What would Lance Bangs say?

I stopped buying Mojo Magazine a couple of years ago, having grown bored of the predictable front covers and feature articles featuring/recycling bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Joy Division, and the occasional genre special. I expected nothing from music publications like Q, Spin, Rolling Stone, and especially NME.
     None of those magazines have ever been accused of having much integrity or substance with regards to the music they feature and review. Choosing mainly to give false press to lesser bands to help create trends and hype, and especially in the case of the NME, to then perpetuate that myth, by giving blanket coverage to the bands they've hyped up, constantly moving on to the next new band in an effort to keep their readers from realizing the truth of it all.
    But Mojo has a strong pedigree of music journalism. Of quality and substance. Which makes it so disconcerting to read it in its current manifestation. Like I said, I was a loyal reader until a couple of years ago, when I couldn't take the mediocrity anymore. But yesterday while passing through Tescos I was suckered into buying one more issue. They had put Tom Waits on the cover which ordinarily wouldn't have been enough, despite my love of everything Tom Waits does. But not only was Tom Waits on the cover but he was the guest-editor. Sorry, but my willpower is only so strong, and I bought it without another thought.
     Now don't get me wrong, this months issue does have some strong articles and features. Not the least of which being a cd specially compiled by Tom Waits for Mojo magazine, featuring a bunch of his favourite artists and songs. Who doesn't want the knowledge and history contained on that cd?? The issue also features several lists of Tom's favourite films and music, and several articles about albums and artists that impacted him personally. It also has a great article on Harry Belafonte and an extended article about some of the major moments in music in the last 200 issues of Mojo. Sorry, I forgot to mention this issue was also the 200th issue of Mojo Magazine. So yeah, plenty of quality to be found, and to warrant the spending of £4.50.
        But then you reach the reviews section. What I consider to be the infamous Mojo reviews section. And at this point Lance Bangs would have laughed his ass off.
      This month Mojo reviewed 81 albums. 81 albums. Now of those 81 albums they gave 39 albums a four star review. They gave 39 albums a three star review, and they gave 3 albums, a mere 3 albums, a two star review. Just so you can gauge the ridiculousness of this, here's the Mojo ratings legend as featured in Mojo Magazine:
***** MOJO classic
**** Brilliant!
*** Good
** Disappointing
* Best avoided
no star - deplorable

So by their own standards Mojo considers 78 of the 81 albums reviewed this month to be Good to Brilliant!78! Keeping in mind I have heard none of these albums personally, just by ratio alone I find this very hard to believe. I mean, included amongst the three and four star reviews are albums by Tom Petty, The Chemical Brothers, The Apples in Stereo, Roky Erickson, Solomon Burke and Crowded House. It seems perfectly plausible to me that these bands might very well deserve their review. But also included and more importantly, are albums by Scissor Sisters, Nas and Damian Marley, We are Scientists, Hot Hot Heat, Mike Patton, Robyn, Kele Okereke(singer from Bloc Party), Scorpions, Sandi Thom, and Micah P Hinson.
     I should mention, the only albums of the lot to get less then a good review were an album by Dan Sartain, an album by The Magic Numbers, and an album by the Pernice Brothers.
    But that's irrelevant right now. I mean, are Mojo honestly telling me Mike Patton put out a good album? That Hot Hot Heat are once again capable of making good music? That We Are Scientists, Jack Johnson, and Scorpions all put out good albums? Or even more staggeringly, that Kele Okereke, Sandi Thom(??!!), and Micah P Hinson all made Brilliant! albums this month?
    Obviously, I'm falling into a bit of a rant here, and the last couple of paragraphs come down to personal taste and would undoubtedly be strengthened if I had actually heard any of the reviewed albums. But in my opinion, one thing here is clearly unavoidable. 78 of 81 reviewed albums receiving a good to Brilliant! review indicates a severe lack of critical integrity. Mojo Magazine seems to have lost any critical faculty, and with it has lost sight of what makes good music journalism and in turn a good music magazine. And this makes me despair just a little bit more for the current state of popular music.
     In a side note, and this again is down to my personal taste, I was also disconcerted if not totally surprised to read Keith Cameron describe Oasis as the greatest British band of the last twenty years. And I was disappointed to see Mojo give the new Jon Spencer Blues Explosion compilation two stars, seemingly because they decided to leave off a few songs the reviewer really liked. He also, bizarrely, criticized them for including a song sung by RL Burnside, and a song sung by Calvin Johnson. Saying:
   "Others, like Lovin' Machine, Do You Wanna Get Heavy, and Soul Typecast, have been bumped, in favour of a 'representative' sampling of scratchy first-album tunes, live cuts and instrumentals. When two of the first four tracks are sung by R.L Burnside and Dub Narcotic's Calvin Johnston, rather than Yowlin' Jon hisself, we are surely so far from 'Best of' territory as to be slightly malicious."
    That's probably because as far as I can figure this release isn't supposed to be a greatest hits compilation, but rather an introduction to the band. And how can you properly introduce anybody to the mighty Jon Spencer Blues Explosion without including R.L Burnside, Calvin Johnston, and the raw power of their first album?
     Like I said, I loved the Belafonte interview and all the insight and inside information about the legendary Tom Waits included in this issue was fantastic, and as always I found the reissues and reissues extra section very insightful. It's just a shame that however many years ago the editors of Mojo got stuck celebrating the same bands of the 1970's and 1980's over and over and that for some reason they had to park the once great Mojo Magazine's critical review square in the middle of the road. Oh and it also annoyed me that Florence of Florence and the Machine was included in the All Back To My Place section. But that's just because her music gets on my goddamn nerves. Nice job getting Can's keyboard player though.
    I guess my journey through the wilderness of Music journalism shall continue until Mojo suck me in again a couple of years from now with another weird rare coup, like Tom Waits guest-editing.