“Paste” Knows Its Audience A Bit Too Well

Once again, we present Rock-Critically Correct, a feature in which the most recent issues of Rolling Stone, Blender, Vibe and Spin are given a once-over by an anonymous writer who’s contributed to several of those titles–or maybe even all of them! After the click-through, he switches things up a bit and gives the latest issue of Paste a once-over:

To varying degrees, it’s reasonable to ask of the magazines assessed regularly in this space, “Do they know who they’re talking to anymore? Don’t they all, despite investing in enough market research to choke a goat, seem a bit confused?”

Paste knows exactly who it is addressing. This would be a man–far less likely a woman–in his early 30s to early 40s. He favors sedate music in line with what you might call “rockist” verities, doesn’t have time to familiarize himself with rogue Russian download sites or BitTorrent but finds iTunes convenient enough, patronizes Starbucks and Whole Foods, listens to NPR during his commute and his workday, and watches Charlie Rose. (BTW: Your Correspondent has been told by someone who should know that a surefire method of selling records to “adults” is to have artists featured on the latter two outlets.) Which is to say: These readers really, really dig Wilco.

So here’s Paste! Every issue contains a free CD composed of songs that folks of the sort described above would like! Everyone wins!

Alone among the mags considered here so far, Paste is produced outside New York City; its offices are based in Decatur, Ga. YC could infer from this that the Paste editorial staff is outside the cosseted, not-very-permeable bubble that separates New York Elites from “real people” and creates some of the confusion described above. In fact, Tracks, an almost identically inclined magazine dreamt up by longtime NY-area music mag bigshot Alan Light, struggled and then went under after a year and a half. (Tracks sold its subscriber list to Paste; there’s also a completely indistinguishable magazine from Paste called Harp.)

So Paste‘s motto, which appears near the top border of each cover, is “Signs of Life in Music, Film and Culture.” Obviously, this creed defines a standard of middle-class respectability that Paste expects creators of music, film and culture angling for the magazine’s endorsement to achieve. It also seems to cast one particular kind of music that doesn’t meet that standard as a bearer of the death-urge–namely, mainstream hip-hop.

Case in point: The September issue’s editorial “Hip-Hop’s Valedictorian,” written by the mag’s editor-in-chief Josh Jackson. Therein, Jackson notes that some acquaintances expressed disappointment upon learning that Kanye West was going to appear on this issue’s cover. “The Shins, Wes Anderson, Beck, Parker Posey, The White Stripes, Philip Seymour Hoffman–these are the signs of life readers tend to expect from Paste,” writes the magazine’s curator. Jackson goes on to fret that West, a hip-hop figure who seems to YC to be pretty safe for 30-something NPR listeners and thus this mag (c’mon, he collaborates with Chris Martin, Zach Galfinakis and Peter, Bjorn and John!!!), has admirable qualities, but is still too much like those horrible people who infest popular hip-hop. He’s just too complicated for Jackson, who nonetheless concludes that the mag is gonna go way out on a limb and “look for signs of life in both expected and unexpected places” (he diligently inserts the phrase “signs of life” twice besides the above cited in the piece; you gotta work the brand, even in the magazine itself).

Upon finishing the editorial, YC felt bottomless regret that, if he were to go up to the roof of a tall building and drop this issue off, it would not shatter into several hundred pieces.

YC may be a bit of an odd bird in that he enjoys the music made by individuals with whom he disagrees, such as Skrewdriver or Count Grishnackh. But he also believes that artists should not be judged along the lines as elected officials: artists do not have to be moral exemplars, but they do have to be, y’know, interesting, insightful or skillful in some way. Even–whisper it– challenging! Lil’ Wayne and Atlanta native T.I. may not espouse values that YC, Paste, or the Reverend Al Sharpton believe are healthy. But are they good at what they do? It’s fine that Paste doesn’t cover mainstream hip-hop, but that the mag casts the genre as its ideological opponent only highlights its defensiveness and conservatism.

Incidentally, YC wonders if Paste‘s posture is related to Decatur’s proximity to Atlanta, which is essentially the seat of black music (the former is a suburb to the latter). YC would think that Paste‘s staff couldn’t help but be sympathetic to hip-hop, but maybe all those rappers in town are too loud and flashy, or make money that is rightfully due somebody like Josh Ritter (whose new album The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter receives a four-and-a-half star review). If hip-hoppers must exist, better they be backpackers like Aesop Rock (his new None Shall Pass earns a three-and-a-half star review).

But Jackson oversees a magazine that knows who its readers are, and thus he makes them very, very comfortable. The Kanye profile–“Pomp and Circumstance,” written by new managing editor Nick Marino–is a fairly by-the-book piece of the sort you’d read in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s Sunday magazine (Marino worked at that paper prior to his new job). Toward its conclusion, Marino uses an old trick: include a quote from the subject to reassure the editor and the readers. To wit: “A lot of rap music is very flash in the pan … for people who listen to Norah Jones, the songs stay with you a lot longer. Or maybe Maroon 5 … or the Killers.” Ah yes, the songs of Maroon 5 and the Killers are surely redwoods, whereas Rihanna’s “Umbrella” is but a sapling.

So Paste essentially is a component of the Starbucks experience: no crime there. However, editorial standards therein are evidently relaxed enough that the likes of Josh Leven’s ghastly prose is deemed acceptable. Both his four-star review of the New Pornographers’ Challengers and his incompetently headlined profile “Clever Indie People Unite! Rilo Kiley’s and Rock’s New Era” are so windy and ponderous that it’s astounding that an editor allowed these pieces to be published in their present form. Swear to gawd, y’all: both are so Pitchforkian that I was convinced they were written by a 19-year-old desperate to convey his intellectual and “I have a lot of records” bona fides. In fact, Leven is a L.A. music biz lawyer; for his sake, I certainly hope that he expresses himself in a much more cogent manner in court. YC recommends reading both just for their flabbergasting-ness …

Otherwise, YC’ll just quickly note some other Paste-ly matters: whichever designer responsible for the FOB Scrapbook has a distracting, eyesore-ish fondness for the color magenta; YC loves both Rufus Wainwright and Linda Thompson, but thinks that no one is served well by an interview where the two gush all over one another; the word “fuck” is presented throughout as “f—“; and the sections devoted to film and books seem to be a lot more forward-thinking.

It would please YC immensely to say that a music mag created outside of New York is impressive and plucky in ways that ones run by snobby New Yorkers aren’t. He will say that Paste has the pulse of its audience the way that the big boys in NYC don’t: Its readership likes what it likes and isn’t interested in being challenged, and Paste serves them well on that score. Thus, the mag has grown since its debut in 2002, a time when no one would have recommended starting up a new music publication. But even if the big boys are confused and are trying too hard to be, ahem, down with the kids, they’re still trying–unlike Paste, whose idea of a big risk is putting the most bourgie rapper ever on its cover.