Paste

Also, in the interview, the editor, Josh Jackson says they try to make Paste a "magazine that doesn't objectify women, that doesn't glorify drug addiction, that tries to respect the artists it covers, and that writes about all of the grand themes of searching, of loneliness, of love, of darkness, of hope that popular music is often courageous enough to tackle."

One warning, as a previous reviewer has mentioned, reading Paste will cause you to spend some money, as you find hidden gems of artists and albums you hadn't heard before, and now really want to own! Amidst a sea of commercialism and crassness in music and entertainment magazines today, Paste is a weclome sign of how beauty, truth and artistry can still be celebrated and enjoyed in popular music.


Great writing about great music   June 6, 2004
Paul Wade (Gravesend, Kent, UK)
31 out of 33 found this review helpful

I bumped into paste magazine when browsing through Borders looking for something other than the usual pop-peddling tat found on the UK newsstands today. The cover (for issue 5) grabbed my attention - Joe Henry, Emmylou Harris, Guided By Voices - people already populating my music collection. Great, I thought, at last a magazine that fits my tastes. This should be a good read.

So I bought it, sat down with a large cup of joe & started reading. I couldn't put it down! As well, as the artists above, there were articles on people I'd never heard of; articles on people I'd always wanted to hear something by, but never gotten around to; and articles on artists that made me want to go out & buy their music there & then. The copy I picked up didn't have a sampler CD (someone had nabbed it from the inside before I got there!), but it made me want to read more by these guys.

I've since subscribed and find paste to provide wide-ranging content, not particularly genre-based (but if you were really into pigeonholing I'd probably say they covered Americana singer-songwriter artists most of all), and not always favourable. This is not a sycophantic bow to all things underground & trendy (as someone else mentioned, they know when to put a megastar on the cover), neither is it afraid to shout about music it loves from the proverbial rooftops. They've even gone so far as to set up their own label.

The sampler CD is a revelation as they cram it full of artists covered in that particular issue and as another reviewer wrote you will spend a lot of money trying to track down the individual CDs discussed within the magazine.

In short, this is great writing about great music, with no preconceived ideas about what great music is. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in music & culture today.


Three Stars for a Good Idea   June 21, 2004
24 out of 32 found this review helpful

It sounds good--"signs of life in music and culture"--but the writing is definitely not up to par. Yet. I've been a subscriber for the past year and though I've been disappointed overall, I have seen some improvement in the quality of the articles over the year, although not nearly enough to get me to re-subscribe. I found I was more interested in their book and movie reviews than their articles on music and musicians. The latter tend to be short sugary praise columns on mostly very young and very white pop bands who are apparently popular on college campuses. The feature writing lacks soul (as do the CDs) and is about as profound as the average Amazon customer review, which we can get free! They try to cover too much in each issue and end up covering nothing really.

Having been a fan of much older music all my life (My parents' stopped buying records around 1978 but they had a little bit of everything--Gospel, blues, folk, rock...), I thought Paste might point me to some good music by my own generation. Alas. I've been consistently disappointed by the sampler CDs, usually finding that the only tracks worth revisiting are the ones by old vets such as June Carter Cash and The Subdudes. Most don't live up to the hype in my opinion. For instance, the blurb introducing "Melancholy Polly" by Allison Moorer on the latest sampler: "...Contains some fantastic, heartbreaking lines like, 'She is not a starlet with a red guitar / Just an easy target for a broken heart.'" Huh? Somehow I completely missed the "fantastic, heartbreaking" part when I listened to the song. Maybe I've been spoiled for too long by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, but if the likes of Moorer, Ben Kweller, Five for Fighting, Howie Day and many others are any indication, we're in for a long dry spell in the world of popular music. There are some real "signs of life" here and there (Jolie Holland! And they did a rather good feature on Robert Randolph recently), but Paste isn't very good at sifting the grain from the, well, you know. Like I said, they've shown signs of improvement so far and there's no reason why they shouldn't continue to get better. Could be that they're just young and there's nothing wrong with that--gotta start somewhere.


Thank-you Paste for respecting my intelligence and taste   August 25, 2004
MovedbyMusic
23 out of 25 found this review helpful

"Paste" does not make a big deal out of music genres at all and I love that they choose to discuss great music no matter what the "category".

The other aspect of this mag I really love besides the focus on the music is that it does not get into the "fashion" the incessant foul language or the drug references that seem to have overtaken other music mags (as IF popular music HAS to go hand-in-hand with bad habits.)

The in-depth look at Indie artists as well as signed, distributed music is well-balanced and thought-provoking. I found some great new listens reading through and checking out their articles.

I think if you're really into the music and the inspirations behind music this is the subscription for you - it sure is for me.

Get an issue with the sampler CD - it'll blow you away.