered what hell is like, picture a farm way outside of Phoenix filled with frat boys waiting for NOFX to play. So maybe the Phoenix New Times' willingness to send eight (!) bloggers out to the self-proclaimed "Arizona Treasure" Schnepf Farms for our local alt-rock station's daylong festival is worthy of some admiration, if only because of the collective stamina involved. Then again, the team coverage may not have been in the name of craft: Village Voice Media's Internet strategy these days seems to be "find as many ways to get women who are as naked as possible into click-inducing slideshows," and the resulting coverage of Edgefest was more than willing to oblige. Anything for Digg-based traffic, right dudes? [Phoenix New Times]
A note to Phoenix New Times Music Editor Martin Cizmar and Clubs Editor Benjamin Leatherman: if you're going to cover a show with comped tickets, it's generally considered poor form to show up late and miss the opener. Even if traffic is terrible and somehow you end up getting to your seat late (despite the fact that your paper's offices are a mile or so from the venue), mentioning your shared tardiness in your clever point/counterpoint review is less a comment on the relative value of MGMT as show opener than it is on your ability to do your job. [Phoenix New Times]
We haven't run a new segment of our search for the worst in Village Voice Media music writing recently—not because there hasn't been material, but because forcing myself to read some of the same writers turning out the same crap got tiresome after awhile. However, that doesn't mean there isn't exciting VVM-related news going on.
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Something to mull over if you want to think about music this weekend (but please, do it away from the computer, unless your area of the country is going to be as oppressively hot as the NYC area is slated to be and the only climate-controlled option you have is a tiny room with nothing but a glowing MacBook): Is the increased capacity of MP3 players, and the resultant passivity a listener can engage in when listening to their record collection, resulting in people actually listening—really listening—to less music, and subtly narrowing their tastes? The Phoenix New Times thought about this recently, and as luck would have it, I have been too.
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As previously reported on Idolator, you might have noticed that the quality of writing in the music section of your local Village Voice-owned alt-weekly has dipped slightly in the last few years. In partial tribute to the memories of adequate-or-better writing gone by, and partially to make for easy material on a Friday, we again turn the spotlight on everyone's favorite national alternative media chain. Niki D'Andrea, music editor of the Phoenix New Times, today's your lucky day!
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You (hopefully) have better things to do with your day than read the bold and edgy blogs the New Media folks at 
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