Gawker
In the March issue of Maxim, writer David Peisner reviews the new Black Crowes album, "Warpaint." The verdict: Ehhh. Two and a half stars, out of five. The problem: Maxim didn't listen to the album. Their review, it turns out, was an "educated guess." Um, what? The full story, including the faux-review and the band's outraged response, below.
The Black Crowes' label didn't make advance copies of the album available for review, so they were surprised when they saw Maxim's turn up. The writer couldn't have heard more than one song off the album, the label says. When they contacted the magazine, they say an editor emailed them:
'Of course, we always prefer to (sic) hearing music, but sometimes there are big albums that we don't want to ignore that aren't available to hear, which is what happened with the Crowes. It's either an educated guess preview or no coverage at all, so in this case we chose the former.'"
Yea, that's just not right. If you want to tell the Black Crowes they suck, at least listen to the album first, so you can be specific. Imagine a critic handing you this review without having heard your record:
The response from the band:
Then again—now, a lot more people are reading that negative review. There's two sides to the PR coin! The band better hope that its full album is strong enough to make Maxim look foolish.
Comments
let's not forget, it is the black crowes.
That's amazing!
Can you imagine if this was a Blackberry phone commercial?:
+ Watch video
It's going to take a lot less than this to make Maxim look foolish.
As someone who gets all his music recommendations from Maxim, I'm appalled.
So I guess it's ok for me to assume Maxim is a sucky magazine without ever having read it. Thanks Maxim!
Ridiculous, but on the other hand it's no worse than me reviewing Maxim without reading it.
Maxim early years: C+
Maxim in 2008: D
The upcoming Flying Burrito Brothers album, on the other hand, is said to be aces.
The Black Crowes just misunderstood. They got two and a half CIRCLES, not two and a half stars.
Circles are worth like...1.7 stars at LEAST. So really it was a pretty good review.
You know what place is really fucking lame and boring? Atlantis.
Plus, (and, obviously) not even fans can tell one of the Crowes' hippified-blues-jam triple albums from another, so who fucking cares?
Chris Robinson is just mad because Vince Vaughn stole Gretchen Mol from him, or whatever.
As many women can tell you, one needn't have sex with me to surmise that it will be an awkward, brief and unsatisfying experience.
PS: Unicorns are assholes.
who's naïve now? as if there aren't already tons of reviews of concerts that critics didn't attend, or books they didn't read. usually noone calls them on it.
Way to email it in Maxim.
@Sarcastro: I hear Moby Grape has some groundbreaking stuff coming up too.
I used to make pocket money recommending art shows for a website that I'm too embarrassed to name (even though I believe it doesn't exist anymore). Since they paid so little, I set myself two rules: don't bother going to see the show, and don't spend more than half an hour writing the recommendations.
This is all to say that I fully agree with Maxim's review. And furthermore, I think their next album is even worse!
This is exactly what Maxim does with ladies. They review them without actually fucking them. It's the new new journalism!
I attribute this total lapse in journalistic integrity to Kent Brownridge. He never cared about music all those years at Rolling Stone. While still the big baddie in charge there he said "Rolling Stone is not a music magazine." Well...he was right but still.
To be fair, predicting that the new Black Crowes album will suck is like saying "When the bullet enters your body, you will feel intense pain." Somethings are just assumed. Also, Maxim readers don't know how to read, so the Black Crowes have nothing to worry about.
The runour is, Quicksilver Messenger are going to rock your socks.
You're kidding right, this is Maxim, the more "Wordy" version of Stuff. As if there is any integrity within thse pages here. Just face the music get Playboy. Actually PB has better ediotrial content, esp interviews.
Another rag for immature male masses with the attention span of a flea. :P
@Steverino: It's sad, because in its early-early years (we're talking the original British version and the earliest American version), Maxim was probably a solid B to B+ magazine. The writing was hilarious at times, if a bit juvenile.
Over time, the quality of the writing dropped off completely, the stories became repetitive, the photo shoots blended into one another, and the magazine became more or less interchangeable with FHM, Stuff, and all the other shitty lad mags flooding the market. At some point I even noticed that whole-cloth stories, jokes, pictorials, and letters to the editor that had originally run in Maxim were being re-run in Stuff a couple months later, or vice versa. That was the final straw for me.
I haven't read one of these mags in years, but every time I've leafed through one, I can feel my brain cells taking up arms and preparing to stage a violent coup.
Listening to the Black Crowes, and reading Maxim. Two things I won't be doing this month!
@unutterable: You want mailing it in? Wait until you see the column my old newspaper asked me to write.
@Sarcastro: I give your column, wherever it will be, 3 1/2 stars. Highly recommended.
Blah blah outrage and all that, but seriously: who here doesn't feel fully qualified to write a full review right now for all of the films Jessica Simpson will ever make?
Also, this whole incident is, for me, kind of a hilarious flashback to the heady days of editing my high school newspaper. We used to review full movies based on the previews, review albums based on cursory snippets of one or two tracks, and invent fictional people to "interview" for various stories. It was kind of awesome, actually. Good to know that real-world journalism works the same way!
That guy should be fired BTW.
*phone rings*
"hello?"
"oh, yeh, sorry. we ran an educated guess"
"hmm, yeah. I know, we quoted him."
"Oh, you mean he wasn't at the Carolina Herrera show?"
"Wait, wot? Wot do you mean Freddie Mercury is dead?"
The commenters posts on this are all solidly mediocre, bordering on unreadable.
I know that without having read any of them, by the way. Because I can't read.
I have neither read Maxim nor heard an entire Black Crowes album, therefore I am outraged by this scandal.
Reading Maxim for music reviews is like reading TONY for dating advice.
Ooooops!
Perhaps the review was too kind...
...and if you ladies like grizzled, boozy and competent, I'm available on Saturday night.
@Monkey_Butter: Do you mean "idiotrial"?
Has Old Media hired Mark fucking Penn to help them beat New Media or what?
This is worse than commenting on posts you haven't read (which I'd never do).
@TheHonJudgeSmails: Well put.
@Clarence Rosario: Niiiiice.
wait the same magazine that has a completely fabricated "image" of Britney Spears on its current cover? No way.
I've been getting Maxim for free for the past three years. I've moved three times and it keeps following me. I usually just use it to let me know when certain cds are about to come out. that's about it.
Black Crowes notwithstanding, it is a shitty thing for "journalists" to do. I don't blame the band for getting their trousers in a twist.
And "Remedy" is a kick-ass song.
How can the Black Crowes criticize Maxim without reading the whole magazine?
@She Blinded Me With Omniscience: My favorite is commenting on articles without reading the other comments first. It's especially awesome when I realize that, like, ten other people have made the same joke I have about a given topic, and usually much better.
@EastEndguy: (every single issue)
Isn't Maxim thisclose to being grizzled itself?
@Furious George: That's why I'm fastidious about reading the comments before adding mine. I even did this during the legendarily long Foxymorons thread (which is so beyond anal-retentive that the ghost of Sigmund Freud is weeping).
I learned in seventh grade that I usually got a better grade on a book report if I hadn't read the book. I think one of my classmates works for Maxim.
@Furious George: Yeah, I've been known to do a find for certain keywords before I hit submit for just that reason.
@famousauthor: Cliffs Notes got me my 3.5 high school GPA.
I missed that review. Must've run in the middle of Maxim's monthly "Jessica Biel is the Hottiest of Hotties" pictorial, those pages are always stuck together.
Need to talk to the mailman...
@famousauthor: I got an A on a paper I wrote about Wuthering Heights, which is the one book I never actually bothered to read in high school. My average grade on papers for the books I bothered to read: B+.
@Band Meeting: BTW, Wuthering Heights fucking sucks, and if you can manage to actually read the whole thing, it's because you're some sort of lame-ass nerd.
The Black Crowes really went downhill after Chris Robinson died in that motorcycle accident in 2009.
@EastEndguy: I haven't read it, but my educated guess is: Table of Contents, Bad Jokes, Dumb Letters, Bunch of Expensive Crap You Should Buy, Ads for Other Expensive Crap, Bland Feature about somethign Macho, Sexy Photo Spread of Celebrity, Amateur Photo Spread, Ads for clothing, Feature on clothing, ads for clothing, Gizmos, cigar ad, failed humor article, done.
@Band Meeting: Agreed. But the Glass Menagerie I think takes the prize for being a steaming pile of pretentious bullshit.
Isn't Maxim just Men's Health with more bikini pics and cologne ads?
I doubt we would've even heard about this had they given them 5 stars.
Wuthering Heights sucks? No effin' way. Here's a sample, and f&*^ing stellar quote.
"The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails, and I grind with greater ferocity in direct proportion to the increase in pain."
There's more greatness where that comes from folks. Do yourselves a favor and read this book!
@RedHotAries: Touche. I never even thought of that.
@Hiphopopotamus: Well done, akin to when someone whose observations shine brightly in the wilderness described the genre of grunge as "quiet thing, loud thing, quiet thing, loud thing, big crashing ending."