Given a choice between the two “major” US music magazines, I would go with Spin over Rolling Stone any day. Both are probably dying since neither are as (physically and subscription-wise) large as they used to be.
Recently I wasted five minutes perusing RS at Waterloo Records to see how their political reporting was over the enemies of stopping Climate Change (meaning, people who want to maintain the status quo). I was more surprised to see the ol’ hippie rag reduced to the same form factor as Time or Newsweek.
My guess is that this move by Spin to have its archives online could be a pre-emptive move in light of the upcoming iPad hitting the streets in early April.
When I saw the announcement via The Onion‘s AV Club, I quickly rushed to see if they started from the beginning (as the link does) because I had so many great memories of Spin‘s beginnings. I managed to score the first issue during our long weekend in Montana of all places. Then I was a big collecting nerd trying to be a completist. I quickly fell short in several months due to my lack of income more than being in a remote location (North Dakota). Either way, Spin was an eye-opening experience for me at 16. The upstart magazine covered “obscure” acts RS didn’t have any interest in; it would’ve taken up valuable pages on their worship of has-beens Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan. In its early years, Spin let Henry Rollins have a column, there was a knock-off of Siskel & Ebert watching MTV when music videos still got played and they reviewed some records which are now a part of my collection RS skipped or really hated; how often I laugh at their prediction on Huey Lewis & the News’ Sports and Tear For Fears’ Songs from the Big Chair.
That first issue featured Madonna, who remains boring, but I sat in the car on the ride back from Montana, pouring over the other pages about U2’s love of Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry (of Roxy Music), Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Fela Kuti, what CDs were like and this weird trio called Bronski Beat. Looking over it now online, I’m laughing on how I probably overlooked the pieces about the Replacements, Joe Bob Briggs’ piece on the worst 10 movies of 1984 and snippets over other up-and-comers, yet I think the BoDeans couldn’t get arrested after 1989.
The ads are pretty funny too. The hair, the clothes and who used to be on top of the heap (Hall & Oates!). My personal favorite was the plug for cleaning solution to use on vinyl and record players.