I felt like laughing and puking at the same time:
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Gunark
2
Man who edited one of the most famous magazines completely ignores that nearly all of the musicians he promoted would not have been making music were it not for black musicians. Itās no wonder RS hasnāt been relevant since the 1970s.
Many of those bands such as The Stones were always at pains to point out their blues and RnB roots too.
Everybody knows that thereās precious little contemporary music that canāt be traced to non-white origin including blues, jazz, soul (which is why in the UK we have called the MOBO - Music Of Black Origin - awards, which many pointed out was basically everything bar classical, some theatrical music such as vaudeville (to a degree) and folk music indigenous to caucasian areas, etc.).
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plragde
4
I stopped reading RS in the late '70ās or early '80ās after JW undercut his own staff by āre-reviewingā two albums by the Stones and J Geils Band that he felt had been undervalued in their initial published reviews in his own magazine. I mean, come on, J Geils? Everything Iāve heard about JW since then has confirmed the correctness of my decision.
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zollenz
7
Rockist dad vibes that I grew up with. Used to get me aggy, now I just shrug and laugh.
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We can all laugh now but should also be aware that people like him and their sexist influence in music journalism and thereby opportunities, radio play, concert bookings, signings and history, totally killed existing and potential careers of countless artists and shaped music for the worse in unimaginable ways.
I grew up reading so much music journalism that never featured women with only like three women in its best of lists, and itās easy to be led to believe that theyāre not there, and not headlining festivals etc, because of a lack of talent or just not existing. And this was liberal, forward thinking indie alternative press.
Seeing places like Glastonbury Festival still booking all white male headliners this year with an excuse that there arenāt enough women on that headline act level shows how long term damaging this shit is. Even the fact that I bet the vast majority of us on here are white men.
The music world needs to put the heads and publications of these awful men on spikes and make a giant effort to push things the other way.
Even seeing the crap Taylor Swift gets like Damon Albarn saying she probably doesnāt write her own songs even though sheās clearly one of the greatest songwriters. Or a thing I read lately that said lyrics have got worse over the decades which clearly points to the researcher not counting women because Iām lyric and poetry obsessed and modern female songwriters are totally revolutionising the artform.
So we can laugh at boomer rockist man, but this stuff is incredibly harmful. And needs to die.
17 Likes
I fucking hate the Rollings Stones and find them to be the antithesis of what I perceive as āintellectualā music. Canāt stop and think of a single thing that Mick Jagger said that I ever found thought provoking.
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JES
10
I remember when Allan Bloomās Closing of the American Mind came out and he was railing against young men wanting to be Mick Jagger and my teenage friends and I just howled in laughter at the idea.
Then again, we were fucking nerds. We actually read parts of the book.
Even so, I never liked that generation of rock journalism.
āUseful idiotsā was the last thing that i was paying attn to from Rolling Stone. Once they stopped supporting Matt and Katie, it was just a ānail in the coffinā for me to pay attn to anything they do, itās very much from the millionaire white man point of view. IMO
Itās sad that most people donāt recognize that most media reflects their millionaire and billionaire point of view, like their editorial staff isnāt picked for specific reasons.
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Stuff goes around, then comes aroundā¦
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