Playlist For Camel Cigarettes and Rolling Stone

Download: Jens Lekman - "The Opposite Of Hallelujah"
Download: The Mountain Goats - "Fault Lines"
Download: Built To Spill - "Strange"
Download: Arcade Fire - "Rebellion (Lies)"
Download: Nirvana - "Heart Shaped Box"
Download: Devendra Banhart - "This Beard Is For Siobhan"
Download: Wilco - "Jesus etc."
Download: Wolf Parade - "You Are A Runner And I Am My Father's Son"
Download: Pixies - "Here Comes Your Man"

A couple weeks back, I posted a review of Rolling Stone magazine. In the review, I noted that the issue contained a sleazy fold-out ad by Camel Cigarettes. The ad was a tour of the "Indie Rock Universe" where everyone wears black Chucks. It was designed and drawn to look like the inside of a teenager's notebook.

Stereogum then reported that not only was the ad sleazy, but it was illegal. Back in 1998, Camel (owned by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.) signed an agreement not to use cartoons to promote their products. Nine states took the "Indie Rock Universe" ads to be a violation of that and have brought suit against the company. The fine for this infraction could be as high as $100 million. Wow!

To add insult to injury, none of the bands featured in the ad were asked if they wanted their names on the ad. A full list of bands who were used in this ad and associated campaigns can be found here. The site also has a link to the original ad.

As it turns out, some of the labels whose artists were wrongfully represented by Camel are taking up arms against the cig makers. When the labels confronted the magazine, they were told that the section was an editorial, which is completely and utterly unbelievable given the spread's layout and content. Kill Rock Stars, Touch and Go and several other labels sent out an open letter to the magazine highlighting the poor taste of the ad and RS' deceptive conduct following its publication. You can view the letter here.

The labels don't want any money, just an apology. I hope they get it.

Up top is a playlist of artists who were taken advantage of by R.J. Reynolds.

(April Wright)

Rolling Stone: The 3rd 40th Anniversary Issue

Download: Bright Eyes - "Four Winds"
Download: Kanye West - "Can't Tell Me Nothing"
Download: The White Stripes - "Little Ghost"
Download: U2 - "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses"
Download: REM - "Pilgrimage"
Download: Wilco - "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart"

The temptation to hate Rolling Stone Magazine is pretty strong. Between the policy of giving every new release 3 to 4 stars and the fact that they often seem really far behind the times with regard to music, it seems like the mag is constantly grappling for relevance in a scene that it doesn't quite understand.

But is the magazine all that bad? I happened to come into possession of two recent copies of RS recently, and wanted to evaluate their merit.

One hard thing about reading RS is the volume of ads. There are 2-3 ads for every page of content in the magazine. On top of it, a good portion of the ads are for goods and services way out of range of the younger RS reader.

The news briefs in the magazine are okay. It’s a good place to catch up on the news of the mainstream, but I'd say that between Perez and Billboard, you can find more in-depth and timely coverage pretty much everything in this section. I think the fundamental failing in this section is that the magazine publishes twice a month. In two weeks, an event can be news and then old news, and news on a record or DVD release has been covered, re-covered and opined upon by every blog in the biz.

And I'm not going to lie: I often like RS' features when I read them. In these sections, writers will often go immerse themselves in a situation and then come up with around 3k words on it. They tend to be good pieces that strike the right balance between creative writing and hard-hitting, heavily-researched journalism. Other times, they'll gather up a bunch of relevant celebs and ask them about relevant political topics.

Except for that a lot of them are the same. It seems like the headline always reads "Inside how BUSH LIED ABOUT IRAQ!" or "Inside how Bush and some other dude LIED ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE!" or "CONTRACTS AND LIES: BUSH?" Admittedly, these are stories that need to be told and often have very good content, after a while, the scope starts to feel a bit narrow.

The particular issues I managed to get a hold of have very good pieces. One is a retrospective on Hunter S. Thompson that gets people who knew him way back when to tell the story of his life. The piece is very, very cool, and I think it captures Thompson in a very human light. The article doesn't shy away from his faults and successfully manages to avoid the rambling fan worship of most other writings on Thompson's life. The other is the third part of their Fortieth Anniversary Issue, in which the likes of Al Gore, Meryl Streep and George Clooney were interviewed about the state of the world. Lily Allen, Jack White and Michael Stipe were also interviewed about the future of music. Again, it was a really good piece (and we got to find out Kanye really wants a flying car).

But then smack dab in the middle of the piece is a Camel-sponsored chart to the Indie Rock Galaxy, "Where everyone wears black Converse." Gross.

And then we get back into the aforementioned "give everything 3 or 4 stars" reviews. They've got some good writers, I'll give them that. But that doesn't mean they're great reviews. Half of them read really well, but say nothing. And in the other half, there seems to be a disparity between how good the reviewer thought the record was and how they rated it. It's not a very trustworthy face to put forth.

So, what's the bottom line? I think of RS like I think of Playboy. I don't buy Playboy for porn, I buy it for that Neil Gaiman interview in the back. I don't buy RS for music news, that's what blogs are for. Blogs and websites are much more up-to-date and we don't have corporate overlords telling us how to rate things*. But, when it comes to getting good interviews and doing hard-hitting literary journalism, I think RS is still a very good magazine. I'm not going to take out a subscription or anything and out of protest for the massive number of ads, I won't buy a copy, but it's a magazine I could see reading in a bookstore while killing some time on a rainy day.

Up top are some mp3s from interview subjects in the latest issue.

(April Wright)

*Or at least MFR doesn't. And, to get it out of the way, Ian doesn't pay us to say that we like the Afternoon Records crowd of bands. We do everything on this site out-of-pocket, and I bought the We All Have Hooks For Hands record because I think they're a great band and wanted to share them with all of you. That also means that I'm not going to be buying the new Battle Royale record because I'm not going to throw away 10 bucks that I know I won't enjoy. The only way something gets reviewed on the site is if it gets sent to us, or we think it’s an important record to share.

Oh Yeah...I'm From Rolling Stone: Parts 5 and 6

Hola, Compadres!

I totally forgot about this feature I was doing. This is due to the fact that Sliver evolved into what I coloqually refer to as MFR. I'm having loads of fun explaining to my co-workers at my day job what the "F" stands for. Actually, that's not quite true. When I have to explain what the "F" is for, I usually just yell, "Frau Blücher," and then I run away while all of the horses in the stables get upset.

For those of you who are new to MFR and didn't read the Sliver website, allow me to explain what this feature was/is/will be. MTV and Rolling Stone, the nefarious kings of all things pop-culture, joined forces to produce, "I'm From Rolling Stone," a show about six young journalists competing for a writing gig at the birthplace of Lester Bangs and Hunter S. Thompson. Don't worry if you haven't heard of the show. The only two people watching it are myself and the folks over at Idolator.

Also, don't fret about not watching this show, as "I'm From Rolling Stone" is basically one not-so-glorious exercise in anti-climatic non-conflict. Normally, I'd be happy about a show with no tension whatsoever falling by the wayside and being canceled. But here's the rub: the reason that this show is boring is because the show is about making the journalists do actual work , rather than focus on whom is sleeping with whom. My God! A reality show where people do things!

In concordence with the show, RollingStone.com is running a writing contest where the fine folk at home who are watching the show submit 300 word "articles" about a subject that, in some way, pertains to the episode which just aired. For example, the assignment for the episode where the gang goes to Lollapalooza (boy, did they screw the pooch on that one) was to design your own music festival, in 300 words or less. For the past seven weeks or so, I have been submitting articles for this contest, and then writing about how dumbed down my writing has gotten. I'm batting 0 for 5. I'd never thought I'd get depressed about something like this, but sweet jesus. The last assignment (which I missed, due to my visit to the Deuce Cities this past weekend) was to write an album review and, amongst the entries picked, two are favorable reviews of fucking Fall Out Boy? Argh!

The last time I wrote, I was about to see if my ladyfriend's entry about an African festival had won this round of the writing contest. Her entry was for assignment four, which was the create your own music festival one. Now that she hasn't, I can tell you about the fast one she pulled on the RS editors. She called her festival "Wota Memam Dhon!" which she translates as "Come Be With Us." In actuality, the phrase means "Don't Touch Me There!" Was this fact checked? Probably not.

For assignment five, I was to interview a local celebrity. I shot an e-mail to the editor of the other blog for which I write asking if she had any contacts. Because, oddly enough, I'm not exactly rubbing elbows with the big shots on a daily basis. Shocking, isn't it?

My editor gave me the name of her magazine's copy-editor, a chap by the name of Joel who plays in a band called Painkiller Hotel. Yikes. But Joel was nice, chatty, funny and enthusiastic about his band's prospects (they're playing SXSW in a couple of weeks and just recorded in Nashville). Though I can't reprint what I wrote (once you send your article, it's property of Rolling Stone), I can tell you that Joel made Nashville sound like the happiest place on Earth. We talked for 20 minutes, and I wrote a 300 word profile about the dude. I unfortunately couldn't find a context to print the quote I liked best, in which Joel discussed watching the lead singer of PH channel his "inner Bob Marely." But so it goes. You can only say so much when you have a word count.

Like I said, I missed assignment six. But for assignment seven, I'm supposed to pitch a story idea about the band who will next break wide. Goody!

Here are my ideas so far:

Mouthful of Bees
David Vandervelde
The Changes
Let's Get Out of This Terrible Sandwich Shop
M. Ward

That last one is in there because, let's face it, RS is about six to seven months behind the times. Or, I was thinking I would just make a band up. What do you think, dear reader? If you had to choose the next band to blow up big (in RS terms), who would you write about? How can I damn the man in the most subtle way possible? Let me know by leaving a comment in the...uh, comment section.

(Jonathan Graef)