And so, Rolling Stone devotes its July 10/17 issue to an interview with the all-but-presumptive Democratic candidate for the President of the United States of America, just four months after the mag's endorsement. The MSM pricked up their ears when the mag hit the stands last week: "Ooh, no cover lines for this issue, just like the 1980 Annie Leibovitz-shot image of John Lennon suckling Yoko Ono." We learn, from answers elicited by editor and publisher Jann Wenner's first two questions, that Obama is pleased by the endorsements of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, that Blood on the Tracks graces his iPod, and not much else.

(BTW: This week, a sale of Wenner's Us Magazine to Condé Nast was mooted; the consensus opinion seems to be that he's mystified by that mag's game-changing success and doesn't have much interest in the celebrity culture upon which it feeds. But it's clear that Wenner'd sooner a bear gnaw off one of his feet than part with Rolling Stone, what with it being the instrument with which he administers tongue baths to his longtime heroes and new crushes.)

Mention was also made of another article therein, which concerns another persistent meme of the past two years: Amy Winehouse leads her life in a heedless manner.

But no one in a position to trumpet the contents of any entertainment magazine noted the truly big news. So, with full knowledge that he has been much easier on Mr. Wenner's mag since he revealed his identity and his prior associations with RS, it is Your Correspondent's pleasure to laud the fact that Rolling Stone has published a feature on the Canadian progressive rock trio Rush in this very issue.

YC reckons he's on pretty firm footing when he suggests that Rolling Stone's past and present staffers regard the band the same way as every American woman and non-nerd male: as an abomination. Writer Chris Norris enumerates the qualities that damned Rush in RS' purview, although he describes them as commonplace complaints: "Their hypertrophic musicianship is mocked by critics, " he writes, "their lyrical pedantry spoofed by hipsters, their singer's voice a subject of churlish speculation..." As such, RS has been a bete noire to the trio's fans not only due to the mag ignoring the band for three decades, but also because Jann Wenner's other plaything, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has steadily declined to nominate Rush for induction. Since the 1980s, Rush coverage has been left to the likes of Guitar World, Bass Player, and Modern Drummer.

So YC wonders how this piece came to pass. Did the departure of Joe Levy and the ascension of Eric Bates and Jason Fine as co-executive editors clear the way? Is one of those two a fan of the band? Is Mr. Wenner so cuckoo for Obama that he didn't pay much attention to what else was in the issue? Or did he turn in his interview from wherever it is that he summers, allowing his employees to sneak the Rush piece in? Was the piece intended as an acknowledgment of Canada Day? Or does Norris have mystical ability to pitch the unpitchable? Whatever it may be, drummer Neil Peart generally consents only to speak to the drum press, so it's refreshing to read him interviewed by a journalist who's not invested in the sycophancy of the snare set.

Norris was a staff writer at Spin in the 1990s and early 2000s, and "Rush Never Sleeps" is his first piece for Rolling Stone. His conceit is that the band has created a world with as much immersive detail as the Grand Theft Auto diaspora, the Marvel Comics universe, or J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth. Which is to say that a certain kind of nerd digs the fuck out of the band. So, between the MSM's recent interest in geek culture and Rolling Stone's agenda to laud any band that has stood the test of time, Rush can now receive the mag's imprimatur.

And when that imprimatur doesn't involve supplicating to many tropes beloved to Mr. Wenner, this can be a very fine thing indeed. A Rolling Stone writer obviously tends to get a lot of access to interviewees, and indeed Norris gets loads of color: he goes to a Toronto Blue Jays home game with bassist-singer Geddy Lee; he attends a rehearsal for the current tour; and he goes to dinner with the three. We learn that guitarist Alex Lifeson is an oyster enthusiast and that Lee is an oenophile. (YC must confess that he knew that factoid previously.) It is at this time Norris and the band discuss the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's persistent snubbing, a passage YC is frankly stunned was allowed to see print.

But Norris particularly excels at describing common knowledge in engaging language and thus avoiding cliche. To wit: "the very phrase 'Neil Peart' is shorthand for the kind of Olympian accomplishment rarely seen outside genres like classical music." "Lee entered the history books as one of (hard rock's) truly sui generis frontmen: gimlet eyes, ectomorph noted proboscis. Robert Plant may have sung about Mordor: Lee looked like he'd been there." YC believes that what you write about is not nearly as key as how you write, and he would bet that Norris agrees.

As a veteran of five Rush shows, experienced in each New York area venue that can accommodate the band (Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, Jones Beach, Garden State Arts Center), YC can say that Norris' contention that most attendees sing along with every word to every song from every album, even from last year's Snakes and Arrows, is true: Rush fans are the Trekkies trekkers of rock. Since the issue came out last week, there has been much debate on fora dedicated to the band, wherein fans have tended to be defensive w/r/t Norris' characterization along these lines. And yet, YC is surprised that Norris does not make the point that the Rush model—a band that does everything its own ruggedly, individualist way— has found recent adherents in the band's Canadian countrymen like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Wolf Parade and the Arcade Fire.

A few notes:

1. Norris notes only one of the nicknames the Rush dudes have given one another: Lifeson is "Lerxst." YC can reveal that Peart is the "Professor," and Lee is known as "Dirk."

2. Norris also does not mention Lifeson's New Year's Eve 2004 arrest for assaulting two sheriff's deputies, which is the one of the very few "rawk" occurrences to have involved a Rush dude.

3. He alludes briefly to Peart's interest in weirdo philosopher/ponderous prose stylist/right-wing nerd icon Ayn Rand, which manifested itself in many of his lyrics from the 1970s and prompted the band to be tarred as "fascists." YC believes that Peart's worldview has evolved since then, but he would have liked for Norris to get Peart to address this specifically.

4. But Peart's annus horribilis, which found his daughter and wife dying within ten months of each other a decade ago, is accounted for. He went on a motorcycle and biking odyssey, which is recounted in Peart's book Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, which YC read a bit of and found it quite moving.

In any case, Norris has done a superb job, and YC—who, it should be sufficiently clear by now, really really digs Rush, and has watched Peart's instructional videos—is jealous of the quality time he got with the band. His somewhat arch tone, typical of everything YC has read of his work, can occasionally read as if he's condescending to the band and their fans on behalf of RS. But more often, his take on what makes the band unique seems genuine and admiring.

Let's have some more like this, RS! And to you what don't like Rush: reading Norris' article will begin the process by which you will acknowledge how very very wrong you are.

It has been a long-running meme at this column that mainstream entertainment magazines don't like it much when their competitors run a cover story featuring the same famous people at the same time as they. And so it comes to pass that the July 2008 Spin hits newsstands two weeks after the most recent issue of Rolling Stone. The former comprises an image of the entire lineup of Coldplay, whereas the latter features only the band's front-sissy Chris Martin. RS is clearly observing prevailing publishing wisdom that an image of a single individual will produce better newsstand sales than that of several; Spin goes with the noble concept that "Coldplay is a band."

But Your Boy wonders if the respective muckety-mucks of Spin and Rolling Stone can muster any righteous indignation as to which has the exclusive right to feature the most self-effacing rock band in the history of the world around the release date of Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends. It seems like all concerned would keep their heads down, play ball with one of the few bands to debut in the past decade that can command a consensus among people around the world that have no "oh they're just the Home Depot version of Radiohead" bona fides to prove, and hope that these issues do well in a crumbling marketplace and not worry that the dudes across the street had the same access they did. But Spin's braintrust must be pleased that their issue came out two days before Coldplay's record debuted at No. 1.

In any case, the issue under consideration this week is a Bizarro World version of Spin's June 2007 issue, which perhaps unintentionally featured a three-part examination of what the term "rock star" used to connote: namely, a imperially arrogant, debauched, and extravagantly wealthy individual. This month, again perhaps unintentionally, the mag presents a trisected meditation on how residents of the indie-rock diaspora are often seized by notions of humility.

Spin begins, of course, with Michael Joseph Gross' "Shine On," in which he spends some time in London with Coldplay. Gross presents a woman who works next to the band's rehearsal space: she knows little of the band other than that they are unassuming and that they are probably "crap at what they do." He recounts the standard litany of Koldplay Komplaints—their music is dull, the 40-Year-Old Virgin "gay" comment—then notes that the band's new album is produced by Brian Eno and Arcade Fire knobsman Markus Dravs, and is thus spikier and more challenging than its previous music.

For the remainder of the piece, Gross portrays the dudes being self-deprecating. They are self-deprecating while planning the band's marketing; they are self-deprecating in that they foolishly ceded too much decision making to others and erred in dismissing their now-reinstated manager, Dave Holmes; Martin frets over the possibility that someone might think the name of the album and the video for "Violet Hill" are pretentious, as well as the celebrity culture that makes his family's life trying; and so on.

YB should mention here that he was interested to learn that Martin's grandmother is Zimbabwean despot Robert Mugabe's next-door neighbor. But otherwise, YB is mostly struck that with Coldplay, the now 15-year-old expectation that musical artists should not behave in a manner associated with Louis XIV dovetails with an ancient and very English notion that one should not draw undue attention to or seem altogether pleased with oneself.

Similarly, Deputy Editor Steve Kandell's "Animal Collective of Montreal" (BTW: no matter the knowledge and predilections of Spin's readership, that's one unwieldy mufuggin' headline) concerns the Canadian quartet Wolf Parade. The men of this band are also laconic and concerned/unconcerned with seeming too prepossessing: like Coldplay, they each profess a lack of interest in cellphones and the innuhnet, and are bemused that anyone cares much for their music. Unlike Gross, Kandell ascribes these traits to the band's nationality; he also delightfully describes singer/guitarist Dan Boeckner as being "one blue knit cap away from being Jimbo from The Simpsons."

Finally we come to "Fjord Escorts," which concerns how the Swedish government takes an active interest in and indeed subsidizes native musicians as key exports abroad. The piece is written by Adam Sachs, a fellow YB has known since he was 14 years old and with whom he spent a long weekend prior to this writing, so he must recuse himself from any qualitative assessment. He'll just leave you with the fact that Swedes—part of the Scandinavian continuum populated by folks widely considered to be exceedingly reserved—seem to regard music and musicians as humble artisans producing exquisitely designed and serviceable craft, and not powerfully self-involved "art."

YB should say here that he tends to desire humility in his personal acquaintances, in elected servants, and in other players in public life. And it may be that most self-conscious, middle-class music fans were taught by Nirvana 15 years ago and by the domestic and foreign policies of the current administration that swaggering around with your big dick is bad. "Those folks are not like the Motley Crue, most rappers, or the tweakers on all those realty shows," they might say. "They're like me: responsible and humble. They look like they go to the same bar as me." And perhaps some of the people interviewed in these three articles are in fact preening jerks, but are adept at concealing this from journalists.

But YB more or less believes that some artists should be arrogant. Swaggering around with your big dick when you have a titanic, compelling gift that enriches the human race is okey-dokey in YB's book, and he'd like the regular-guy paradigm to go away for a while.

Last month, Keyboard Krybaby scolded Vibe editor Danyel Smith for evidently allowing a story about June cover subject Mariah Carey to be printed despite the lack of anything resembling an interview.

For the July "Swagger" issue, the mag secured the participation of Usher Raymond for both a photo shoot and a sit-down chat. In "Caught Up," penned by Mitzi Miller, Usher addresses the issue that has enveloped his public profile in the past year: the dismissal of his "mom-ager" of 30/15 years, Johnetta Patton, and his marriage to longtime confidant Tameka Foster.

The two were to wed at the Hamptons estate of Antonio "L.A." Reid last summer, but it was called off, which prompts producer Jermaine Dupri to provide this reminiscence, which amused KK: "Usher had all of us pay for private planes to go to Reid's house, and on my way to the plane, he cancels, and I blow a couple hundred thousand dollars for not going up in the air." The rich are very different than you and me, etc., etc....

The common supposition is that Foster has supplanted Patton in Usher's organization, and that his marriage has rendered him a player no more. (In KK's municipality, this is called "being pussy-whipped.") So Miller sets 'em up for her interloctutee to knock down. In his telling, he did not fire his mother, but she was by mutual consent to be retired so she could be "a full-time grandmother." Miller contacted Patton, who, after an hour of off-the-record conversation, contradicts her son's account and enumerates her continuing managerial duties for other artists. Usher goes on to say that he gets his swagger from his wife, which if true would be the first time in history that such a thing has ever occurred.

So this month, Vibe's cover story did what it was supposed to: It got a famous person to address a controversy or otherwise surrender personal information, as consumers of popular culture have come to expect. Fine.

But it's at times like this that KK sympathizes with a complaint common to artists: "Why don't you ask about my work?" It might be true that said consumers are not interested the creative process, but KK would like to know how his personal life impacted Usher's (pretty good) new album, and to what degree his music reflects his choices and preferences or those of his co-conspirators. (Miller only references "Love In This Club" in her piece, so it may be that no one at Vibe got to hear the record before press time.) Clearly, though, KK's interests are prioritized by neither Vibe nor any magazine aimed at the present consumer, so perhaps he doth protest too much.

The other substantive article in the July Vibe comes from the pen of Online Content Producer Linda Hobbs. "Stoked" concerns the alleged misdeeds of Chris Stokes, the "king of black boy bands" and former manager of B2K and Immature, a pre-teen R&B trio that recorded some tunes that KK dug the fuck out of in the '90s.

It seems that the three less-emphasized members of B2K (lead singer Omarion transitioned into a successful solo career) are now disgruntled and have accused Stokes of sexual misconduct and not allowing his charges to eat chicken, since the hormones therein would make them grow too fast. Horrors! Hobbs has done her due diligence with this deeply reported story; every underappreciated online drone who watches with irritation as his/her lazy editorial "betters" do little other than pick belly-button lint should salute her.

And it does seem, based on this particular issue, that there's some indifference or sloppiness in the editorial department at Vibe. To wit:

1. The first page of the Usher story is on the right-hand side of the magazine, facing an ad for the Nature Conservancy. The reader sees a freestanding picture of Usher and has to turn the page to see that it's part of the package: the placement of the photo seems disjointed and is likely a hugely embarrassing error.

2. 2008 marks Vibe's 15th anniversary, so the front-of-book of recent issues has dedicated space to counting down the "top this or that" of the past 15 years. This month recounts the most notorious sex scandals since 1993, which on its face is a tremendously lazy exercise. But the fact that the page design defies notions of easy navigation on the part of the reader compounds the problem: each numbered entry proceeds to the next in a willy-nilly, illogical, and almost amateurish manner around the page.

3. Similarly, the results of a sex survey conducted on vibe.com take up nine pages; not only are the findings presented by the edit staff—as it must—as very exciting and revealing, but like the charticle described above, the pages are designed using a worrying clash of colors.

4. Smith states in her editor's letter that the July issue is not the "Sex" issue traditionally presented this time of year; it is instead the "Swagger" issue. Yet there is not much in the way of what KK understands as "swagger" represented in the issue. You've got the Usher profile, and two pages in the VMix front-of-book replete with photos of Jay Z, Snoop and Flo Rida swaggering around. And that's it.

Typically, this kind of indifference is evidenced in magazines published in July and August, when editorial staffers can't wait to get to the share house on the Jersey Shore or Fire Island. Is something distracting Smith and her staff?

Some years ago, Anono-Prick was walking around one day with a copy of the magazine he assesses this week. He ran into an acquaintance, who noticed the issue. "My boyfriend can't live without Mojo," she snorted. "It's porn for rock nerds."

Indeed it is. AP had been a longtime Q reader in 1994 when he noticed its new sister publication, which was emblazoned with the visage of Frank Zappa. A few feet away from where AP writes is a closet containing about 100 issues of Mojo that, despite taking up space better used for irreplaceable family heirlooms, he cannot bear parting with.

It would seem likely that Emap, the former mag's publisher, noticed that issues of Q bearing images of classic rock acts (or however artists are thus described in the UK) on their covers sold well. So, one year before Q would get in the tank for Oasis and Blur, came Mojo, ready to go to the well for Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin multiple times. (Mojo is now owned by the massive German publisher Bauer.)

But Mojo wasn't just an enterprise based on challenging Rolling Stone for the title of "magazine that puts the Beatles on the cover for the most cynical, flimsiest of reasons whenever it needs a circulation boost or is otherwise short on ideas" (9 times since 1993, tied with Pink Floyd and not counting issues devoted to post-Fab careers). AP certainly had no problem whatsoever slapping down eight bucks a month for a magazine that, for no apparent reason other than it would probably be interesting to rock nerds, put out a Krautrock issue in 1997, the same year that brought a pre-Volkswagen campaign Nick Drake cover feature. Or would publish career retrospectives of AP's beloved Todd Rundgren and Roxy Music. AP could forgive the mag's fascination with Gomez, an English band that wished desperately to turn into Ry Cooder circa 1969.

Alone among British music publications, Mojo didn't indulge as in nearly as much quasi-nativist Britpop cheerleading (although Oasis has appeared on six covers since 1994). If rock nerds on both sides of the pond were rediscovering Lee Hazlewood or Scott Walker, then Mojo was there with a 30-page retrospective. Mojo has to sell pretty well stateside, since a common practice is for a particular issue to have one cover for the UK and another for the U.S. (Last month, Paul Weller and Slash split the difference.)

And it must be said that, like an issue of Vanity Fair or Wallpaper, there's a significant heft to Mojo; you can walk around with an issue, or leave one conspicuously around your home, and it'll signify to others that your taste in music is superlative. A given issue will BE assembled with great care: in particular, AP has long been impressed with its design and art direction.

But roundabout 2002, AP had had it with Mojo (and with Q, too). He wasn't sure this was because Mojo had run out of popular music history to mine, or because of his irrational disaffection for British people at the time. So he was interested to revisit the mag.

The July 2008 Mojo runs with interviews with each of the four Sex Pistols, a band with a new DVD and a series of British shows this summer to promote that signifies for English people the Britain of 1977 as vividly as the Beatles did a decade prior, and thus probably can be relied upon to sell magazines in the UK. Two of these men, John Lydon and Paul Cook, look like AP's great aunt and grandmother, respectively, and all four do not say anything of much interest to Sylvie Simmons, a writer who's been reliably and gushingly more fannish than her '70s pop scribe peers.

You can count on Mojo to dutifully note the current, major label-financed doings of pop legends. So, in the front-of-book featurette "Yes Minister," Gabe Soria (with whom AP worked at Blender) checks in with Al Green at JazzFest and discusses Lay It Down, his new, ?uestlove-produced record that will be referred to as his best since The Belle Album for the next couple of months. And Simmons speaks with Neil Diamond about his Rick Rubin-helmed Home Before Dark for the "Mojo Interview." AP is listening to the latter as he writes, and it's the kind of solemn, ponderous record that bears Rubin's recent imprimatur and thus which Mojo can duly laud as a late-period masterpiece. But there are no drums on record, so AP, who has never cared for the author of the one karaoke staple ("Sweeeet... Care-Oh-Lahn, BAM BAM BAM") that never fails in boiling his blood, don't dig it.

But the reason AP picked this issue for consideration was the inclusion of two longform pieces that, again, have no particular product peg of the sort commonly regarded as necessary in entertainment journalism. "Jungle Boogie" details the rise of August Darnell, the Bronx English teacher who left the employ of his brother Stony's Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band to found Kid Creole and the Coconuts. AP is familiar with Darnell's "Endicott," and only a few of his other tunes, so Mojo has succeeded in making him want to examine Darnell's catalog in grater detail.

"Double Trouble" concerns the often fractious relationship between former schoolfriends Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, which has long fascinated AP. He thinks that, after 1970, Zappa's work in the rock music arena was pitched to chops-a-holics and devotees of excretory humor, and may have financed the "serious" music that truly interested him but which also cast him as a cynical, heartless misanthrope in the eyes of many rock critics. Beefheart, on the other hand, was all heart, all the time: his shit was "outsider music" before the term existed, and it inevitably appealed to critics sympathetic to neo-primitive authenticity or somesuch claptrap. According to Dave DiMartino's reporting in this piece, the Captain resented what he considered Zappa's marketing of him as a "freak," and disliked being thrown a bone vis-a-vis a guest spot on Zappa's Bongo Fury and 1975's subsequent tour. Highly recommended for them interested in either artist.

Mojo, to be sure, has its easily identified and mocked traits. Of course Fleet Foxes' debut album is going to praised to the skies in this issue's marquee review in the Filter section, penned by Simmons: the band's 22-year old frontman Robin Pecknold believes that "Van Dyke Parks is rad" and thus fulfills every requirement of what a Mojo staffer wants a young musician to be. And of course the reissue section's marquee review of Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue (which AP really really digs), written by London's Dreaming scribe Jon Savage, cites Gene Clark's No Other and Neil Young's On The Beach as "dark night of the soul"-style precedents. And of course the recent doings of hippie standbys like Gong and Hawkwind are bestowed with great import.

So yeah, Mojo has an Apollonian ideal: music of the late '60s and the '70s can't be topped, only emulated. AP's irritation with this kind of thinking is well known to regular readers of this column, but, perhaps since he's not often confronted with the English iteration of that kind of thinking, the mag doesn't vex him. Besides, the level of trainspottery detail common to Mojo is pitched to the obsessive and the omnivorous more than it is towards the self-satisfied survivors of the '60s and the '70s.

He's not gonna start buying it again all the time. Too goddamn much $$$.

The magazine that Your Correspondent assesses this week can currently be found on newsstands wrapped in a loose plastic wrapper. Typically, this packaging is enacted so that a mag can tease the potential reader with content that he/she cannot access while standing around and flipping through its pages in a store. Thus stymied, the reader is more likely to buy the issue.

This is a practice most often associated with publications catering to enthusiasts of the guitar and of pornography. Take, for instance, the latest issue of Anal Gourmand: the issue contains a pictorial featuring rising Japanese/Dutch adult star Takesa Hüügedikk, but since the issue is packaged in the manner described above, anyone curious must purchase the mag in order to see what she's up to therein.

YC wonders if Alpha Media Group Chairman Kent Brownridge, publisher Ben Madden, and editor Joe Levy concluded that Blender's July cover gal, Leona Lewis, may be the kind of young lady your mom thinks "is so elegant" yet not, shall we say, the kind of gal representatives of Blender's primary readership would knock one out to. ("Bleeding Love" strikes YC as redolent of the pre-lotsa fun, "Vision of Love"-style material that Mariah Carey was compelled to record in her role as a suitable consort for Tommy Mottola.)

So, once the cover shoot, photography, and reporting were each complete and the three possibly realized that they didn't have a home run on their hands, perhaps the idea was to boost sales by not only making in-store perusing difficult, but by promising free downloads! Yay! A card floating around the issue's wrapper includes a URL leading to a page on Rhapsody.com that offers MP3s from the likes of Tokio Hotel (misspelled as "Tokyo"), Fleet Foxes, and No Age, among others, as well as enough legal language describing the limits on this promotion to choke a fucking goat.

As for that cover story: It was up to Music Editor Rob Tannenbaum to elicit a series of interesting quotes from Lewis. But based on "Leona Lewis Wants a Cuddle...But Not the Way You Want To," the British singer either has nothing interesting to say or has been prepped by her handlers to a superhuman, Monica-Lewinsky-interviewed-by-Whitewater-prosecutors-in-1998 degree. Tannenbaum (with whom YC worked at Blender several years ago) is an uncommonly gifted interviewer, but he more or less concedes that he's not getting blood out of this particular stone. YC hopes he had a good time in Tokyo, where he interacted with Lewis during promotion, got loads of reportorial color, and probably otherwise enjoyed himself.

Elsewhere, we come to the second installment of Rob Sheffield's Station to Station, which, given that it ostensibly concerns the reunion of Yaz, seems to augur that the column will perpetually find Sheffield waxing rhapsodic over his favorite artists of the 1980s. While he breaks from type by interviewing Yaz/Depeche Mode/Erasure keyboard boffin Vince Clarke in his remote Maine village instead of relying purely on his often airless ruminations on this TV show or that gleefully plastic New Wave artist, it'd be nice to see Sheffield grappling with an artist or occurrence tethered to this moment, like... oh, YC doesn't know, Miley Cyrus or the R. Kelly trial or something.

Apart from pointing out that YC feels like Dennis Wilson's fascinating Pacific Ocean Blue should have been awarded The Guide's marquee spot for reissues over Liz Phair's slightly refigured Exile in Guyville, YC isn't moved to comment further on the July Blender.

So he'll note that this issue makes three consecutive "chick singer" covers under Levy's stewardship. Perhaps he was Rolling Stone's cheesecake advocate, as his former mag has not featured a surfeit of such cover imagery since his departure (maybe this would be unseemly during the mag's "go, go, Obama" phase). But it's past time for a male musician or a band to front Levy's Blender. And what about those lists that Blender excels at, which make similar efforts from Rolling Stone look fusty and get attention from Assholes in the AM with Schmucky and Fuckface, as well as the Topeka Pig Testicle? When is Mr. Levy going to unveil his iteration?

YC realizes that he previously voiced a concern that Levy might import too much Rolling Stone-style kiss-assery to Blender, and it doesn't seem like anything of that sort has come to pass. But it seems like Levy has relied too much on his predecessor's templates (notwithstanding the above point re: lists). It may be that, in a lousy-and-getting-lousier advertising climate, he and Mr. Brownridge are loath to tamper with proven editorial formulae. But YC thinks that, after 11 years of diligent obeisance to Jann Wenner's preferences and allegiances, Levy is free and might want to cut loose and show how he'd run a fully engaged, revitalized music magazine without having to keep Wenner's wishes at the front of his mind.

This week, Your Boy breaks one of his informal rules: He shalt not assess two consecutive issues of Rolling Stone in a row. But the June 12 RS leads with a package titled "The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs Of All Time," and if both music mag publishing trends and protocols of innuhnet bitching tell us anything, it's that people luv lists—or at least luv disagreeing with them.

Being that the mag represents what it does, Rolling Stone is awfully invested in the totemic centrality of the guitar to "rock and roll" music. This issue is the third in five years to emphasize the guitar: in 2003 came "The Greatest Guitarists of All Time," followed in 2007 by "The New Guitar Gods." Typically, this sort of exercise involves a lot of grandiose verbiage regarding how the instrument is rock and roll's "essential liberating voice," as per this feature's introduction.

It goes unmentioned that Guitar Hero and various YouTube shred clips have created greater general interest in the guitar in the past two years—saying so might render this list a bit more timely, and then wouldn't have to rely purely on shopworn "these are the immortal moments of rock's six-string legacy" tropes. It's a point that RS never tires of making.

YB should mention that he contributed a few entries to the 2003 list: he was charged with making the case for the greatness of several players, including Soundgarden's Kim Thayil (which he, frankly, struggled with) and Randy Rhoads (which he most emphatically did not). That assemblage drew the ire of many respondents (among them Scandal's Patty Smyth) for the lowly status granted to Edward Van Halen (No. 70).

If Van Halen was slighted at the time, all is forgiven now, as he appears with a be-mulleted Jimmy Page, B.B. King, the Mars Volta's Omar Rodriguez, Kirk Hammett, Carlos Santana, Buddy Guy, and RS' current "pop dude we like cuz he's into playin' bloozy and bangin' famous gals" John Mayer on this issue's wraparound cover; all are interviewed therein. Typically, RS puts an image of Jimi Hendrix on the cover of any such big guitar extravaganza, but perhaps his visage is no longer the automatic sales tonic it was for so many years.

In an editor's note, senior editor David Fricke is described as possessing the requisite "encyclopedic knowledge of music," which more or less identifies him as the point man for this list. YB knows that Fricke is dependable for such prose as "barbed wire fusillades" and so on, but does not know if he actually, y'know, plays guitar. As for the package's remaining contributors, YB knows that Douglas Wolk plays guitar and that Austin Scaggs had and may still be in a band, but he does not know any such thing about Evan Serpick, Brian Hiatt and Gavin Edwards.

But clearly the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time" was shepherded by Fricke. It's unlikely that tunes from Moby Grape ("Omaha," No. 95) would make a list were he not running the show. Otherwise, this is exactly what you'd expect: Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze," and Cream's "Crossroads" take the top three spots, Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit (No. 10) is the only song from the past 20 years to make the top 20, the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" appears at No. 21, and...

Aww fuck, just look at the list itself and then go be a good little innuhnet whiner and complain that the mag has no credibility because songs by Deep Purple, The Band, Black Flag, Arto Lindsay, the Isley Brothers, Allan Holdsworth, Maiden, Richard Thompson, Pantera, or the cover subjects of the previous issue aren't included. Run along now!

YB will pass, as he long has believed that these assemblages emphasize unnecessary divisions in music, which is an art form best appreciated in its vastness, and not in some stuffy (and, in this particular case, rather boring) canon-building exercise. But Rolling Stone's edit staff and many of their competitors know that some folks like to argue about the best this or that in bars and on their computers.

He's also very very tired of the adulation that the mag has thrown toward the act of playing the guitar and its notable practitioners. So he'll suggest that next time, why can't RS do a list of the greatest rhythm sections in rock and roll history? Or of singers? Or of Australian bands? Bands fronted by women but otherwise staffed by men? Best bands with sci-fi-, fantasy-, D&D-themed lyrics? These kind of pitches are part of what made YB the success he is today, so he doesn't expect RS to pay them much mind. But he does wish the mag's staff would throw a curve here and there.

Now, a few notes:

• In a sidebar interview with Eddie Van Halen conducted by Hiatt, EVH repeats a claim that YB remembers the guitarist making in the early '90s, namely, that he "doesn't really listen to anything nowadays. The last record I bought was Peter Gabriel's So." YB wishes to take nothing away from EVH's monumental talent when he suggests that a lack of musical stimulus may go some way toward explaining how his creative output has dwindled over the past decade.

• The No. 6-rated "Eruption" by EVH is a composition, a performance, and a recording. But it is not a song.

• In an entry for the No. 4-rated "You Really Got Me," the composer Ray Davies states "I said I'd never write another song like it. And I haven't." YB fails to see how the very next single the Kinks released, "All Day and All of the Night," is not a rewrite of the former song.

• YB wonders if, once the mag no longer feels the need to trumpet the way each carries on the rock tradition, My Morning Jacket, John Mayer, or the Mars Volta will make RS' next guitar-oriented list. He does think its funny that RS flies the flag for such unexceptional fare as the Strokes "Take It or Leave It" (No. 71) and Pearl Jam's club-footed clamfest "Even Flow" (No. 77).

• In a brief obituary notice in the issue's front of the book, RS mentions that the original drummer of Rush, John Rutsey, died earlier this month, which makes YB want to go back on his above pledge to not complain about this or any other list. So: RS! Please get over your tiresome institutional bias and pay the noted Canadian progressive rock/objectivist power trio the respect it is due in future iterations of your dreadfully dull rockist lists.

This week, Keyboard Krybaby comes not to bury the May 29 Rolling Stone, but to praise it. The issue features a cover story on the Eagles—a story that may seem a bit late, as their first album in 30 years was released five months ago. But based on the comment traffic to last week's post regarding this cover image, y'all seem to be interested in this most smug of rock bands.

He'll waste no time and say that his praise is tinged with bias. The writer of this issue's cover story is a guy who KK has had dinner with a number of times and has otherwise been friendly with since the early '90s, when said writer was an editor and KK was an intern at Musician. He's also pretty much KK's favorite writer to have ever practiced music journalism, one who deserves as much recognition as Lester Bangs.

Now some backstory: when Charles M. Young came to work at Rolling Stone in the mid-'70s, the Nixon/Hunter S. Thompson era that most consider its apex was coming to a close. The mag's music coverage had long been in the doldrums; even then, it seems the the staff were dismissive of disco, Kiss, and all manner of musical developments past James Taylor. Young came along, was noticeably unafflicted by baby boomer exceptionalism, and proceeded to have an open mind towards artists that RS kept at arm's length.

Young covered the CBGB diaspora, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Ted Nugent, and Parliament/Funkadelic with gusto, trenchant wit, and, above all, curiosity. He didn't have to like the artist's music in order for him to recognize a good quote, observe funny shit, or explore what made one human or another tick, and he was Rolling Stone's first music beat writer in a long time to offer anything in the way of penetrating insight (Cameron Crowe, an RS music writer a good five years younger than Young, was regarded as a bit too fannish, which should be clear to anyone who's seen the remarkably shitty Almost Famous).

Young was also apparently the only RS staffer who understood punk rock in 1977: he insisted that he go over to London to profile the Sex Pistols that year when everyone else he worked with probably wondered why he wasn't more interested in an audience with, say, Linda Ronstadt. But he got his story, "Rock is Alive and Sick in London": while the issue took a notorious dive on the newsstand, it's looked at as a highwater mark in RS' history. He got it right, and for a few years afterwards, he was the mag's star music scribe, often referred to therein as the Reverend Charles M. Young.

At the same time, the magazine and the Eagles sustained a mutually antagonistic relationship. Henley and Co. represented a nakedly careerist, hedonistic, and misogynistic version of RS's beloved Jackson Browne. KK wouldn't be surprised if the persistent rivalry between Los Angelenos and San Franciscans comes into play, as Rolling Stone was based in SF until 1977; the disaffection continued when RS moved to New York City, which the Eagles also did not like. These days, the Eagles are simply an enormous, totemic rock band that represents the way shit used to be, and so naturally Rolling Stone comes calling, two weeks after running with a cover story on the chicks from The Hills, a more recent exponent of Hollywood decadence. But 30 years ago, Rolling Stone and the Eagles no likey.

Roundabout 1978, the Eagles were the biggest band in America, but Rolling Stone was constantly dismissive of the band and its manager, Irving Azoff. After a charity softball game in which the Eagles' team beat RS's team 15-8, Don Henley befriended Young, who followed the band around for a year during the recording of The Long Run, argued with them over the merits of punk rock, and did a shitload of drugs with them. Young fell afoul of Henley, who was not pleased about reportage of his "stress related indigestion": it was but one of many instances of Henley complaining about about being profiled in a frank manner. (Many in the biz have apparently received long, invective-ridden missives from Henley regarding this slight or that.)

That cover story was also Young's swan song with RS: he left the magazine's employ the next year and has penned pieces for it regarding Beavis and Butt-Head, Noam Chomsky, and (most recently) Ray Davies since.

And so, 29 years later, he has reconvened with the Eagles again. According to the "editors' notes," Young ran into Henley at a Jerry Lee Lewis concert last year, which apparently paved the way for this piece. Under normal circumstances, a Rolling Stone article that proceeds with Don Henley's cooperation would bear the byline of Anthony DeCurtis, a Baby Boomer Boswell who can be counted on for grade-A genuflection.

That's not the kind of piece Young has written. He may not be able to go deep with these men the way he did 30 years ago, but his story, "Peaceful Uneasy Feeling," is nonetheless a rare piece in Rolling Stone for its candid insight. Essentially it regards how everyone in the Eagles organization has to negotiate the vicissitudes of Henley's ego. Glenn Frey, who's never seemed like an unpleasant person to KK, emerges here as a guy who surrendered the band he started and fronted to his drummer, and who now defers to Henley. "Without Don," he says, "...we'd be Air Supply."

As for the remaining current Eagles: Timothy B. Schmidt continues his policy of not "creat(-ing) waves" in interviews, while Joe Walsh posits that the advent of ProTools gave Henley new methods with which to be obsessive in making a record. Young also contacts Don Felder, the guitarist who left the band and then immediately sued Henley and Frey: Felder was said in the '70s to be Henley's dude, while Frey favored Walsh. (A screaming match between Frey and Felder after a 1980 benefit show for Alan Cranston directly preceded the initial break-up of the band.) He tells Young, "I admire a band like U2 who share a brotherhood and, despite the money, still care about the music. That was never the case and never will be with the Eagles."

Felder describes Henley and Frey therein as "the Gods," and Walsh describes the band as "a democracy with two dictators," but it feels like both (and possibly Young) are trying to obscure the fact that it is Henley alone who is the micromanaging asshole. "No one can suck the fun out of a room faster than Don Henley," Young quotes Frey remarking to someone other than he many years ago.

KK, who is fascinated by the Eagles and loves a lot of their music, but thinks that most of their "rock" tunes are lousy due to Henley's weak-ass beatsmanship, now offers a few stray comments on Young's story.

a.) He says that The Long Run is "the least of their six original albums." KK thinks that it's their best: a curdled, often nasty piece of work containing "King of Hollywood," a song where Henley points his finger at film dudes who were probably just as predatory towards young women as the Eagles themselves, the equally creepy "Those Shoes," two really fucking weird tunes ("Teenage Jail," "Disco Strangler"), and four awesome AOR hits.

b.) The finished article does not mention an event in Henley's past that forever precludes him from running for higher office and is echoed by the alleged deeds of another famous entertainer whose trial began this week.

c.) The finished article also does not explore the deal the Eagles struck with Wal-Mart to sell their new album exclusively, despite Wal-Mart being a massive corporation whose business practices are in direct opposition to Henley's often laudable but nonetheless limousine liberal principles.

d.) Young states that the Eagles are selling "$175 tickets to hordes of or Middle Americans who would never pay that kind of moola in the age of foreclosure to hear rhythmic declamation over a drum machine, orgasmic melisma, morbid snarling or other forms of contemporary vocalization." Notwithstanding the creeping hostility of Young's descriptors, many of those same Middle Americans pay more than the amount he cites so that their children may thrill to the concerts of Miley Cyrus, whose music is a close cousin to his second example.

None of which obscures the fact that this article is a significant achievement. Don Henley doesn't seem to trust anybody, but it seems like age has mellowed him to the point that he can vaguely let go of at least one ancient grudge. And so, Rolling Stone can publish a story that touches on the rivalry between two warring pop culture institutions in the 1970s by one of its all-time great stylists. It may be clichéd to suggest that they don't make 'em like Young no more, but sometimes cliches are true. Notwithstanding a considerable conflict of interest, KK urges you to read this story.

Anono-Prick passed on assessing the March and April issues of Vibe. He recalls glancing at the former and thinking that it didn't look very interesting; as for the latter, he thought that it was kinda lame that the mag went with a Lil Wayne cover story less than six months after the guy led their November issue. AP wanted to be generous to Vibe this time around.

So the June 2008 Vibe, which is intended to herald the summer, appears with none other than the patron saint of all outerborough broads on the cover. Mariah Carey, make no mistake, still sells records—at a time in which expectations for sales of tangible recorded product dwindle down further and further, she commands something like a consensus. Fortyish hausfraus remember "Vision of Love" fondly, their younger, cougar-ish sisters and cousins still dance to "Fantasy" at the club, and their daughters either prize her influence on American Idol contestants or contemplate twisting around the pole to the strains of "Touch My Body." And all manner of dudes would not, shall we say, turn that shit down. (AP digs most of her singles a ton; "One Sweet Day" with Boyz II Men is his fave.)

Vibe can't go wrong, right? You'd think that the mag would send a scribe to follow Carey around for a bit and perhaps extract some clues that she was very serious about Nick Cannon, the actor/rapper described in the story as a "recent acquaintance" and whom she married a month after the events described in this issue took place?

No dice. There is no evidence in "Body Language," the piece accompanying the cover, that Ms. Carey consented to anything vaguely resembling an interview with the piece's writer, associate editor Shanel Odum. In her editor's letter, EIC Danyel Smith describes a delegation including herself, Odum, fashion editor Memsor Kamarake, and photo editor Robyn Forest traipsing off to Antigua, where Carey celebrated her birthday and where the reporting and the photo shoot for this story transpired.

Odum employs mucho purple prose in depicting the firestorm that ensues amongst Carey's handlers in the run-up to a photo shoot, how Carey comports herself during the shoot itself, and how much she, her nephew, Cannon and bunch of other folks enjoyed themselves during her lavish birthday celebration that evening. Odum records one solitary quote from Carey, during the shoot, in which she requests different lighting.

And that's it: the mag's readers are supposed to be satisfied with a few words regarding Odum's five hours in Carey's general, but very fabulous, vicinity.

It's hard to understand how Smith, an editor whose first time at the rodeo was many years ago (she alludes to her own audience with a more forthcoming Carey for a Vibe story a decade ago in her editor's letter), could possibly stand for her writer being denied significant access to the subject of her magazine's cover story. She had to have known this would be a dog of a story, notwithstanding what might have been a pleasant trip for her and her staffers.

If a celebrity is awarded the cover of a entertainment magazine, then that celebrity will consent to at least fifteen minutes of innocuous conversation with a reporter for the magazine. Perhaps the reporter will try to solicit an interesting quote, which a celebrity of Carey's caliber will do their level best to bat away. At least that's been the prevailing modus operandi for entertainment journalism for the past twenty years, but maybe Smith and her peers are adjusting to the following, emerging facts:

1. superstars will grant the access they feel like at a particular time;
2. vague access is better than no access;
3. superstars are not afraid of alienating particular music magazines, a double-fucked species of cultural commerce; and
4. editorial muckety-mucks can go jump in the lake if they don't like any of the above.

Indeed, it could be that Carey's surrogates dicked Smith and her retinue around, or it could be that Smith agreed to the Carey camp's contention that she would not speak directly to a Vibe writer—although this seems inconceivable to AP. It could also be that Smith knows that her group left Antigua with something much, much more important than a record of Carey's current state of mind. Namely, they left with photographs of Carey arching her back and frolicking in three expensive swimsuits while on the beach. This, more than evidence of a fleeting conversation, was Smith's primary quarry in Antigua, and the consequences would have been far more grave should she have returned without it.

Otherwise, the June issue includes a list of the top "summer bangers" (and runners-ups) of the past decade, of which AP can only say that from May to September 2006 he heard Chamillionaire's "Ridin' Dirty" a helluva lot more than he heard T.I.'s "What You Know" on the radio. And "It's Murder," an oral history regarding Irv Gotti's Murder Inc., the gangsta pop idiom Gotti proffered in the early '00s, and feuds with both federal government and with 50 Cent, is mildly interesting, if premised on the shaky notion that Gotti's hitmaking acumen is undimmed.

In Ms. Smith's editor's letter, she paraphrases ODB's fabled verse on Carey's "Fantasy": "Vibe and Mariah do go back like babies and pacifiers." AP supposes that's not far back enough to ensure that the writer of the cover story for her magazine was granted at least a brief conversation upon which a semi-credible profile could be constructed. Smith's editor's letters have alluded to at best the opacity and at worst the uncooperative attitudes of the people on her magazine's covers. Perhaps it would have been impolitic to candidly discuss what seems like a gratuitous insult from Camp Carey, but AP would have appreciated a bit of transparency from Smith on this matter.

But, like AP said above, Smith got the most important things she needed in Antigua: several photographs of Mariah Carey in a number of bathing suits.

This past Monday, Idolator posted the cover image of the June 2008 Blender, which Your Correspondent assesses this week. What follows is the first comment, from Dead Air ummm Dead Air, that followed the post...

"There's not one word or image on that cover that would entice me to buy that."

The post asked Blender's new editor, "why?" Although YC is certain Idolator's writers know the answer, he'll suggest that the reason Joe Levy rolled out the red carpet for Tila Tequila is the same as why YC suspects that the page views for this post are going to be greater than if, say, the accompanying image was that of the gentleman who fronts Fucked Up. The latter is fat, while the former fits all manner of requirements for the masturbatory fodder of many young men.

The promise of images and words regarding music figures of estimable worth are hardly a guarantor of newsstand sales, and the type of reader that Blender would have been able to depend on a few years ago now fills comment boxes with invective along the lines of "OMFG, I can't believe that they're putting this creature on the cover" and "whatever happened to talent?" So why, precisely, should the big music mags do what pleases Idolator- and Pitchfork-niks? Why shouldn't Blender, like MTV, appeal to people who like to watch strippers, cocktail waitresses, and goofball dudes debase themselves?

Were YC in Joe Levy's shoes, he'd probably put Tila Tequila on Blender's cover. This is simply because doing so helps subsidize some content that would interest Idolator- and Pitchfork-niks—this was the way that Blender operated when YC worked there, and given the first two issues of Levy's tenure as the mag's editor, he doesn't see any evidence that the "respect for artists" that Levy once promised to foster in Blender's pages is resulting in an infusion of Rolling Stone fustiness. The Hippocratic Oath's first rule is "Do No Harm," and Levy hasn't harmed Blender... yet.

Indeed, Ms. Tequila—or rather, Ms Nguyen, as scribe Chris Norris refers to her— has but the most slender rivulet of a burgeoning music career upon which Blender hangs "Everybody Loves Tila": a Lil' Jon and will.i.am-assisted ep entitled Sex. Otherwise, Norris attempts to unravel this Singapore-born Sphinx, but she remains as inscrutable and unforthcoming as any woman who must promote another season of a program in which her affections are the prize. She tells Norris that she thinks that "every girl is born bisexual," which both she and Blender's editors (who dutifully place her quote in display type in the issue's table of contents) know is a good thing to say when appealing to readers once referred to by a Blender critic as "walking boners."

Norris calls upon Dr. Drew for an explanation of the kind of participant common to Shot of Love, Rock of Love, and Flavor of Love. He says they tend to be "narcissist/borderline sociopath(s)," and that "producers actually do psychological testing to find people who (bespeak) this kind of makeup...they put them in an isolation tank away from their usual anchors, in this very intense environment with someone they're attracted to and encourage them to have intense feeling for them." YC has watched very little of this kind of programming, but he wouldn't be surprised if the producers have also inculcated or reintroduced some of these unfortunate people to the joys and pains of methamphetamine.

This issue sees the debut of Rob Sheffield's first "Station to Station" column. Sheffield's prominence at Rolling Stone was mostly due to Levy's beneficence, so YC fully expected "Nonstop Erotic Cabaret," a paean to Madonna, to ricochet from non sequitur to incongruous song lyric to 21 Jump Street reference even more recklessly than his RS columns. But it's nice to see that he keeps his eye on the ball for the most part: Sheffield loves Madonna (and her new album Hard Candy) and says why in less caffeinated prose than he used at his old gig. He does often betray the sense that he listens to music and watches television by himself in such worryingly massive doses that his ability to contend with ideas other than his own is either compromised or nonexistent (a hallmark he shares fellow Blender contributing editor/Levy crony/"my opinions are so precious that I needn't ever commit to real reporting"-adherent Robert Christgau), but he seems much, much closer to the ground here than usual.

A few paragraphs ago, YC mentioned that Blender uses cover images of the likes of Tila Tequila to finance content that might enlighten blog readers, should they be able to tear themselves away from their Yeasayer-centric playlists. This issue's contender as such is "The Eyeliner Wars" by senior editor Josh Eells, a guy who consistently gets out there and ruins his shoe leather real good. He goes to Mexico City to report on the mass hysteria and frequent beatings that Mexican emo fans often endure. (Note to Dead Air Umm Dead Air: YC believes that Chuck Klosterman wrote about Mexican-American devotees of Morrissey a few years ago, so Blender's article herein cannot be tarred with the brush you suggest.)

Eells reports that sensitive boys wearing eyeliner and identifying with darkly dramatic rock music flourish in a culture that favors drama (telenovelas, masked wrestlers); but that same culture contains deeply ingrained, intertwined-with-Catholicism notions of machismo, which results in "cholos" and punks often assaulting these "faggots." Something similar happened, by the way, in England last year: a young goth girl from Lancashire named Sophie Lancaster was beaten to death by a bunch of "chavs," the cholos of their country. Since YC does not frequent emo-culture hotbeds on his computer and was thus unaware of these events, he thinks Eells has done a commendable job.

Now a few quick notes...

• YC should mention his amusement at seeing that the some of the stock questions asked to nine music figures in this year's "Summer Music Blowout" are the same he posed to a bunch of musicians in the same roundup in 2002 and 2003: in fact, he thinks he came up with some of them.

• YC was also amused by the front-of-book featurette "Armadrinkin' It," in which three oenophiles from Def Leppard opine upon the merits of various wines proffered by six musicians. Guitarist Vivian Campbell asks whether Vince Neil's Vince Petite Sirah 2006 is called "duuuuuude"; singer Joe Elliott asks of the proprietor of Little Jonathan Winery Cabernet Sauvignon 2006, "Who's Lil Jon? He named for the Robin Hood guy?"; and bassist Rick "Sav" Savage, based on the accompanying shot of the three, looks like he goes to the same hairdresser and plastic surgeon as your great aunt.

• Finally,YC thinks that, in pop music journalism, it is unwise to publish more than one major feature on the same artist inside of six months, since it bespeaks a certain "appearance of impropriety," i.e. it makes a mag look like it's in the tank for said artist. Lil Wayne is one entertaining mufugger in this issue's "Dear Superstar" feature, in which he answers—ahem—"reader questions." But since he was already profiled in a feature in Blender's March issue by the same writer behind the piece in this new issue, senior editor Jonah Weiner, the mag should probably cool it with Lil Wayne, review his record whenever it comes out, and leave it at that.

This week, Your Boy assesses a publication that saw its first issue in 1952, and is thus much older than all but one assessed in this space; it's been an irreducible part of the pop music conversation since.

The New Music Express initially fulfilled for the United Kingdom the same function as Billboard in the U.S. until the early '60s, when British music took the rest of the world by storm and it was changed into a consumer publication. In terms of longevity and influence, NME can only be compared to Rolling Stone, but that's where the similarities begin and end. It remains a newspaper (a format RS forewent in the late '70s) and the fact that it can be effectively distributed throughout the UK every week reflects that the British Isles are easier to traverse than the United States: NME could thus report on events pertinent to its readership in a timely manner.

For three decades, NME competed fiercely with Melody Maker (est. 1926) and Sounds (est. 1971). In the second half of the 20th century, popular music was the UK's most consistently vital culture product, and this vigorous environment supported three weekly papers. But Sounds folded in 1991, and NME subsumed Melody Maker in 2000.

NME has long functioned in the U.S. as a crib sheet for terminally anglophilic music fans and as a pre-blog era example of how writers in their twenties can get comically overheated when they discover an exciting new band. More recently, its Web site has become renowned for running with every music-oriented rumor that emerges out of the murk, often without a shred of verification (in this, the site is kin to the English tabloid newspapers collectively known as Fleet Street). But in the UK, the paper is perennial: there is the Queen, Cliff Richard, lager, chip butties, and the New Music Express.

Your Boy purchased his first copy in 1989, decided he didn't like it, decamped for Q, and thus didn't purchase another issue until earlier this week. His efforts to decode NME's shifting priorities over six decades would not result in terribly reliable analysis, so he'll begin 'splainin' what he understands as the paper's traits from when he started started paying attention...

It seemed that in the late '80s, NME's brain trust was keen on "the vanguard" of whichever moment pop music found itself. Being that this was the Thatcher/Major era, there was a keen sense of opposition to established rock stars amongst young turks (the term "rockism" had been coined by various English writers a few years earlier), and so idioms like the English version of indiepop, acid/house/rave, shoegaze, and goddamn grebo music were all championed by writers and editors who were probably just out of university and thus eager to demonstrate their spittle-flecked, quasi-socialist solidarity with this revolutionary musical movement or that.

But then came the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. Here was a genuine mass "youf" movement, one that briefly seemed to wash away Sting and Dire Straits forever. Then came Nirvana and Pearl Jam, of whom NME could pretend the same. Then, almost as a gift from the gods for English guys who might have regretted advocating American bands that could seem like Boston and Bob Seger with more distortion, came the big summer of 1995.

Blur vs. Oasis was a great story for the British media: its emphasis on the clash of Northern and Southern cultures in Britain made YB think how fun it would have been if Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Talking Heads sustained a red state and blue state-based war of words. England seemed like the center of the universe for NME and its readership, and them with no dog in that hunt would be forgiven for thinking that the paper's cheerleading gave off a whiff of nativism. By the time the dust settled, NME looked up to notice that Tony Blair was now Prime Minister, and railing against the canon seemed out of step with Cool Britannia. If rooting for the Spice Girls would be out of the question, then promoting the Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim would do. NME would now, as English folks might say, be "havin' it."

By 2001, NME had recovered from its Britpop binge and found another movement it could go bananas for. The Real Rock bands! The Strokes! The White Stripes! The Hives! That really rather shitty Australian band the Vines! The paper's advocacy of these artists reflected two essential truths about NME in the last 20 years:

1. When NME gets in the tank for an artist, said artist will be covered with all the thoughtful restraint of a St. Bernard slobbering all over a giggling kindergartner.

2. NME will tip its hat to dance music and hip-hop, but nothing will ever replace guitar bands in its heart; that archetype, after all, is the greatest gift British culture has given the world in the past 50 years.

The Strokes in particular have been key to NME: they could have been made up over the phone by a couple of British rock writers dreaming up a perfect "New York Guitar Band," and NME has since idealized Williamsburg, Brooklyn (the neighborhood's rise as a hipster paradise is contiguous with that of Julian Casabalancas and his four fine feathered friends). And the two English acts that NME has championed most fervently over the past five years, the Libertines and Arctic Monkeys, are more or less homegrown iterations of the Strokes.

And so Your Boy comes to the April 26, 2008 edition of NME. There ain't much to it. Nearly a third of its 66 pages is devoted to ads for festivals and concert venues: YB thinks it would be wonderful if major music publications in the US could subsist on such ad revenue. The front-of-book section evokes NME.com by making hay with what's evidently the first interview with Paramore since its frontgal wrote a blog post that shook the world and the fact that "Noel and Liam Refuse To Drink Together." The "Live" section reveals that Staff Writer Mark Beaumont can travel through time to the year 2012, since he reviews a Muse concert at the Royal Albert Hall that's dated "Saturday, May 12." Similarly, Alan Woodhouse's review of a Hard Fi/Carbon Silicon gig near Nashville is datelined "Sunday, April 12."

The issue is devoted to, as per its big cover line, "The Future 50: The bands, artists and innovators driving music forward." Editor Conor McNicholas declares in his editor's letter that "the dominant of skinny-jean, vest-wearing jangly indie boys is coming to end," and that it's time for something new. YB wonders if Mr. McNicholas will be putting his money where his mouth is when, say, a new Interpol album is at the ready.

The entire feature well is devoted to the "Future 50." The list begins with stage-garb and prop designers Nova Dando and Petra Storrs, and whizzes through Spank Rock at 45, perpetual recipient of English-pop-writer-affection Mike Skinner at 37, the guitar-band-subsidizing Canadian government at 19, Canadian cover duo the Crystal Castles (who appear on the issue's cover) at 10, and the inevitable Alex Turner, Damon Albarn, Radiohead, and M.I.A. at 9, 8, 3 and 2, respectively.

NME's pick for the individual who is pushing popular music forward is... Dave Sitek. Why? He's a member of TV on the Radio and the producer of Scarlett Johansson's new album Anywhere I Lay My Head, which is comprised of songs by bobo fave Tom Waits, and the Foals' Antidotes. Anything else, NME scribe identified as "GC" who may be Assistant Gig Guide Editor Greg Cochrane? Well, he lives in Brooklyn ("currently the creative centre of the universe; home to the most exciting bands and artists on the planet right now, all making intellectual music that values creativity over celebrity," drools Cochrane), thinks most current pop music sucks, and describes his production aesthetic is reached by "sitting in my underwear, doing bong hits.'"

NME thinks this guy is pushing music forward more than any individual on Earth? Of course they do!

So, according to Crain's New York Business, only one of the four magazines regularly assessed in this space showed any ad growth in the first quarter of 2008: Spin Magazine, which by some estimates should be the one of the four most vulnerable to the various depredations of the Internet: indie rock fans under 25 seemed long ago to settle into the multifarious fora where they could argue endlessly over the relative merits of Modest Mouse and Built to Spill.

But Keyboard Krybaby guesses that Spin's brain trust must have embraced the Pitchfork model, or at least accepted that its core purpose is to cover indie-rock musicians. "Let the competition try to be all things to all people," the thinking would go, "and we will appeal to readers who identify heavily—almost exclusively—with middle-class bohemians playing housebroken variations of different kinds of rock and roll music of the past thirty years."

The current indie rock Diaspora often reminds KK of the folk boom of the early '60s: collegiate and post-collegiate artists and audiences congratulating themselves for their rugged independence and purity of intent while seldom evincing interest or otherwise having contact with anyone different from themselves. As much as Rolling Stone, Blender and various "Jack" stations wouldn't like it, most self-identified music fans aren't generalists: the prominence of Pitchfork and god-knows-how-many blogs suggest that indie rock fans burrow into their niche and are content to stay there. "I listen to tons of different kinds of music" is inaccurate self-flattery right up there with "I have no compunctions about voting a black man for president."

This is one of the reasons KK feels little kinship with indie-rock fans, but he certainly won't begrudge Spin a strategy for selling advertising that has worked in the first four months of 2008 (in his newfound spirit of transparency, KK should say that he worked a few feet away from the office of then-Blender and current Spin publisher Malcolm Campbell in 2002-2003). Whether or not this translates into success on the newsstand, KK cannot say, but cultivating accounts like Virgin America and Patron suggests that Spin's ad staff has convinced "lifestyle" advertisers that they're purchasing eyeballs.

In any case, the May 2008 Spin heralds the summer festival season: KK is fairly confident that hundreds of complimentary copies of this issue will contribute to untold thousands of pounds of garbage that custodians will remove from the site of Coachella this weekend. Like their hootenanny attending forebears 45 years ago, indie rock partisans love them some festivals!

Noted road dogs My Morning Jacket receive the imprimatur of Spin's cover. KK will take a moment here to say that, like the band, he comes from Louisville. When he was coming up, hardcore punk rock bands and then Squirrel Bait and Slint were the big comers—southern rock and country were signifiers of redneck-ism that most punk/college rock types there wished to avoid. So it's somewhat amusing that the most famous band currently from the town signifies the good ol' boy paradigm. As far as KK is concerned, take the Neil Young out of MMJ, replace it with Alice in Chains, and you're left with LATE '90S Louisville acoustic grunge band Days of the New.

If the preceding sounds like KK doesn't much care for MMJ, that would be correct. He's predisposed toward southern rock and country music, but MMJ (and Kings of Leon, for that matter) have always struck him as hugely dull. So while he's never quite understood why indie-rockers dig 'em, in the telling of John McAlley's "The James Gang," Jim James and his band of recent recruits seem amiable, if not hugely interesting. (McAlley correctly notes that "despite its reputation as the sour mash mecca of the South, Louisville is as centrally located as any city as there is in America," or, as a local writer put it once, "Louisville is a midwestern town with southern pretensions.")

In any case, the Summer of Live package proceeds with "the Crowd Pleasers," quick interviews with seven acts—Death Cab for Cutie, Tapes 'n Tapes, Flight of the Conchords, Nicole Atkins, No Age, Black Kids and Spiritualized—who expound on the festival experience. Most agree that "the hang" for festivalgoers is more important than the indignities of 45-minute sets with malfunctioning monitors.

Having apparently concluded his "the rock and roll experience of my youth was the last authentic one" series in this magazine, contributor David Browne weighs in on the surfeit of American indie-rock festivals in the next six months in "Outside Chance." Browne notes that too many festivals may spread many acts too thin, that this season seems to lack the big reunion of years past like the Pixies and Rage Against the Machine (KK thinks that his and Ms. Johnston's beloved Stone Pimple Toilets weren't gone long enough to qualify), and that many festival promoters are not utopian idealists (a contract for New Jersey's All Points West specifies that acts cannot play shows within 70 miles of the festival from the time it's announced until 90 days after its conclusion).

And now a quick word for Bob Mehr's "Unsatisfied," a profile which beats the drum for a reunion by one of the few holdouts of the alt-rock golden age: the Replacements. KK has sympathy for Mehr, since a.) his article appears at around the same time as an identically intended piece in Billboard.com and b.) he's at work on a book on the Replacements shortly after the publication of Jim Walsh's oral history of the band, All Over But the Shouting. That the evidence of this piece indicates that Mehr's prospective book, unlike Walsh's, will have input from Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson is cold comfort in a market for books that probably won't support two histories on this one band.

When Anono-Prick began writing this column 51 weeks ago, he assumed a cloak of anonymity simply because that was the kind of job Idolator's since-departed curator presented to him. And yet, when commenters suggested that the writer of this column did not have the courage of his convictions to use his given name, Anono-Prick had to admit that they had a point.

Prior to writing Rock-Critically Correct, Anono-Prick thought that the kind of "computer courage" that encompasses anonymous commentary fell well short of the real variety, but he still believed that writing a column that would find him critiquing the work of other people, some of whom are influential in AP's sphere, was pretty risky. So he indeed compromised his principles. Although anonymous writing has a furtive, surreptitious appeal that may have accounted entirely for RCC's popularity, AP has been feeling for some time that he should own up to what he's written on Idolator. AP planned on blowing his own cover around the first anniversary of the first RCC column—that Idolator has been sold by Gawker Media to Buzznet had no bearing on this timing of this particular post.

Anyway, I think a lot of people have figured out that my name is Rob Kemp. I've been writing "professionally" since 1995, and have been a member of this band since 1999. (Come call me a pussy to my face at Rehab—formerly Club Midway—tomorrow night.)

What follows are full disclosures of the significant professional interactions I've had with individuals whose work has been critiqued or mentioned in this column.

From 1999 until about 2006, I wrote a bunch of album reviews for Rolling Stone. My editor there was Nathan Brackett, who hired me to work with him at Time Out New York in 1995. Nathan left for RS in 1996, and assigned me work for good pay (relative to the rates typically paid for music journalism) during the period indicated above. He also got me to assess the discographies of the likes of Shania Twain and Kylie Minogue for the most recent Rolling Stone Record Guide, which I consider an honor.

Nathan has been a good friend to me, so I will admit that I was relieved to learn in mid-2007 that he was not going to edit RS' reviews section any longer and would be supervising the mag's Web site (my understanding is that he resumed some of his duties for the reviews section recently). Pursuant to his new duties, Nathan assigned me some minor editing on a couple of features on Rollingstone.com last summer. Being that I was writing this column at the time, I shouldn't have accepted that assignment. So by the time anyone reads this, a check for the same amount paid to me by Wenner Media in August of last year will be on its way to WM.

I'm reasonably sure I will never write for Rolling Stone again, but I hope that many of the people I know who have worked there would recognize that while I dislike a lot of Wenner Media's institutional biases, I certainly begrudge no one a living that, like many if not most jobs, probably entails a lot of compromise.

From early 2002 to mid 2003, I was an associate editor at Blender, which functionally amounted to a "staff writer" job. While I wouldn't be surprised if any reader noticed that my posts re: Blender tended to be fairly insightful, I should stress that this was easily the most unpleasant working experience of my professional life. Very shortly after I was hired, it became clear that my position was redundant, and I was never entrusted with assignments of any consequence (Jonah Weiner was hired shortly after I was, and he by contrast succeeded quickly at Blender).

My bosses at Blender were Andy Pemberton, Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum, all of whom I failed to befriend and to whom I otherwise failed to be useful. While I worked there, I became pretty disgusted with the mag's raison d'etre, and found it very difficult to carry out certain tasks that Pemberton had charged me with. But he was my boss, and it was my responsibility to do as he asked effectively. So I was eventually fired (Victoria De Silverio was hired shortly) before my departure).

Marks became the editor of the mag in 2004; by the time I started this column, my resentment towards Blender as an institution had long passed, and I was pleased to see that Marks and Tannenbaum (who in my experience was Marks' very savvy consigliere) had been producing what I consider the best publication regularly considered in this space—I guess I developed a taste for sausage after a few years away from the factory. I have no doubt that Marks will succeed in whatever turns out to be his next venture.

As for Spin: I became a casual acquaintance of Doug Brod's a few years ago. When he became Spin's editor in 2006, he suggested me as a freelancer for a few FOB items, two of which were edited by Melissa Maerz, and an album review, which was edited by Charles Aaron. Brod's iteration of Spin is one I identify with a great deal more than those of his predecessors. Or it simply could be that I like the guy quite a bit, and cut him too much slack!

Michael Azerrad was the drummer in a band in the late '90s. While at TONY, I wrote a listing regarding his band that was pretty unprofessional and regrettable.

Tom Beaujour assigned me an album review for the first issue of Revolver, which he declined to run.

I met Alan Light one evening to discuss employment opportunities at Tracks, the magazine he ran for a few years in the mid-2000s.

For a very short time, I supervised the Front of Book "Burner" section in Blender: I worked with Nick Duerden on a few items therein.

In 2006, I wrote a cover story for GuitarOne, which is one of the four magazines that publisher Future Networks shuttered last year.

There are a lot of folks mentioned in the column in the past year who I used to see at various spots in New York City from time to time several years ago; I don't think these fleeting interactions merit a disclosure of the sort provided above.

Ultimately, I strived to call them as I saw them in this column; I don't believe that there has been much in the way of ad hominem score-settling. I'll just say that some people I dislike wrote some great shit and I said so. And some people I like wrote some shit that weren't so good and I said so.

So! I thank anybody who has enjoyed reading this column, which will continue in a more candid but as yet undetermined fashion.

And to Jo Jo Dancer and Dirty Sanchez, who mined similar but often much more gratuitous territory (the former once called another writer, amusingly in light of his subsequent activities, a "dickless imp" in his Rock Critical List): It's your move.

Madonna, Mariah Carey, Kid Rock, John Mayer, Keith Richards, and Alicia Keys are all artists that can reasonably expect to be treated with deference in Rolling Stone whenever it is advantageous for them to consent to interviews and photo shoots. Each of these artists can expect to be covered in Blender, too, and each is teased on the cover of the mag's May 2008 issue.

In Rolling Stone's telling, John Mayer is a famous soft-rock singer-songwriter who peels off Stevie Ray Vaughan-style solos whenever he can get away with it. To Blender, he's a smart and relatively self-aware guy who knows that a lot of people think his songs are sissy shit, fit only for your uncool chick cousin and her book club buddies. Mayer knows this, and even if it's debatable that he should give much of a fuck since he's richer and has bagged more famous hawt broads than anyone reading this sentence could dream of, he's quite happy to play Blender's game.

So senior editor Josh Eels climbs aboard the Mayercraft Carrier, in which Mayer is the draw for a cruise traversing the Caribbean. To Eels, the trip mostly comprises packs of cougars and bachelorette partiers similar to the hypothetical woman described above, all enjoying the fellowship of other Mayer fans, going to his shows on the boat, and hoping to catch a candid glimpse of—or even share Patron with — the object of their affection. (Notably, the photo spread accompanying the piece, "Greetings From the Mayercraft Carrier," does not include the widely disseminated photo from the cruise in which Mayer poses in Borat's man-thong.) Eels is good at on-the-spot "wtf?"-style reportage; this kind of story is key to Blender's interest in the absurdities often found in the periphery of pop music. "What do you think of Buddy Guy?" is not part of Blender's purview.

That kind of question is, however, part of the purview of Rolling Stone, for which Joe Levy worked as an executive editor for almost eleven years until this past January, when he was hired as editor-in-chief of Blender by fellow Wenner Media dissident and current Alpha Media Group Chairman Kent Brownridge. This issue is the first in which his name is listed as such on the masthead.

When he was hired, Levy said that he hoped to inculcate more respect for artists, which is an aim of Rolling Stone, in the magazine he's now running. But for a purely cosmetic design overhaul, this issue indicates that he's working with the staff and pool of freelancers that was in place for his predecessor Craig Marks' last year, and thus the mag's philosophy and accompanying editorial apparatuses have not been monkeyed with.

Your very own Anono-Prick would think that this month's cover subject, Alicia Keys, might have indicated a shift towards "respect for artists," since AP thinks Keys' music and persona are both predicated on profoundly boring "this-is-how-proper-music-used-to-be-made" tropes. Sure enough, in "Alicia Keys Unlocked," senior editor Jonah Weiner reports that she believes that "there was so much more good music 40, 50 years ago." But Weiner unearths the fact that, due to various comments Keys made that that ranged from the anti-Bush to—dude—the pro-anarchy, the New York Police Department put Keys under surveillance prior to the Republican Convention in NYC in 2004. Although it may seem that the mere fact of a member of the creative class not much caring for the current POTUS isn't terribly noteworthy, Weiner did succeed in the unprecedented feat of interesting AP in Keys for a moment. Still, AP thinks that Keys may have been chosen to be the first cover gal of Levy's tenure because of her abundant "artistic" qualities; As I Am was released six months ago, and the promotion of the album's third single, "Teenage Love Affair," isn't much to hang a cover on.

Levy's first issue blows through the front-of-book Burner section without much fuss and includes a week-long "Phone Home" feature from a touring Kid Rock and a "Dear Superstar" sit-down with Keith Richards, in which he answers questions that are probably not from flesh and blood readers. After the Keys profile comes a "Spend $848 with..." stunt feature in which rest-of-the-world-conquering German emo-boppers Tokio Hotel spend that sum at a Hamburg Casino. (AP gets nervous when ever he writes the words "world-conquering" and "German.") AP has absolutely no confidence that these little Krauts will ever interest anyone in America beyond particularly avant-garde 11-13 year old girls, but he thinks it would be pretty cool if Tokio Hotel broke the U.S. Senior editor Victoria De Silverio touches on the issue of be-fright-wigged frontboy Bill Kaulitz's sexuality, but points out that the kid became famous for his 2003 rendition of "It's Raining Men" on the German Star Search. AP isn't sure about German culture, but he's confident that no minder in the U.S. would ever allow their tween boy charge to sing that particular song.

Then comes the Mayer piece, then "Rock's Secret Millionaires," a foldout quasi-list feature that's most likely sponsored by Mini Cooper; it seems like a bit of an afterthought. By page 73, we've reached the reviews section "The Guide," wherein Madonna's Hard Candy and Mariah Carey's E=MC² are both assessed to the tune of four stars. R.E.M.'s Accelerate, while awarded three and a half stars, is nonetheless dismissed by senior critic Jon Dolan with language far more frank than Rolling Stone would ever allow regarding that band.

And that's about it. The feature well is nowhere near as crowded as recent issues, and there's no ingenious, irreverent list of the "top" this or that. It's quite possible that, given the two or three-month lead time, much of this content was initiated by Marks. If that is the case, then it would be a very foolish editor indeed who would swan in and say "I don't care how long this has been planned and how much $$$ has been dropped; this is Day 1, and everyone must start over now."

AP's supposes that new bosses don't always bulldoze into a new workplace, changing everything that worked immediately because they need to "leave their mark." Levy has a staff remaining from Marks' tenure, and, given that AP does not have access to Audit Bureau of Circulation data, it doesn't seem like the mag is tanking on the newsstad; Blender isn't broken by any means. Some exponents of Old Media could do a lot worse than to evoke the irreverence of the computah world, which is what this mag has been up to for some time.

But Levy will have to come up with new editorial gimmicks, and he'll likely bring in more of "his own people," like his pal who signed up earlier this week. AP hopes, though, that the respect for artists Levy speaks of never materializes.

[Cover image via Eartodastreetz]

Few relationships between supplicant and master reflect the "law of identity" as keenly as that between the magazine considered in this space this week and two of the three men on the cover of its April 24 issue. When a major project involving the Rolling Stones is nearing commercial release, the magazine named for the band is right on time. A is A, dogs piss on fire hydrants, commenters complain in Internet fora, and Rolling Stone puts Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on the cover. This is the magazine's nature.

Jagger and Richards share the cover with Jack White, a musician many people over fifty believe makes rock and roll music the correct manner and is thus an artist RS can endorse with gusto. White appears with the pair in Shine A Light, the new Martin Scorcese concert doc capturing a two-night stand from the Stones at NYC's Beacon Theatre in 2006; he also has a new album out with the Raconteurs that's emblematic of emerging music business paradigms, etc., etc.

Senior editor David "this new Stones album is a stunning return to form; its switchblade six-string brings to mind Sticky Fingers" Fricke facilitates "Blues Brothers," a friendly conversation with Richards and White. He calls the Stones' current onstage M.O. "feral" in the piece's intro and goes straight into pig-in-shit mode as his charges hold forth regarding the blues tradition and Stones Cinema. (Fricke doesn't ask White any Raconteurs questions.) There isn't much evidence that Richards is interested in White; he appears to have a vague knowledge of the White Stripes, but he's more invested in conversation along the lines of "heh heh, rhargh, Bo Diddley, ghargh, Chuck Berry, arghle, back in the old days, heh heh."

White doesn't seem at all to bristle at Fricke's frequently retrograde line of questioning: "Do you feel cheated that you won't meet and play with your favorite bluesmen because so many of them are gone?"; and "Despite the generation gap, the blues shaped your lives in similar ways." This is probably because, in all likelihood, White believes that he did miss out on the time when music was rilly rilly great. He nonetheless elects himself for the blues priesthood alongside Richards, Charley Patton, and others: "When you see someone play, you immediately know whether you can connect with them or not. You know you're in the same family. And [gestures towards Richards] I think we are." Kumbayah, my lord...

As for associate editor Brian Hiatt's companion interview (titled "Mick Jagger"), it's clear to Your Correspondent that the interviewee devoted the same amount of time and thought to Hiatt's questions that he would for the Topeka Pig Testicle stringer who was slotted in between 3:45 3:50 p.m. on Shine A Light's New York Press Day. Which does make YC ruminate on just how Jagger regards Jann Wenner. According to Robert Draper's Rolling Stone: the Uncensored History, Wenner more or less devised Rolling Stone as a way for him to meet Jagger, who has since clearly been the crown jewel in Wenner's constellation of fancy friends.

But YC wouldn't be surprised if the notoriously cold-eyed Jagger considers Wenner his plaything, a sycophant who can be counted on to do his bidding and marshal every available resource to emphasize the greatness of his band while Jagger himself exerts little effort (and does Richards have less disguised contempt for Wenner?). Given the special relationship between his band and Wenner's mag, YC thinks that Jagger might lift a finger to make this interview more substantive, but no dice—although he repeatedly refers to his band in the piece in the third person ("they have lots of other kinds of facets which make them kind of interesting").

YC did learn some things from senior editor and film critic Peter Travers' interview with Scorcese. Travers notes that "no one asks 'Who Killed the Kennedys?' in 'Sympathy for the Devil,' and in 'Some Girls,' Jagger never sings 'black girls just wanna get fucked all night..." in the film's performances, to which Scorcese replies "that was the band's decision." Boy, them Stones don't shy away from confronting middle-class prudishness, huh? Scorcese also says that Richards sings but doesn't play guitar on the film's performance of "You Got the Silver"; YC is fairly sure that Richards croaking away onstage without a guitar is unprecedented (set YC straight if he's wrong, y'all commenters who bother with music recorded more than 30 years ago).

Of course, the Stones luv ain't stop there! In the reviews section, Rob Sheffield gushes purple in a four-star review of the deluxe edition of Shine a Light's soundtrack: "like any live Stones album," he writes, "this one is about the World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band rediscovering how great they are." YC hasn't seen the film nor heard any of the album's cuts, so he'll just say that any of the audio-centric souvenirs released after every Stones tour he's heard in the last twenty years struck him as the band rediscovering that enough goofballs will buy anything bearing the band's name. He'll also say that he's pleased to hear that the band has dusted off "She Was Hot," YC's favorite of their '80s tunes.

As for Jack White, senior editor Melissa Maerz concludes in a three and a half-star review of the Raconteurs' Consolers of the Lonely that the record "feels like a jam session." Her judgment seems to preclude the half-star necessary to hasten the album toward classic status, so it seems that no matter how many rockist values he holds dear, White will have to wait another 15 years before he joins RS' automatic five-star club.

And so, fare thee well, Harp, published eight times a year since 2001 for those NPR/Whole Foods enthusiasts who keep up with modern bands. Harp is ceasing publication for the expected reasons: the March/April 2008 edition is its last.

Being that he never bought an issue before a few days ago, your Keyboard Krybaby often wondered exactly what differentiated Harp from that other similarly inclined and monosyllabically dubbed music magazine produced outside NYC. He can say that the mag under consideration this week is distinguished by the fact that a "harp" is a musical instrument that has been in use since antiquity, and not a substance that four-year-olds in nursery school are known to put inside their mouths instead of on popsicle sticks.

Near as KK can tell, Harp was distinct from Paste in that it assumed that their readers had a sense of humor (they might have liked Human Giant and Adult Swim, both of which are profiled herein) and might be interested in abrasive guitar music (Mountain Goat dude John Darnielle is played a 1977 cut by Rhys Chatham in an FOB "jukebox jury" piece, a Loren Connors reissue is assessed in the reviews section, the hipster-metal film Such Hawks Such Hounds is featured in the FOB), among other things. There's little sense of the ponderous and defensive middlebrow Bobo-ism that afflicts Paste.

Nonetheless, this issue covers all the artists and records that every media outlet with an eye on the same demographic mutually agreed would be emphasized in late winter/early spring 2008: Kathleen Edwards, Jim White, Nellie McKay, Steph(e/i)ns Merritt and Malkmus, the Kills, that horrible Marah band, the Whigs, White Denim, Ghostland Observatory, the Waco Bros., k.d. lang, the Breeders, the Black Keys, a Q&A with Danger Mouse in which it is noted that he's recently worked with "Susan Vega," the newly recorded rendition of the immensely dreary Trinity Sessions, and finally, a review of—"gawd, we two are so debauched; let's call our joint project something suitably roguish...like"—the Gutter Twins' debut album, Saturnalia.

Now, the contents of this final issue aren't particularly fragrant of despair; it seems like the staff was plugging away without much notion that they were about to lose their jobs. In light of the dutiful prose therein, the mag might have been more interesting to read if there was a stink of death afoot.

The folks who worked at Harp can perhaps console themselves with the fact that the new issue of Revolver runs with a very similar cover concept as their final issue. April 2008 Harp: Dave Grohl announces a run for the White House, and in so doing faces the camera in an Uncle Sam "I Want You" pose. May 2008 Revolver: Grohl and a constellation of hard rock elder statesmen like Serj Tankian and Davey Havok face the camera, each bearing the gravitas necessary to convince metalheads that this election is very very important indeed.

KK suspects that Revolver couldn't have cribbed the idea from Harp (the issue under consideration was on sale beginning in February), and that in any case the cover concept of famous people encouraging reader participation in a representative democracy is hardly a new thing. But one supposes that Grohl's minders would think it impolitic to have their client participate in two similar pursuits—that is, unless those minders had concluded that the climate for print media is so hopeless that no one should particularly care and that one of the mags was going under anyway.

Anyway, the Nicest Guy In Rock^TM sits with Harp editor-in-chief Scott Crawford for "Dave Grohl Rocks the Vote," which KK is fairly sure was not one of the more demanding journalistic interlocutions of his career. He strolls through the interview with his characteristic charm ("what America needs: beer and barbecue") and gets in a few licks at the current POTUS. But, as Crawford's intro only notes in passing, Grohl is from the D.C. area and is the son of a Republican speech-writer. KK would like to know about what it's like for a very famous rock guy to grow up around the seat of the federal government, and be one of many hardcore kids whose background is enmeshed with an entrenched, perpetual Washington establishment. Given that KK saw no mention of Harp's little "Grohl for President" stunt anywhere other than the mag itself, a frank discussion about an under-discussed aspect of D.C. culture (Harp was/is based in Silver Spring, Md., a satellite town to D.C., and you might think this subject would be one the staff has some insights on) would have perhaps been a better way to go out.

That piece leads "Rocks Populi," which examines the politics/ rock intersection, ho hum. The various articles are not very funny or insightful, and labors under frequent and dated references to Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.

Most of the scribbling in the final issue of Harp is manageable rock magazine fare. So KK wishes to stress w/r/t the following that he doesn't relish kicking anyone when they've, y'know, just lost their job. But some editor or other didn't crack the whip on one Rodger Cambria. This fellow attended last June's Fest for Beatles Fans, evidently the gold standard in the U.S. for such events, in Las Vegas. Some 10 months afterwards comes "Don't Stop Believin'," a chronicle of Cambria's trip and one that handily achieves the land speed record for the sheer abundance of cliches regarding the 1960s, the Beatles, and embarrassing hippies in journalism this year so far: not even the Sunday supplement of the Topeka Pig Testicle would publish this piece.

Mr. Cambria begins by comparing the sweltering Vegas June to "Hell," and then continues through "I've always envied the generation who came of age in the 1960s... it's easy to feel as if my generation has been slighted... there was a point in time when I thought Journey was the best band of all time"; through "I don't know what's more depressing: that my generation lacks the cultural and historical connection that unites Beatles fans, or that these refugees of the Love Generation [his description of the fest's attendees] have had their noble revolutionary ideals diluted to such a point where they exist only on the fabric of a t-shirt." Finally, Cambria is ejected from the Beatles Revolution Lounge for improper attire: "I was ejected from the revolution for wearing the uniform of the proletariat," he writes. "Karl Marx would be aghast." Perhaps, but it's also possible that KM would think that Mr. Cambria is peddling some lazy-as-a-mufugger tropes and may have not one original thought in his head.

But dig this! Mr. Cambria and a bunch of other folks signed their names to what they wrote in the final issue of Harp. KK cannot say the same about hisself, and thus wishes well the Harp staffers and various freelancers who put their names on their work at a time when music magazines are, frankly, double fucked.