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Posted by bizquig3000 on 2005-08-15 15:32:11 +0000

One more... 12. Narrow in world-wide scope/too American-centric.

Posted by tgl on 2005-08-15 16:57:08 +0000

Huh. I would have thought you'd put: 12. Laughable P.C. non-American-centric choice.

Posted by tgl on 2005-08-15 18:43:42 +0000

Top ten things to watch out for in creating lists. Number One: ... erm ... --- I agree with the sentiment RE: lists are less about defining a 'canon' and more about a reflection of the list-maker. Damn fun to haggle over, though.

Posted by rladew on 2005-08-15 23:03:33 +0000

Cheer Cheer, TGL! (silent C's if yr still keeping score of homophones, 10 D) Are lists pretentious, inaccurate, subjective, trite, and obnoxious? Absolutely. are they fun? Lets put it this way: didn't you spend hours on the schoolyard compiling which superheros would be deadly matches against each other? We do them because they are fun. Rolling Stone is certainly not a be all end all music text (or even an anything text for that matter- Im sure at this point they are aiming to sell you deodarant and a 'lifestyle' more than anything else). But what about the kid in 7th grade who is at the public library reading about Greg Ginn for the first time? We all have our musical gateway drugs, and one of mine was definitely Rolling Stone. Some of their columnists CAN put complete sentences together and they feature great guest columnists whose names have frequently been dropped on RS.N: Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, PJ O. Rourke.... Unfortunately, like everything else in this world, you have to take the good with the bad with Rolling Stone. It DID start a couple a threads here @ RSN, so some of us have had some enjoyment out of these lists. Who gives a fuck if they're true or not? _______________________________

Posted by pamsterdam on 2005-08-16 07:39:29 +0000

Ooooooooooo, Ladew. I just got a flashback to sitting in my high school library freshman year, with a stack of Rolling Stone issues, making notes re: bands I wanted to check out (this would've been the '87-'88 school year, so probably a lot of anglo-electro-pop). Thanks, man. That made my morning.

Posted by Honar the librarian on 2005-08-18 22:18:35 +0000

Point well made, rladew, but who are the peers of Wolfe, Thompson and O'Rourke in RS' today? The few times I've looked at RS in the last 10 years the writing has been pretty wretched, except for the one guy who was already writing in the early 90's (mostly about domestic politics--can't remember his name). Granted, I haven't looked at one recently. These day's I get my O'Rourke fix in the Atlantic Monthly.

Posted by rladew on 2005-08-19 01:00:30 +0000

Last year, Larry David had a guest column and a chapter from Tom Wolfe's 'I Am Charlotte Simmons' made it in. I don't know any good contemporaries that are being published in Rolling Stone (these are guesses of other good writers who do periodiacals from time to time: Chuck Palinuk (sp?)?, David Foster Wallace? Jonathan Lethem? I know Chuck Klosterman writes some cool stuff in SPIN (yes, I know I actually used the phrase 'cool stuff in SPIN' - I'm sure Ill regret it later) _______________________________

Posted by Honar the librarian on 2005-08-19 14:17:13 +0000

I was thinking of William Greider, who seems to be writing for the nation these days (probably not a rag that lands on your doorstep, rladew;) The point I was trying to make is that when I was reading RS religiously in the late 80's early 90's, you could could almost guarantee writing from one of the previously mentioned cats in almost every issue, and there just doesn't seem to be the same level of quality in the issues I've seen (admittedly few and far between, but then, the reason I stopped reading RS in the first place was because the writing seemed to be getting weaker). I suppose the argument could be made that my critical thinking skills improved, not the overall quality.

Posted by Honar the librarian on 2005-08-19 14:18:30 +0000

I suppose it's because dawn is out of town, but someone really should have taken me to task for egregious misuse of apostrophes.

Posted by rladew on 2005-08-19 15:04:41 +0000

Ive read the Nation from time to time... _______________________________