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Do IT this week: Layering
Magazine's review bogus and betrayal of music fans' trust
Published on Thursday, Mar 06, 2008
OK, this one's kind of personal.
Last week, the Black Crowes (aka the Rolling Faces Brothers) called out Maxim, the magazine for Men Who Can't Read More Than 400 Words at a Time Unless They're Surrounded by Near-Naked Women and Ads for Stuff That Will Instantly Make You Sexier, for printing a review of its latest album, Warpaint. The rockers were upset because the label didn't send out any review copies and thus there was no way for the reviewer to have heard the album. Additionally, the review was unkind, giving the album a 21/2-star rating and stating, among other things, that ''it hasn't left Chris Robinson and the gang much room for growth.''
Righteously indignant, the Crowes cried foul and Maxim issued a half-assed apology stating that the review was an ''educated guess'' written in order to ensure that a Black Crowes review would appear in the magazine.
After getting busted and justifiably raked over the proverbial coals for its dishonesty, Maxim issued another apology via Editorial Director James Kaminsky, who said last week, ''It is Maxim's editorial policy to assign star ratings only to those albums that have been heard in their entirety. Unfortunately, that policy was not followed in the March 2008 issue of our magazine and we apologize to our readers.''
Hogwash. First, the magazine owes the Black Crowes a full and very public apology (there's a sentence I never thought I'd write). Secondly, Maxim was faced with a deadline and ran with a made-up review and assumed no one would notice.
Yes, it is the Black Crowes, which has basically recorded Stones, Faces and Allman Brothers variations for much of its 18-year career. Nearly all of its albums could be named A Nod Is as Good as Sticky Fingers on Main St. . . . to a Blind Horse Eating a Peach.
Recently, the band added talented North Mississippi All-Stars slide guitarist Luther Dickenson, giving another healthy heaping of the Allman Brothers flavor to its early '70s-rock bouillabaisse.
I'm listening to Warpaint as I write this and, frankly, ''growth'' has never been one of those adjectives that apply to the band. But as Black Crowes albums go, it's pretty solid and Dickenson is a welcome addition.
Nevertheless, it's simply unconscionable that any publication — even a useless waste of trees like Maxim — would betray its readers' trust (yes, I still believe in such quaint notions) for an extra few words. Editors could have easily just stuck another near-naked, semifamous waif on the pages and none of their ''readers'' would have noticed.
Hell, I feel guilty reviewing an album after having it less than a week, but to simply pull some words out of your tuckus and slap a rating on them is wrong.
The writer maintains he was assigned to ''preview'' the album and that the magazine assigned a review rating to his story without his knowledge, but the aforementioned quote tells me he's full of it.
As a music fan, I'm offended, because when I read an album review, even if I completely disagree with the writer, I still expect an honest assessment of the music/band/sociological implications, etc. I still want to glean some pertinent information as to the album's content. When a publication flat-out lies to me — the music fan — that obviously makes me question the entire operation.
As a (thankfully) working rock writer/reviewer, I'm offended, because collectively the Internet is already trying to put us out of business. To fuel the fire of thousands of bands slighted in print and confirm the thoughts of many distrusting readers for the sake of convenience is one reason me and my ilk will likely be out of work in a decade.
Stuff to see and hear
A full-on jazz offering with a nod to God and a precocious jazz-, cabaret- and Broadway-influenced twentysomething are among the offerings this week. First, Saturday night at the Cleveland Bop Stop, the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra will highlight the works of one of its longtime members, Paul Ferguson, who will be celebrating the release of his CD called Jazz Vespers. It's a collection of big-band arrangements of sacred songs.
Ferguson, a University of Akron grad who worked with the Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey bands and has been teaching at Case Western Reserve University for 20 years, has written some new sacred compositions that will be given that big-band punch by the CJO.
Tonight at Nighttown in Cleveland Heights, cheeky singer/songwriter/pianist Nellie McKay will perform songs from her three discs, including her latest, Obligatory Villagers, released late last fall.
McKay's debut double album, Get Away From Me, was released in 2004 around the time that other lady singers/songwriters such as Norah Jones (whose album Come Away With Me inspired McKay's title) and Fiona Apple were getting a lot of ink.
But where Jones is mostly warm and fuzzy and Apple is petulant and humorless, McKay is whip smart and funny, with a musical style that uses the flashy arrangements of roadway musicals and the outsized theatrics of Gilbert & Sullivan in songs that are quite witty.
She sings, she curses, she (endearingly awkwardly) raps. She has been called a cross between Doris Day and Eminem, and her songs incorporate a wide range of musical styles, from hip-hop to Latin, jazz and others. Most of the time, it works.
Obligatory Villagers opens with Mother of Pearl, a bouncy shuffle with a tap solo whose opening lines are: ''Feminists don't have a sense of humor. Feminists just want to be alone (boohoo). Feminists spread vicious lies and rumor. They have a tumor on their funny bone.'' Elsewhere, on Galleon, which has a piano-driven disco beat, McKay sings about the dangers of being in the middle of a fight in a men's ensemble's dressing room.
The humor and sarcasm on her previous, much longer albums tended to wear a little thin by the end, but the economic nine-track Obligatory Villagers is a taut, funny slice of modern cabaret. Guests include Bob Dorough, who helped teach generations of kids (including me) about math, language and history via ABC's Schoolhouse Rock, a Saturday morning series of shorts.
Eventually, someone will commission McKay for a full Broadway comedy musical and it will probably be smarter and better written than any of the movie-adapted plays that have been all the rage in recent years.
For her Nighttown performance, McKay will perform with local musicians Roy King on drums and Marty Block on bass.
Malcolm X Abram can be reached at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3758.
OK, this one's kind of personal.
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