clap clap blog: we have moved


Monday, November 10, 2003
Got kind of excited at the outset of this--a music magazine for adults! Maybe it'll be interested in the kind of things I am! Oh, but then it descends like a slide whistle into the basement of dumbness:

Mr. Light and Mr. Rollins are out to prove that music does not begin and end with Beyoncé and downloading.

The first issue features durable, adult-friendly performers like Sting, Ryan Adams and Robert Plant in a pure music format, one that avoids the broader pop culture sensibilities of more established magazines like Rolling Stone, owned by Wenner Media, and Vibe, owned by Vibe/Spin Ventures. Tracks pays little heed to of-the-moment bands like The Rapture and Killing Joke that are a staple of Spin. And it has none of the cheeky attitude of Blender, a more recent arrival from Dennis Publishing USA, or the teenage sensibility MTV's recently christened magazine.


I can understand that this makes good business sense, but c'mon, guys, do we have to be this middlebrow? Not that there's anything wrong with covering Norah Jones, but surely there are a few other people you could slip in there that aren't getting reviewed already in Newsweek, know what I mean? Ah well...