I’ve been reading Entertainment Weekly for years and years. I think I subscribed back in like 1993 or so. And I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with it. I’ve canceled my subscription on a number of occasions, mostly because I believed that it didn’t cover enough of the indie stuff I enjoyed (which is still largely true). But then I’d see an issue and realize that it is a fun magazine to flip through, so I’d re-subscribe.
Over the years, EW has morphed more and more. And each change to the magazine makes me like it less. And now in its current iteration, which happened about a year ago, I feel that they have removed all pretense to being a “smart” publication. Although, at least they stopped including the bold line of text which presumably highlighted the best line of a review. Evidently they thought we couldn’t 
read the entire half-a-column-length of an article. But they removed that, and it’s back to simple reviews.
I’ve always been sort of iffy about their rating system (A through F). It’s a simple guide, so it’s easy to see quickly whether they liked it or not, but as in school, it seems hard to pinpoint exactly what the difference is between say an A- and a B+. But hey, that’s their thing, so it’s okay.
And as a sort of all-purpose guide to entertainment, it’s pretty useful.
The new design has largely changed the order of things in the magazine. And so The Must List which used to be a small thing in the middle now opens the magazine as a full page extravaganza (highlighting in a nutshell what is wrong with this latest incarnation of the magazine–something that used to fill up a page at most is now a two page spread with bigger pictures!) (more…)
Radar Magazine
A few years ago I was visiting my friend Roman. He asked me if I read 
I began my 
SOUNDTRACK–THE REPLACEMENTS–All Shook Down (1990).
And here we come to the end of the recorded history of the Replacements. 7 albums (and an EP). 4 and a half hours of recorded music. And a steady maturation from drunken punks to elder statesmen. Or really statesman (Paul Westerberg at the ripe old age of 31!). All of the reviews state that this was originally designed as a Westerberg solo album, and that the band barely played together on it at all. And it shows.
I don’t recall why I started getting 
SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell (2003).
This was the second EP that came from the Yoshimi disc. This disc contains four original tracks and three remixes.
SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2003).
How do you follow up the fantastic Soft Bulletin? If you’re The Flaming Lips, you simultaneously pull back and push forward. I often thing of Yoshimi as Bulletin part 2 but that’s really not right or fair. Yoshimi has a more Pink Floyd vibe: it’s quite mellow and folky. But nothing the Lips do can be completely commercial, so you get things in every song that add immensely to the sound, yet prevent it from complete accessibility.
SOUNDTRACK: Hmmm….
SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-Race for the Prize (1999) & Waiting for a Superman’ (1999) singles.
When these singles were released, Zaireeka was out of print; these discs were the only way to get any of the tracks. So, each of these singles has two track from a Zaireeka disc as a B-side: “Riding to Work in the 
Year 2025 (Your Invisible Now)” & “Thirty Thousand Feet of Despair.” “Race for the Prize” (1 and 2) have the tracks from Zaireeka discs 1 and 2, and “Waitin’ for a Superman” (1 and 2) have the tracks from Zaireeka discs 3 and 4. The singles aren’t really worth hunting down at this point since Zaireeka is now available, but at the time, they were worth it.
I Just Read About That... 