Another Man
And the award for Best Facial Hair on a Magazine Cover goes to… Tom Ford. Move aside George Michael.
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Two magazine covers with women who look like they’d smell good.
SPIN magazine
Alternate covers for Spin’s Best of 2010 issue. Photographs by Daniel Jackson.
Regular NYC-based Gym Class Magazine contributor Antonio Reis chats with Spin magazine’s associate editor David Marchese. Music-loving magazine geeks, this one’s for you.
What is Spin?
Spin is a music magazine with an indie rock bias.
Who reads Spin?
I don’t know the editorial staff has a particular person or a sort of demographic in mind when writing or editing a story. Generally, we’re trying to reach people who are passionate about music – not necessarily huge music geeks who could tell you every Velvet Underground bootleg – but people who want to hear about new bands and learn about the lives of musicians.
How does Spin differ from magazines like Rolling Stone, Paste, or Fader?
We exist – and Paste doesn’t exist anymore. In comparison to Rolling Stone, we’re looking at younger, more contemporary musicians. It’s unlikely we would put the Rolling Stones on the cover of our magazine. We have young artists on the cover all the time. We did have Bruce Springsteen on the cover, but that was with Will Butler of Arcade Fire. And we’re strictly a music magazine. We don’t write stories about politics or global warming. Each story has a music angle.
We’re a mass-market music magazine and Fader, I would say, is more niche with a smaller circulation. Acknowledging that this is a bad comparison, we’re sort of in between Fader and Rolling Stone.
How did the magazine decide who belongs on its ‘Best of 2010’ lists?
Those came from discussions between the editors. The music editor Charles Aaron started the process by suggesting albums he felt strongly about in 2010. Then there were a bunch of emails and discussions between editors in which we discussed the albums we felt were important.
Sometimes people ask if there are commercial considerations to putting certain artists in the magazine or in giving their albums good reviews. But I can honestly say we never praise an artist or album that isn’t legitimately worthy of praise. The 40 Best Albums of 2010 were honestly the ones that the editors found to be the best of the year.
Who do you predict becoming a big deal in 2011?
There’s a Swedish singer named Lykke Li. I think a lot of people will like her this year. She released an album in 2008, and has a new one out now. I think Cut Copy will get bigger this year. And there’s an English guy named Plan B, he should get good. And, I don’t know, hopefully I’ll get bigger in 2011.
What’s the most memorable experience you’ve had on the job?
There are lots of them. When Scarlett Johansson put out her album in 2008, I went to have lunch with her. But where we were, it was too noisy to do the interview. So she suggested some other place. She was all bundled up in big movie star sunglasses. While we were looking around for some diner not too far from Chinatown, some tourists came up and asked her for directions. Two guys; I think they were English. Right in the middle you could tell they finally recognised her. One of the guys looked at me and I winked at him.
That was fun.
I did an interview with Lou Reed, and it ended up going really badly. He has a reputation for being very harsh with interviewers. It was definitely memorable to see that it’s deserved. In a weird way that was sort of validating.
There are just so many! This sounds cheesy but I legitimately love music. I get to go to music festivals and go see bands all the time; I would never have those opportunities otherwise.
Is New York still the go-to city for musical careers, as it was in the 80s?
I think a musician would be better to answer that question. In terms of the amount of press that’s here, New York seems like a smart place to be. If you’re doing something interesting, more people are likely to notice here. This is a mundane answer, but it’s probably less important to be here than it would have been pre-internet. I think there’s something to be said for being around other creative people, and there are a lot of creative people in New York, probably more than the per capita of other cities. So, it can’t be a bad thing to be around here.
What’s the first ever song or artist you remember really getting into?
The very first one I remember very clearly was Jimi Hendrix. I don’t know if you remember the show Night Court? It took place in a courthouse and starred Harry Anderson. I think it’s from the late 80s, I can’t remember if I was watching reruns or the original when I was little. Anyway, this security guard character mentioned Jimi Hendrix and for some reason the name stuck in my head. And then I was at a music store, probably the next day or soon after, and I was looking through the tapes, and I saw the name Jimmy Hendrix – it was spelled J-I-M-I – and it stood out to me. So my dad bought it for me: Jimi Hendrix’s Greatest Hits. It sounded so wild and foreign, and it still does. I remember listening to it over and over again. There was some family drama at the time, so putting Jimi Hendrix on the headphones and zoning out into this strange world really made an impression on me.
Can we expect anything new or exciting from Spin this year?
Generally, I don’t spend a lot of time going back and looking at my work, mostly because I have a really hard time reading the things I write. So I don’t like to go back. But not that long ago I came home pretty drunk and read through a bunch of issues from 2010. And I was really pleased and impressed. I think the magazine we put out is really good. I think its really high quality. And that’s exciting… that we do that and will continue to do that. I think there are some different approaches we might take in the coming year, but I wouldn’t look for any sort of radical revamping of Spin.
Anything else you’d like to add?
If people hear a band they think is amazing, I hope they let us know.
By Antonio Reis
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