spinning

so ok, i read spin magazine. i know it's total rock trash but i LOVE it! chuck klosterman makes me laugh and within those pages there is always something to annoy me and those of you who know me you know i love to be annoyed.

back tracking a bit, i've been a music fan since i heard green day back in like, 1992-1993 and a total hardcore music junkie since i discovered nirvana just prior to kurt cobain's death in late '93 early '94. i haven't looked back since. as a result i have been reading spin for just as long. i remember when kurt cobain died, i remember an old issue with tim armstrong and lars frederickson on the cover showing off their ninja hardcore moves, i remember when spin was a 'big' magazine (size-wise) like rolling stone. i remember all of that. i've also written them 4 letters over the years and had the first, and only one, published last year.

lately spin hasn't had much to offer me. they rarely feature bands i've not heard of or rarely have anything interesting to say; i blame twenty years of wading through crap and franz ferdinand...yes, i blame franz ferdinand for making spin sort of crappy over the last couple of years! it must be hard for a magazine to write interesting stuff when they spend all their time jerking off the crappiest band on the planet (next to U2 of course)...

...so here i am this evening, reading an old october 2005 issue that i hadn't had time to flip through until now (you should see how many unread books/magazines i have...i'm a word junkie) and the focus of the issue is their twentieth anniversary; more specifically it's their last special about alternative music 'innovators'...cool, eh?

so who would you expect to see in there? kurt cobain? well, he's dead so they can't interview him. frank black? check! anthony kiedis? check! chuck d? check! courtney love? check! eddie vedder? check! beastie boys? check! ian mackaye? check! conor oberst? check? brandon flowers? check?

ok wait, conor oberst and brandon flowers? i'm sorry...innovators? what? yes, i LOVE conor oberst. i want to marry the boy and save his sad emo soul but in the company of chuck d and eddie vedder he is hardly an innovator in the field of alternative rock. he's making smart, awesome music at a time when smart awesome music is cool, when indie rock is selling and when there's no need to sell yourself to a major label. i don't think i'm being too bold when i say that NONE of his success would have ever been possible were it not for those mentioned in the same article, he even cites ian mackaye and discord as being huge influences on him. conor oberst is 25...

...and so is brandon flowers! he isn't even 25! he's 24, he's my age! when spin asked him, 'what were you doing in 1985 when spin started?' he replied, 'i was 4 and in pre-school so probably not much of anything' so what the hell? innovative, i believe this even less than i believe conor oberst as an innovator. i think innovative has become a word so commonly misused and now refers to people who are popular. it has to! the killers are a gigantic band and have never been anything besides a gigantic band. they have the weight of nostalgia, 80s new wave, and a major record label behind them; the only innovation i can see is that of getting out of bed in the morning and putting on a dior coat.

this makes me mad. i think it's giving kids the wrong impression. i think it furthers this sort of post-post-modern belief that originality is dead and as long as you can make a decent copy of something previously existing you're good to go. maybe conor oberst has something to smart to say, i think he does (but i'm biased) but he certainly has yet to do anything truly innovative. and brandon flowers, c'mon...do you think i made that dior coat thing up myself? it seems like the guy has nothing better to do but rag on other bands and talk about clothes.

i miss 1995-1996 when all this was so new to me and there were people who had cool shit to say and cool music to make. i don't know, maybe it wasn't even innovative then, maybe i just thought it was, or just felt like it was...shit, maybe that's what the killers are to kids these days. maybe they're doing what nirvana did for me 12 years ago. i'd find that hard to believe but maybe it's true. maybe i'm a jaded snob who thinks a band that ended in 1994 with a stunningly sad shotgun blast was the best it gets. but that can't be true either because i'm still hearing stuff all the time that's making me feel good about music and where it's going. maybe now spin just needs to catch up!

wow, that was snobby!

thank god they don't say anything about franz ferdinand or i'd be writing another letter!