RS 1000

Like pretty much every college-educated male of the last 35 years, I went through a period where I replaced my Mad Magazine obsession with Rolling Stone. For me it was in the days when 9 outta 12 covers were Annie Liebowitz photos and they wrote about music that mattered to me. That period didn't last long - three or four years I guess - until RS was replaced by New Music Express, then CMJ and eventually various publications like Paste and Harp. Even when I was reading it, I thought Jann Wenner was a useless blowhard, but writers like Greil Marcus and Timothy White made it worth reading.

In the years since then, the magazine was clearly moving further and further away from music that I like, until it seemed that the only people still writing for them only like the music that was covered in the first 10 issues.

So imagine my surprise when I was in the newstand at Midway a few weeks ago while flying home and picked up issue number 999. It was actually pretty good - bashing Bush (yeah, I know they're a little late to that game but better late than never), other good articles, reviews of people that I'm actually interested in - very unexpected. So J pointed out number 1000 this week as we were heading back to Chapel Hill and while it's as self-aggrandizing as one would expect for a self-tribute, it still has some pretty good stuff in it. Two good issues in a row doesn't necessarily reverse the trend of wretchedness from the late 90s, but it's a start.