I could say this is surprising, but I really gotta admit that I look at people who choose to read Maxim in virtually the same way that I look at people who were eagerly awaiting the release of The Fast and the Furious 2: Tokyo Drift.

Do people who aren't 12 and can legally view actual porn read Maxim?

Most other publications on Maxim's reading level come with a box of crayons, so I'm not surprised by this revelation.

Pocket Ninja: I could say this is surprising, but I really gotta admit that I look at people who choose to read Maxim in virtually the same way that I look at people who were eagerly awaiting the release of The Fast and the Furious 2 3: Tokyo Drift.

FTFY. You're forgetting the cinematic masterpiece that was 2 Fast 2 Furious

Pocket Ninja: I could say this is surprising, but I really gotta admit that I look at people who choose to read Maxim in virtually the same way that I look at people who were eagerly awaiting the release of The Fast and the Furious 2: Tokyo Drift.

With envy?

From TFA: "The blues-rock group, fronted Chris Robinson, has released only one song from the disc, "Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution."

That is amusing. It's not like they even heard a couple of songs, just the one.

Dark Mortainius: FTFY. You're forgetting the cinematic masterpiece that was 2 Fast 2 Furious

You're right. I did forget about that one. Thank you for correcting me.

Dark Mortainius: FTFY. You're forgetting the cinematic masterpiece that was 2 Fast 2 Furious

I've got it queued on repeat as we speak, right behind Highlander II: The Quickening.

Dark Mortainius: Pocket Ninja: I could say this is surprising, but I really gotta admit that I look at people who choose to read Maxim in virtually the same way that I look at people who were eagerly awaiting the release of The Fast and the Furious 2 3: Tokyo Drift.

FTFY. You're forgetting the cinematic masterpiece that was 2 Fast 2 Furious

Screw that. I'm 3 fast and at least 7 furious.

Maxim: our captions are so snarky! And your girlfriend likes to read me.

Nothing beats Rolling Stone's review of Black Sabbath's first album.

I just figure Maxim sucks without reading it.

Every month Maxim rates movies that are months away from the theater, and any kind of critic screening. It is ridiculous.

oryx: I just figure Maxim sucks without reading it.

Excellent point.

And the album rocks. Not that I downloaded it or anything.

Great, now every 14-year-old boy without an internet connection thinks the the Black Crowes new album is going to suck.

Do people take their reviews seriously? Their video game reviews are base preliminary box art. All of their reviews are so ridiculously early that it'[s impossible for them to have the review code. I'm pretty sure they've already reviewed Spore a year ago, when it was supposed to be out by now.

Rev. Skarekroe: Nothing beats Rolling Stone's review of Black Sabbath's first album.

Ok, I just read that and that is quite hilarious. Actually makes me want to look up the band Gun.

Speedofdarkness: Great, now every 14-year-old boy without an internet connection thinks the the Black Crowes new album is going to suck.

I have to admit that suckage is my supposition about the new Black Crowes album as well - based solely on the old albums.

Maxim = shiat

cameroncrazy1984:

Screw that. I'm 3 fast and at least 7 furious.

what kind of crazy ass looking dice are you using

ooh look at all the Atlantic, New Yorker and Economist readers in this thread! "Maxim sucks!11"

FTFA:
Maxim editorial director James Kaminsky responded Tuesday with this statement: "It is Maxim's editorial policy to assign star ratings only to those albums that have been heard in their entirety."

That paragraph just sh*ts comic gold.

The RS review of Sabbath's first album:

Mediocrity doesn't tutor greatness often-when it is influential at all, its progeny usually achieve even ranker nadirs. But in rock, one of whose founding principles is that glorious mistakes can open out into amazing new styles, anything can happen. Thus the Cream phenomenon, which is far from dead even now. Although they were essentially an egotistical group of lazy artisans who nullified their considerable talents by swallowing their own hype, raking in fistfulls of cash and flying by the unflattering light of day, they left a whole raft of studious imitators who are setting sail, visions of superstardom dancing in their heads, to this day.

Gun and Black Sabbath are two recent additions to the troops, both from England, and they well typify the paradoxes and possibilities inherent in serving time in such a school. This is Gun's second album, a distinct improvement over the first, but it still suffers by the familiarity of its derivation. The leads are always powerful, often overdubbed to escape the limitations of the trio format, sounding at times as if lead guitarist Adrian Curtis has taken several Clapton riffs and set them whirling around each other - compelling, but not quite new.

It's no accident that the best tracks are at least partially acoustic. "Oh, Lady You," for instance, is a tender ballad of extreme simplicity, rather like the Beatles' "Long Long Long." In another refreshing touch, the song is bounded by two short uptempo flamenco bridges that are just sanguinely appropriate.

But the real standout here is "Angeline," a sorrowful ballad with strings and some beautifully melancholy piano work that sounds like the cat had been listening hard to old masters like "Las Vegas Tango" on the great long-lost Individualism of Gil Evans album. The lyrics are especially poignant, handling the touchy subject of a "straight" individual combing the underground in an anguished search for the girl he loves: "Look at you/What a state you're in/What you been doing? / Where's that place you've been?" Not until the end of the song do you realize that the man is not a lover but the father of the girl he's seeking, pleading to another young runaway as if she were his own daughter. The theme could easily be used for a snide put-down of the old folks, but the maturity of the handling here reveals Gun to have musical invention and lyrical insight only beginning to emerge.

Over across the tracks in the industrial side of Cream country lie unskilled laborers like Black Sabbath, which was hyped as a rockin' ritual celebration of the Satanic mass or some such claptrap, something like England's answer to Coven. Well, they're not that bad, but that's about all the credit you can give them. The whole album is a shuck-despite the murky songtitles and some inane lyrics that sound like Vanilla Fudge paying doggerel tribute to Aleister Crowley, the album has nothing to do with spiritualism, the occult, or anything much except stiff recitations of Cream cliches that sound like the musicians learned them out of a book, grinding on and on with dogged persistence. Vocals are sparse, most of the album being filled with plodding bass lines over which the lead guitar dribbles wooden Claptonisms from the master's tiredest Cream days. They even have discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitized speedfreaks all over each other's musical perimeters yet never quite finding synch-just like Cream! But worse. (RS 66)

get2thachoppa

Did RS writers get paid for every Cream/Clapton reference back then?

/except for HST anyway

Rolling Stone. Written by frustrated, pretentious English majors for frustrated, pretentious English majors.

/dude should be shot for first sentence alone

Speaking of rolling stone reviewing black sabbath , I don't know if its the original from the 70's but I got this old music guide from RS from early 80 and they give all sabbath record terrible 1 or 1 and half star for all their albums

Their heads were and still is far up their arses

Let's not forget Rolling Stone's review of Led Zeppelin I (new window)

some excerpts...

Jimmy Page, around whom the Zeppelin revolves, is, admittedly, an extraordinarily proficient blues guitarist and explorer of his instrument's electronic capabilities. Unfortunately, he is also a very limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs, and the Zeppelin album suffers from his having both produced it and written most of it (alone or in combination with his accomplices in the group).

In their willingness to waste their considerable talent on unworthy material the Zeppelin has produced an album which is sadly reminiscent of Truth. Like the Beck group they are also perfectly willing to make themselves a two- (or, more accurately, one-a-half) man show. It would seem that, if they're to help fill the void created by the demise of Cream, they will have to find a producer (and editor) and some material worthy of their collective attention.

On one and a half man show. Yeah, that drummer... nothing special.

labman: From TFA: "The blues-rock group, fronted Chris Robinson, has released only one song from the disc, "Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution."

That is amusing. It's not like they even heard a couple of songs, just the one.

Based on the one song I've heard, I think their assumption of suckage is a good bet.

I wonder if there will be any remedy to this.

/thanks for coming!
/I'm here all week

jlawn001: I wonder if there will be any remedy to this.

/thanks for coming!
/I'm here all week

I'ts definitely going to be hard to handle, sometimes salvation is only after figuring out where the thorn in my pride is. It's a Miracle to Me that Maxim is still around, only time will tell if Maxim's Nonfiction will get better.

There's a bunch of Crowes and covers in that thar paragraph for my amusement.

Not that I bother reading someone else's opinion of music, but if they say that your album is crap...and they only listened to a few songs on it...what motivation does that give them to think any of the rest of your songs aren't going to be crap, also? Did you slip in a secretly good song that took longer than 45 minutes to write, compose, play, and record, and that's what your're banking on people to buy your crappy album?

fark that. Everyone has, at one time, bought albums that only had a few decent songs on them. Whining like a biatch about an article some stupid magazine reviewer only makes you look more like a biatch.

Make better albums or STFU if someone doesn't like it. Fans aren't going to dump you based on the words of some jackass, alone.

IHNTA, but . . . I met Chris Robinson at a Rush concert in Las Vegas. I was introduced by a lesbian couple. In retrospect, it seems a little surreal.

It's funny, when reading Maxim, I look at the pics and nothing else. When reading Playboy, I rarely bother with the pics and read the articles.

/I'm doing it wrong?

Sounds like the writer is angling for a job at the New York Times.

The famous rock critic R. Meltzer would frequently review albums (yeah those vinyl thingies) he had never even taken from the shrinkwrap.

Best one ever was entitled: "What a Goddamned Great Second Cream Album".

Of course if you read the article you knew it was fully of sarcastic-y goodness.

If it wasn't for these stories I wouldn't not that the Black Crowes had a new album coming out.

vernonFL: ooh look at all the Atlantic, New Yorker and Economist readers in this thread! "Maxim sucks!11"

Wow, someone obviously reads maxim, and a sore spot got hit when it was criticized.

Dude, really, have some self confidence. If you read it and like it, you don't need to react to what others say, have some farking back bone and ignore what others think of you.

/The lack of balls here is worse than that you read Maxim.

If you read rock reviews you're only hurting yourself.

El Chode: oryx: I just figure Maxim sucks without reading it.

Excellent point.

And the album rocks. Not that I downloaded it or anything.

Maxim should apologize for their shiatty magazine and from what I have heard the crows album sounds like the best album in a while.

Communication Breakdown:
On one and a half man show. Yeah, that drummer... nothing special.

...And he'd be correct. Not that I think you're biased or anything, given your username.
/"Hey guys, this song would sound great in 4/4"
//King Crimson would probably make your brain explode

I used to read Maxim when it first came out. It had short articles perfect for reading on the shiatter, good chick advice, and some good feature articles. Then I started seeing old articles from 3 or 4 years previous being re-printed to fill space because I guess they were too lazy/cheap to research new articles. Then they started selling hair color for guys and the advice for guys started reading like they wanted to turn guys into meterosexuals. It went from having an attitude simillar to "The Man Show" to being a Cosmopolitan for men.

It actually was a pretty good magazine at one time. But even when I enjoyed reading Maxim, I always thought their music reviews sucked. It seems their critics preferred dance music and the flavor of the week over rock and roll. This incident with the Black Crowes doesn't suprise me a bit.

get2thachoppa: The RS review of Sabbath's first album:

Wow, Rollingstone had an anti heavy metal bias even back when Black Sabbath invented it.

Explains a lot.

/ Journalistically Hit Parader and Circus were better rags than Rolling Stone anyway.
// Maxim also

Maxim apologizes for Black Crowes review.

And when do we get an apology from the Black Crowes for existing?

Reminds me of the Pitchfork review for Jet's second album: Link (new window)

Pocket Ninja: I could say this is surprising, but I really gotta admit that I look at people who choose to read Maxim in virtually the same way that I look at people who were eagerly awaiting the release of The Fast and the Furious 2: Tokyo Drift.

OMG IS IT OUT ALREADY??

Thanks for posting the sabbath review. This part was funny:

"...despite the murky songtitles and some inane lyrics that sound like Vanilla Fudge paying doggerel tribute to Aleister Crowley, the album has nothing to do with spiritualism, the occult, or anything much..."

And I almost got to agree on that.


/but oh the wondrous thunder that is Iommi

Okay, once again, here's the breakdown on the Black Crowes...

Dope smokers think that they're geniuses.
Drinkers think that they're okay.
People who do neither think that they suck.

Glad to help.

A lot of hate for a band that plays roots-based rock n roll and are talented musicians!

I knew I should've given up on the Crowes and embraced the fighters of foo, maybe put on some linkin park...groove to some nickelback!!

Yeah, trashy pop FTW!!!!1!!!!!

The Black Crowes are one of the few bands that have debuted in the last 20 years that matter. The rock and rolliest rock and roll band in the world, as they say.

The Crowes would rather read High Times anyway.

heavymetal: / Journalistically Hit Parader and Circus were better rags than Rolling Stone anyway.

Axl Rose disagrees?