My local library keeps Rolling Stone in stock. I tend not to bother with it, though. Whatever glories lay in its past are truly past.
One thing I noticed a couple of years ago. Turn to the record review section. There's the lead review, longish, but not out of control like when they had Lester Bangs writing for them. Then there's a second, shorter review. And that's it. Two reviews, the second rather perfunctory. But that's symptomatic. While as recently as ten years ago, culture was king, now it's a sideshow to politics. Which itself has been folded into the entertainment industry. "Show business for ugly people" indeed.
But man, at least The New Yorker still runs cartoons.
2 comments:
Other than reading occasional articles linked to by other writers we very rarely see Rolling Stone these days and haven't done so for a very long time. Maybe the last time was when Hunter Thompson was still writing for them, but considering he died around 2005 probably not then either.
While it was never totally a music magazine it did become famous as one for the simple fact there was so much great music around in the 70s through the 90s. Then there were the writers other than Hunter Thompson such as Tom Wolfe, Lester Bangs, P.J. O'Rourke and others. Matt Taibbi came along later. Jer, being more into current culture, likely remembers more about it than me, although when I looked at the wikipedia articles about Rolling Stone and its founders, particularly Jann Wenner I was reminded of some of the stories they covered and surprised at some of the stories they published that later had to be taken down or rewritten. A few times the magazine has been successfully sued as well. I'll let you check it out if you're so inclined. It's pretty interesting.
Apparently Rolling Stone was sold in 2016 to a company in Singapore. Yet another example of a business that has changed to become 'just the name of the shop'.
Dr. Gonzo I think had largely retired from their service quite a bit before he died. He did have a blog, but I don't remember exactly under whose aegis he wrote it. Maybe Sports Illustrated?
Lester Bangs is an interesting figure. He's one of the few music critics who was ever laugh-out-loud funny on a consistent basis. That was when he was at his height. In his later years it seems like he felt trapped in the music critic niche, which caused him to lash out.
The most notorious journalistic failure on their part is the Duke Lacrosse rape story, which was eventually exposed as bogus. Initially they got plaudits for exposing the truth, but little by little it came out that they really hadn't done that. This is the way it so often is in contemporary journalism. You win by pushing a narrative. Young writers can make their careers writing about outrages, and it may seem like a waste of time to dig and find out whether those outrages actually happend.
Ah yes, I read about the buyout just a little bit ago. They want to “focus on expanding Rolling Stone’s business in new markets, and propelling the brand’s global evolution.” By gum, that's inspiring!
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