WHEN GROUCHO MET ALICE

Well, maybe not the exact moment …



But they were good friends. According to Cooper, Groucho came to see the band play one night and said, “Oh, Vaudeville.”

They hit it off. Groucho would call up Alice at 1 am when he couldn’t sleep, and they’d drink beer and watch old movies until Groucho nodded off.

We should all be so lucky.

You bet yr life,

This is dF

WHY I FINALLY STOPPED READING Q MAGAZINE

Or, “Music journalism still sucks.”

On the old version of this blog, I wrote a post about how hard it is to find a decent music magazine that turns me on to music I might like. Rolling Stone was too hung up on its own legacy, Spin lost the plot some time after No Doubt made it big, and they stopped carrying CMJ here.

So I turned to British mags like Q and Uncut. Both were flawed, but they were better at alerting me to new albums that might conceivably be sold in HK one day.

As of around April, I’m down to Uncut.

I’d been thinking about dropping Q for awhile, and it’s safe to say I’d only been getting it mainly out of habit in the past year. Apart from their general conviction that Britpop was the best era for British music ever and the standard by which all future music should be judged – and going on and on about how great Glastonbury is, at least in theory if not always in practice – Q tends to frame music as a zero-sum game where you can only be the Biggest Band In The World at the expense of all the other bands.

Also, they were increasingly headed into tabloid territory, where you were far more likely to hear about Amy Winehouse’s drinking issues and Pete Doherty’s heroin chic and more legendary tales about what Led Zeppelin used to do with groupies than about the actual music. It’s as though Q’s editors (or perhaps their core reader base) want to admire rock stars for leading the excessive lifestyles normal people can’t realistically live while simultaneously holding it against them for not being someone you could have a relaxed pint with offstage.

To be sure, Uncut has its own narrow obsessions – namely Americana, nu-folk and much of the 60s and 70s – and has a tendency to retell the same stories over and again. Also, I will probably never like Fleet Foxes, Animal Collective or Bon Iver no matter how many times Uncut keeps telling me how great they are.

But at least they keep the tabloid stuff to a minimum. Plus, they have decent CD comps from time to time. Also, their reviews section got a lot better after they finally discovered the usefulness of Alphabetical Order (something Mojo seems determined to resist).

So it’s not perfect. But I seem to be out of options.

And yes, I know, I can always go to Pitchfork.com or something if I want to find out about new releases. But I’m one of those old f***ers who refuses to admit print is dead. Sue me.

Cancel my subscription,

This is dF

THE SECRET TO MY SUCCESS

[Via Hollywood Babylon]

It’s the guitar,

This is dF