The Black Crowes, Maxim, and the Nature of the Music Industry Beast (Pt. 1)
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
Hunter S. Thompson
Thompson wasn’t exaggerating when he made this statement. Most music fans happily exist behind a veil created by publicists that shields any of the negative aspects of the music industry. This is all fine and dandy as far as music fans are concerned, but aspiring musicians fall victim to this image and journey into the darkness of the music industry with no knowledge of its true nature. If there’s one rule that an individual going into ANY aspect (from journalism to performing) of the industry should follow, then it has TRUST NO ONE! This is hard mantra to follow, for everyone is waiting for their “big break,” and there’s lots of assholes out there who are ready to pitch you any line they can come up with in order to put money in their pocket. The music business is just that: a business. There are very few out there doing it for the music. As those few make up a rung or two on the ladder, their priorities tend to be warped or changed completely by “The Business.”
Before you think I’m being cliche, I don’t think you know how outrageous this can be. People will lie to you at the drop of a hat and think nothing of it. It seems to get so melded into their personalities that it seems only natural to them to lie every chance that they get and over things that have nothing to do with business. You can be on the phone with some industry figure, and ask, “Hey, what color car are you driving?” to which they will answer, “Red” even though the car is blue. Yes, they will lie to you about something as insignificant as their car color. It’s for this reason that the recent debacle with Maxim Magazine is not surprising.
In case you haven’t heard, a Maxim review recently gave The Black Crowes’ latest release “Warpaint” an extremely negative review (2 out of 4 or 5 stars, I can’t remember). The only problem is that a full copy of “Warpaint” had yet to be released even to the press. The reviewer based his review on the one song (”Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution”) the band had posted on their website. As I stated before, a situation like this is not surprising. What is surprising is that Maxim actually thought that they could get away with making what has been called an “educated guess.” Then, the finger pointing started with Crowes manager Pete Angelus calling Maxim out and the reviewer (David Peisner) told the LA Times that he had never claimed to have listen to the entire record. He was asked to write a “preview” (not a review) and never knew from where the rating came even though he made disparaging remarks about the band and their album, which really isn’t very kosher in a preview.Maxim ended up apologizing for writing a bullshit review only after being called out by Angelus. Rapper Nas has also claimed to fall victim to Maxim claiming that they same thing happened to him.
My brother and I are both raving Crowes fans, and we were discussing the motivation for doing something like this. I know Maxim is just the Skinamax version of Playboy, but even Playboy has been lauded as having some sort of journalistic substance. My brother’s opinion was that the industry was turning against them due to the Robinson Brothers’ contrary and flakey attitude. Basically, the industry was trying to get rid of a problem. I didn’t think much about this until I read a recent interview with Angelus on Entertainment Weekly’s website (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20181485,00.html).
In my opinion, EW was totally trying to take up for Maxim in a very passive way that gave the impression that it was the Crowes’ fault for not allowing Maxim to listen to the entire CD. To me, EW seemed to take a “What’s the big deal?” attitude with their questions as well as the good ol’ “Bad publicity is still publicity” philosophy. Even with EW trying to snare Angelus, he remained strong stating that it really wasn’t the review that set him off, and insinuated that nothing would have been said if it had been positive. The concern for Angelus was that Maxim had supposedly gotten their hands on an album that had only been accessible to specific periodicals who were invited to listen to the album on an online stream (Maxim wasn’t on the list). Angelus gave the impression that he was trying to track down where Maxim had gotten the album and discovered everything else in the process.
So, what the hell was Maxim thinking? I’m not surprised that they lied, but I am surprise that they actually thought that they could pull this one off. I’ve dealt with enough publicists to know that they keep informed with what people are saying about their clients. That’s kind of a key part of their occupation. So, what made them think that they could get away with something like this? Was this retaliation for not being on the list for a preview of this album? Or is the media really turning against The Black Crowes?
Discuss amongst yourselves…