Reconstructing My Favorite Music Review

For about a year in the mid-’90s I worked in a bookstore in Paradise Valley, Arizona where I was the Newsstand Supervisor. This meant that I was responsible for keeping the magazines stocked, swapping out old issues for new, and cleaning up those little subscription cards and AOL free trial floppies that would fall out and make a mess of the place.

It also meant that I got to decide what magazines we carried.

Sure, there were the obvious ones I had to carry, the newsweeklies and whatnot. But the distributor that supplied our magazines would frequently include some random titles with each delivery just in the hopes that I might put them on the stands and see if anyone bought them.

The way the magazine industry worked, the bookstore only paid the distributor for copies of magazines that we actually sold. Anything that went unsold we could return. But it doesn’t make sense to pay to ship back a ton of outdated magazines, so the practice was to tear the covers off and return just the covers as proof that the magazine didn’t sell. Then the rest of the magazine would get tossed in recycling. Or, if it looked interesting to me, I’d take a copy home.

(The same practice applied to paperback books, so if you’ve ever seen a paperback book with a warning that if you bought a copy without a cover it may have been stolen, that’s what they’re talking about.)

Sometimes the random magazines the distributor sent me were really weird choices. One month they sent me a stack industry magazines for exotic dancers. I didn’t think it was very relevant to the people of Paradise Valley so I didn’t put it on the stand. And it wasn’t nearly as titillating as you might think, mostly filled with articles about either getting or removing breast implants, and reviews of cosmetic surgeons. I tore those covers off to return pretty quickly.

But they did send some magazines I hadn’t heard of before that I ended up loving, like CMJ New Music Monthly, which later turned into a full-size magazine, but at the time was a pamphlet-sized publication with a sampler CD full of great songs that would become popular on college radio stations months later. It didn’t sell very well, but I ended up subscribing to the magazine and I still listen to some of those CDs today.

But this post is about one particular music review in one random magazine that the distributor sent me. This music review has occupied space in my head for nearly 25 years. At random moments, I think of this review. It was in a magazine I’d never heard of, and I don’t remember the title or who wrote the review. I don’t even remember if it was an American magazine. But I would love to read it again.

Maybe if I reconstruct this music review from memory, someone out there will be able to help me find it.

I don’t even remember what album was being reviewed. In my memory it was an album by Cher, but looking at her music release dates, this would have been in between her albums It’s a Man’s World and Believe. So it probably wasn’t hers.

But the music review went something like this:

Ha! None of the other reviews in the magazine were anything like this. They were pretty standard music reviews. How did this get published like this? Was it a staff writer? A pitch from a freelancer? Was there any internal debate about publishing it?

If you have any idea what magazine this was from, let me know.

Speaking of Clever Magazines

Recently I saw a humorous piece from McSweeney’s making the rounds. It’s called This Is Your Kid’s School and Even Though the Emergency Contact Form Lists Your Husband, We Need You, the Mom by Kristin W. Vogan.

It’s something my wife and I talk about all the time. The default contact is always the Mom. There are important communications from the school that I’ve missed because they only contact the Moms. I have spent time proactively getting myself added to some communications, only to end up being dropped again later. It’s inconsistent, so I never know for sure if I’m missing anything. It’s aggravating, and I sympathize with Kristin.

But you know what else is frustrating? Moms who only include other Moms on their inter-parent communications. Does your kid’s circle of friends have an all-Moms group text? Do the Moms only contact each other about homework or playdates? How many birthday parties did I not know about until the last minute because the evite only went to Moms?

In the interest of fairness, I admit that Dads aren’t immune to this, either. Dads should be more proactive in arranging playdates and organizing class gifts for Teacher Appreciation Week, etc. There’s no reason those need to be Mom Duties.

I guess my point is that yes, it’s maddening that schools contact the Moms by default. But they’re not the only ones perpetuating this idea that Moms should be the primary contact. We all need to do better.

I don’t know how to fix this, but I guess in the meantime I could start an all-Dads group text. Does that help the problem or make it worse?

That’s it for another newsletter. Thanks for reading. See you at the bake sale!

David