Comments on: Rolling Stone Subscription = Cancelled

By: Brittany

Brittany — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:07:47 +0000

ALARM has stood for nearly 15 years as a bastion of freethinking music and art, unconstrained by the mainstream marketplace. Each issue features in-depth coverage of the up-and-comers as well as established underground bands, artists, and other integral, yet often below the radar, cultural figures, all presented in a unique, collector-quality book-style format featuring the best in modern music photography and stellar design.

You would love it!

By: Heather O'Connor

Heather O'Connor — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:57:19 +0000

Love the letter. I have an idea for you: subscribe to the print version of the Onion and read their A/V club music reviews.

By: Natalia

Natalia — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:31:58 +0000

I haven’t been home in the States for a while, but I thought Paste was alright when I first encountered it.

RS has some great articles, but I wish they objectified men more.

By: MomTFH

MomTFH — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:19:08 +0000

Great letter.

I don’t stay in touch via print mag. Not that I am really in touch. But, I listen to Sirius, and they have pretty good DJs and good alt niche stations, so I get exposed to new music.

By: Gweem

Gweem — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:52:46 +0000

I’d recommend the BMJ. Well, maybe not for music news. But it definitely seems to have a better attitude towards sexism.
I get the student version and, this month, they talked about rape as a medical emergency and highlighted, as unethical behaviours, a doctors refusing to allow a 14-year-old to have an abortion ‘because he wanted to teach her a lesson’ and intimate examinations without consent on unconscious, anaesthetised patients, in an article about speaking out against people higher up than you in the medical hierarchy. A previous issue called out people making comments about, say, overweight patients when they were out of earshot, on the grounds that, even when meant in jest, such remarks encourage attitudes which can lead to the impairment of a patient’s care (in this case, assuming fat people are lazy). This kind of feminism and enlightened thinking is increasingly more common in magazines for the traditionally middle-class and sometimes slightly more conservative medical readership, it seems – far more so that in the so-called modern ‘alternative’ magazines.

By: Meowser

Meowser — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 06:47:31 +0000

Off the top of my head, I can think of two exceptions to the rule. One is Yoko Ono’s cover back in 1981, at which point she was a grieving widow. The other is the very recent cover of Taylor Swift, who is the opposite side of the virgin/whore dichotomy.

In the 1970s and 1980s, and even as late as maybe 1991, they had on Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt a couple of times, and Tracy Chapman once, without ever making them take their clothes off or pose “sexy” (and all of them strike me as the kind of women who’d tell RS to jam the cover up their asses rather than pose for a picture like that).

On the other hand, they made Ann and Nancy Wilson, Bette Midler, Liz Phair, Tina Turner, and Patti Smith, among others, pose shirtless or in skimpy underwear — or, once in Phair’s case, butt naked except for a strategically placed guitar. And it seems that for about the last 15 years, that’s the only way they want a woman to pose for their covers. (Taylor Swift probably caught a break because she’s only 19 — no Britney, she.) That’s their audience — Guyville, as Phair once called it. Poo on ‘em.

If I’m gonna buy a mindless-twaddle magazine, I’ll make it Entertainment Weekly. At least they don’t pretend to be all progressive and profound when they’re not.

By: Alexandrialeigh

Alexandrialeigh — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:41:55 +0000

Well, Blender just folded today, so that takes them out of the running anyway! Sad times for magazines, these days.

By: Elle

Elle — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:08:16 +0000

Leaves me missing No Depression, again. Still.

By: DCN

DCN — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:47:06 +0000

I’m pretty sure (not 100%) that I found some extremely offensive anti-gay language in Mojo a few years ago — if it was meant to be “ironic,” the irony was lost on me. It *may* have been another magazine. I wish I could remember so I could make sure they never got my money.

By: Cara

Cara — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:08:17 +0000

Hmm. I was checking out The Word at Borders yesterday, and it looked alright. Maybe.