Dr. Frank's What's-it

The attention is a little weird (though deserved). I mean, it's strange for me, I can't imagine how you feel. See, I've been reading your blog for a couple of years and I've been buying your CD's and all. So this media rush makes me feel like someone I know just got famous. Except you already were kind of famous. And also I don't know you at all. But still.

And I finished the book. How sad was my life that Tom and Sam were still way more cool than I ever was. Gah.

If you want to get your band in AP, you've got to sound like Fall Out Boy ... so it's kinda surprising that they don't do young-adult book reviews.

Well Frank what can I tell you? These magazines are just fucking wrong...maybe Rolling Stone was something back in the day but I'm too young to remember the context of the times.

And if Spin wasn't so hell bent on the "Pavement" sound then why did they ever have Green Day, Rancid and the Ramones on its cover? These editors have their heads up their asses instead of buried in the sand.

This attention IS weird. But very cool. We're rootin' for you!

One united unity, united for the people of tomorrow!

I've always heard that persistence pays off, but just didn't realize that sometimes you have to change directions in order for it to (pay off). Nice Churchill quote btw...

::Well Frank what can I tell you? These magazines are just fucking wrong...maybe Rolling Stone was something back in the day but I'm too young to remember the context of the times.::

Well, I'm not too young to remember "back in the day," and in fact I remember distinctly the day in 1967 my roommate came home with the very first issue of Rolling Stone. Trust me, it was clueless from the start, and never ever was it "something."

The Political Economy of Rolling Stone and Spin

Pop music is in large part about identity associated with the music. Were it not, people would be more likely to buy great music from the thirties as new music. They aren't.

Of course, the associations people make with each individual piece of music are subject to a person's own bias and interpretation. That is why you see heterozygous, although not completely random, associations of musical preferences among different individuals. One CD from a person's case has some but not complete predictive power when it comes to identifying what else will be in the persons case. I have both Pavement and MTX myself. However, if you were to compile a large set of the musical preferences you would be able to note general "species" of music. That is large groups of music that seem to "inbreed" via their associations. Pavement and MTX would most likely be an example of "outbreeding".

Although there is outbreeding, associations are likely non-random enough to create non-arbitrary distinctions between "in" and "out" association. You could organize this information into species, genus, families of music likely continuing to make non-arbitrary associations. This is important in determining the nature of product differentiation in the market for cultural identity.

The other important factor is the level of competitiveness in the market. The expense of entry into the music magazine market as well as RS and Spins's ability to advertize and to present their selves as important by having interviews and exclusives with major celebrities, gives them substantial market power. The also have to compete with the continually growing internet music/indentity peddling publishing industry as well as "zine" publishing which is itself declining in entry costs thanks to Xerox, Kinkos, Microsoft Paint/Photo, etc.. Like all brands they have two competing incentives. First, generalize to incorporate the largest population of consumers. Second, differentiate to draw increase market power such that prices are not competed down to marginal cost. The nature of the market will determine the equilibrium level of differentiation with more competition leading to more differentiation.

To use my analogy, RS uses its market power to cover and entire family of music. SPIN covers more of a specific genus, while the more competitive online and Zine publications (more competitive due to low or non-existent entry costs) focus on species-specific music/identities.

The sad thing is, “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” is part of a family that, while not necessarily on the verge of extinction, has settled into an equilibrium population smaller than many of the species covered by many of the smaller publications. One can only hope that a small mutation or perhaps a shift in the general equilibrium conditions of the music world will allow its descendants to thrive.

hey, i love the book.

in other news did you quit/get fired from the suicide girls gig? because that place has started to suck for music news lately. they called rancid pop-punk???

Well, what can I say? For me, this is a very heady topic. I have been working with these magazines for 10 years, and I am married to an editor of SPIN. So, I am biased, but no more biased, really, than anyone else with each our own stakes in what's cool and what deserves attention. A magazine, like everything else, is far more complicated and quixotic and dependent on the individuals involved than it may appear from the outside. There isn't really ever a hegemonic dictum being mindlessly carried out. But there are these strange consensuses which form among the groups of people who run these magazines. The problem for Lookout and for Frank is really Nirvana. Two bands broke through from the US underground to become huge million selling beasts in the 90s and change pop music forever. They both sold around 15 million albums. One was Nirvana / Nervermind and the other was Green Day / Dookie. Nirvana, with their drug induced art school lyrics and musical nods to all that is heavy and "rock" were seen as substantial. Green Day, with their nose-picking, album named after doo doo and generally clownish attitude, were not. And so began the critical pop punk ghetto which none of us have ever been able to climb out of. If Op IV had broken, instead of Green Day, with their politics and their world music influences, it would be a very different world today for all of us affliliated with Lookout. We would be the ultimate arbiters of American punk. But instead, everyone touched by the NW, from Bikini Kill, to Death Cab for Cutie, to the Foo Fighters, carries the Nirvana torch, and Bay Area pop punk has been forever written off as trite, childish, and silly. You all can sit around and gripe about what Rolling Stone, SPIN, Blender and AP cover, but none of you sound like you actually read any of them in anything remotely resembling a regular way. I do. It's my job, and my husband's job. And believe me, they are 4 very different magazines with different mentalities. And their failure to cover MTX is the leftover dookie that got smeared all over them by the brush of Billie Joe.

p.s. - Several years ago, I went to the EMP museum in Seattle, the "Experience Music Project" museum. They had a huge, awesome full floor display of artifacts from American punk from all regions, Minneapolis, DC, So Cal. They had a giant SF punk area. They did not have one thing, not a single item, which made any reference to East Bay pop punk or Lookout. I emailed the curator and asked him about it. He said "I hate pop punk."

I consider myself part of the Yummy yummy yummy nation. I received King Dork last friday and I felt a shiver through my backspin when I readed about one of my favourite songs ever: My baby loves lovin'!!! I'm loving the book, I can't wait to be out of work to finish it tonight.

and as far as Fallout Boy goes.... they've been on the covers of Spin, Rolling Stone, AP and EW -they would have been on the cover of Blender if they were naked girls. Their single, "Sugar, I'm Goin' Down" is the catchiest pop single of the last year. I listen to it every morning on my way to work. I love it. So where does that put them on the Yummy Yummy Yummy continuum?

Are you sure about AP ignoring MTX, Dr Frank? Well, you'd probably know better than I would, but I first "discovered" MTX after reading a review of "Love Is Dead" in a magazine back in 1996, and I could have sworn the magazine was AP (I haven't picked up a copy of the magazine in years). Then again, maybe I'm wrong, but I can be positive it was a national magazine, rather than a Bay Area or California-centric publication, since I'm out here in the midwest. But anyway, that doesn't really change your point, which is reassuring to anyone who ever — with all the good will and earnestness in the world — put on a Pavement CD and found themselves wondering "now WHY am I supposed to like these guys?"

Unfortunately, I've had a subscription to Spin for many years now. Thank God it expires in July. I even had a subscription to Rolling Stone, but that ran out many years ago. So I guess that would classify me as a "regular reader" of these "fine" magazines. It was perfect for me when I listened to whatever "the mainstream" listened to, but as I got older (and wiser) I realized that the music these magazines covered was being force fed to me, and I was just too full from an MTX pizza with a side of Lookout fries. Fall Out Boy will never, EVER make a song as good (or as memorable) as "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" - most of their appeal is based on the fact that their bass player's Sidekick got hacked only to expose the Internet to his vain nudie pics. The point: it takes awhile for people to catch on the the good stuff, it just goes to show who has better taste. We're all happy for Frank that some recognition for his talent finally knocked on his door, even though recognition tends to be fashionably late. And I don't even sleep with an editor of Spin to figure that gem of info out.

Spin sucks. So does Rolling Stone. Yawn. Bring on the nose picking and doo doo.

I remember being semi-surprised in the public library one day in 1996 when I saw a full page devoted to the The Queers in Rolling Stone (a few years later - maybe 1999 - Screeching Weasel got some ink for "Thank you very...") (and the Groovie Ghoulies got an album review that year for "Fun in the Dark").

But at the time of the Queers article, I thought that it was kind of strange that in that full page article, neither Lookout nor Larry were mentioned at all.

Hey Beth, Fuck you.

I informed the Alternative Press editor of this blog in what I guess was a not so nice manner and his response was for me and Dr. Frank to eat his shit.

Oh well, I've given up on Hawthorne Chemcial Boy Press magazine a long time ago.

"Hey Beth, Fuck you."
Posted by Tristin Laughter at May 4, 2006 01:01 AM

If this is how you "work" with magazines I'm guessing you're buying your antacids with food stamps.

Count me as a member of the YYYN! Those K & K Buddha Bubblegum records are fucking brilliant.

When I was a young single horndog, nothing worked better at winning over hot young nerd girls than a mix tape of vintage bubblegum! Kasenatz & Katz got me laid on more than one occasion!

Wow, I have to admit this whole conversation has me a little boggled, both the original post and the responses. Between the perception-reality gap of what people seem to think music rags are covering vs. what they actually cover, and the skewering of Fall Out Boy (by what are nominally a bunch of pro pop-punk/Lookout!/MTXers), I've got to wonder...

I assumed character of Little Big Tom was meant as a shot at Franks' parents' generation, but apparently he's captured his own generation quite nicely too.