Tuesday, Mar. 19, 2002 - 2:57 p.m.
Went downtown to deposit some pay checks and headed to the record stores in search of Ride's "Going Blank Again" or at least the "Twisterella" CDEP. Heck, I might have even purchased "Carnival of Light" if somebody had it in stock. I finally found it on CD at Schoolkids Records, but it was on import and $18. But wait! It's also got The tracks from the "Twisterella" and "Leave Them All Behind" EPs! So I bought it. This way I won't ever be tempted to go out and drop another 8 bucks because I want to hear "Stampede".
This sudden urge to buy Ride albums probably has something to do with the feature on shoegazer music in the most recent issue of Magnet. The article wasn't particularly good. They attempted to tell the stories of all the core bands of the genre, but ended up not really saying anything about any of them. Furthermore, there's a whole lot of reliance on cultural constructs that didn't really exist. For instance, the advent of Britpop is blamed for the decline of shoegazer's popularity, yet many of Britpops main offenders were active throughout shoegazer's heyday, or members of shoegazer bands themselves. In fact, the most underrated britpop album in existence is probably Ride's "Tarantula", which was released posthumously with absolutely no promotion.
The article goes on to make the claim that shoegazer bands never became huge in America because of the success of Grunge. This is just absurd. Who in their right mind would actually beleive that mainstream middle American teens would be cruising down main street on their way to the big football game blasting My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive instead of Nirvana and Soundgarden? It would have been great, but it never could have happened.
Enough railing against the Magnet article. I still feel that it's the best music magazine on the market. If only they could get their publishing schedule up to 12 issues a year. At least their not publishing crap like Spin's last issue, where they dedicated half of the magaine to the "Spin Top 40". For those that didn't see this, it was a series of pictures and blurbs telling us information that any regular reader of the magazine would already know. Jay Z? Never heard of him. Creed? The Strokes? Argh.
I also picked up Billy Bragg and the Blokes' "England, Half English". It has a lot of Algerian folk influences in it.
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