Taking One For the (Street) Team

I subscribe to Magnet magazine. It's subtitle is "real music alternatives." See that clever use of alternative? They're not coming right out and saying it's a magazine solely devoted to Alternative Music because that's so 1994 but it's there and you and I both get the hint. It's a pretty lame magazine in a lot of ways. The cover photos are always, ALWAYS, horrendous and ugly. They are often super close ups of people who are already a bit odd looking and they use terrible lighting and show off every pockmark and pore and we often have to flip them over so as not to scare the children. The non-feature articles are rarely more than one page advertisements for bands with no real journalism or insight, simply positive platitudes that are guaranteed to offend no one. They do have a nice sense of rock history, especially the dusty corners of college rock and post punk ,and oftentimes have interesting essays on various genre chronologies or overviews of a specific band's entire career. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have Magnet magazine. But hands down the worst thing about it is the sampler cd that accompanies each issue. Unlike Q or Mojo or any of those other overpriced journals that come packaged with a cd, the Magnet sampler's ties to the current magazine are tenuous at best. Most of the bands on the thing aren't even mentioned in the entire issue and 90% of them you've never heard of in your life. Nor should you have because they almost always suck royal eggs. Who are these people and why is anybody allowing them to make music? It's truly a shockingly bad listen every single time. I haven't made it through one from start to finish in years but tonight I will, no skipping, no fast forwarding. I submit myself to this torture to test my own fortitude and to document each step of the journey as I investigate the utter worthlessness of the Magnet sampler cd.

Volume 48 - Before I even start it I peruse the song list to see who may look even the slightest bit familiar to me. Of the 19 bands featured on this masterpiece, I have only heard of one. One of the groups is named after a Cure song and the rest are no more promising.

1. Fiskum "Tom Waits' Bar and Grill" - Oh what misery this title foretells. Dan Fogelberg meets the Crash Test Dummies while digging through James Taylor's trashbin. Thanks Melodypig Records for kicking it off with a strangled whimper of a song. Next!
2. Racetrack Babies "The Messenger" - Like American Analog Set's "The Postman" but without anything even remotely approaching a melody line or a beating heart. Soulless rock written by the corpses of beer ad session musicians.
3. The Alphabetical Order "Constant State" - 4th generation Sunny Day Real Estate ripoffs who seem equally influenced by the last Matchbox 20 album. Who let them in the studio?
4. Jeremy Larson "A Neutral Conclusion" - Heavy synth action gives way to programmed beats and pounded piano chords. It's not my cup of tea but it's the first song on this sampler that doesn't make me want to weep for the future of music.
5. When Thunder Comes "Calm Before the Storm" - I hope you like the wah-wah pedal because When Thunder Comes loves it. A lot. Seriously, it's like the second coming of Swervedriver.
6. Rooney "I Should've Been After You" - Hey, I know this band! They have some great pop songs on their first album and some great haircuts. This somehow reminds me of Journey, which isn't a terrible thing, but it is a bit unexpected. There's some serious Styx influence here as well. Handclaps, harmonies and 70s keyboards will always put a smile on my face.
7. Crack the Sky featuring John Palumbo "Safety in Numbers" - I was going to skip this one but then I saw it features John Palumbo and didn't dare. All the John Palumbo fans in the audience say "Aye!"
8. The Trolleyvox "I Call on You" - Are we really out of good band name options? Because this band was obviously forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel for this one. Boy that guitarist likes to wank around whether the vocalist is singing or not. Someone reign him in for the love of Pete.
9. One for Jude "Et Moi" - I'm surprised this is actually in French. I'm not surprised that it's pretty dreadful since it is a song on the Magnet sampler and all.
10. Vulture Whale "Baby in the Oven" - OK, we may be officially out of band names at this point. The song title is super-awesome however and I'm going to give this one an actual listen. Too bad the tune is back-breakingly awful although pleasantly short.
11. Mist and Mast "Turn Into the Turn" - It seems everyone has a record label these days, even the Oakland Petting Zoo who today bring us this strangely non-sucky Pinback-lite piece. These guys must be the ones who make sure the goats don't eat anyone's pants or mount any of the smaller children.
12. John Parkes "Second Golden Age of Protest" - Hard hitting political righteousness. Turn off your CNN and turn on some John Parkes. (That phrase is yours if you want it, Mr. Parkes, for a small fee).
13. Anton Sword "Maybe It's Begun" - I've stopped paying attention by this point. It's one giant melting marshmallow of bland. The kind of sampler you'd expect to find packaged in a loaf of Wonder Bread or box of Velveeta.
14. Hoax Funeral "Melting (Into Corners)" - Don't let the faux-poetic title fool you. These goofs have nothing to say. Kristen Hersh with less crazy and more embarrassing lyrics. I don't mean to keep comparing everyone to other, better bands but it's easy shorthand to describe songs you will never hear in your lifetime and it's probably more interesting than simply writing "another slab of crap" for each track.
15. Racoon (sic) "Laugh About It" - How many singer-songwriters with an acoustic guitar and a heart full of song are there in this country? And how many people actually seek out this sort of music? At this point, it seems like we must be at a 1:1 musician-to-fan ratio. Can't someone put a cap on this outpouring of emotion and stop the madness before the coffee shops are supersaturated with these jokers?
16. Charlotte Sometimes "How I Could Just Kill a Man" - I assure you, this sounds absolutely nothing like you'd predict from the band name/song title combo. It's basically MOR dancepop that you'd hear on your local mix station and not at all the Cure-influenced mope rock or hardcore hip hop I was expecting. This band is on Geffen. How is that possible?
17. Giancarlo Vulcano "3x3, No. 2" - Madagascarish guitar instrumental? Why not? The Magnet sampler likes to keep it fresh.
18. Palumbo "Hey, Mr. President" - No shit, this song is sung by a child and contains brilliant lines like "Hey, Mr. President/Where are you eating tonight?/Are you hungry like us?/Little people on the outside" and "Jesus and Mary are watching you/From their window in the big sky?Wondering what you're gonna do" and my favorite, "We're the dogs of Dog City."
19. Konrad "Shapeshifting Marathons" - It's always nice to end a cd with out of tune singing.

One of the best things about these compilations is their total disregard to listenability. Songs are put in a random order so that wildly disparate tunes rub up against each other and awkward juxtapositions are the norm. They don't flow at all nor do they have a strong leadoff track or appropriate last track. They throw all the shit in a blender, pour it out and send it to their subscribers every other month. If they so obviously don't give a damn about the sampler, why should I? I guess the money they get from the labels to feature these songs keeps the subscription price down but it hardly seems worth it to end up clogging landfills with such terrible sounds. This may have been the worst one yet. I would say worst ever but I have confidence that they'll one up themselves next time around but I can assure you, I won't make this same mistake again. It has been a truly painful evening leaving me with the same hateful feeling towards music that I get when searching through the $3 cd bin at a used record store. Who are these people and why are they compelled to make music? Congratulations, Magnet sampler. You've done it again.