The New Version of the Replacements’ Tim Is Quite Literally Revelatory by Jack Hamilton

Much as I love the band and consider them highly formative in my college radio career, my penny-pinching ways have largely dissuaded me from stocking my record shelves with the procession of enticing box set releases excavating the history of the Replacements album by album. This splendid piece of music writing by Jack Hamilton raises a dizzying desire to abandon that policy for the new rescue-mission version of the Mats’ major label debut, Tim. Hell, I even live within comfy driving distance of a beloved record store with enough of a local connection to the band’s history that the reissuing record label has provided an irresistible bonus item to slip into customers’ bags. This article is published by Slate.

Jann Wenner’s Biographer: “He Revealed the Ugly Truth of Rolling Stone” by Joe Hagan

It would have been so easy for Jann Wenner to recede from the public spotlight in his retirement, cultivating his friendships with rock stars and listening to same five calcified rock records over and over. That’s not what wealthy narcissists do, though. After an astonishing demonstration of his arrogance and prejudice in a New York Times Magazine interview conducted by David Marchese, Wenner’s legacy is down to ashy residue and he’s been summarily ousted from his few remaining positions of influence. Writing for Vanity Fair, Joe Hagan considers the current car crash in the context of what he learned about Wenner when writing a recent biography of the Rolling Stone founder. As someone who spent his formative years reading Rolling Stone with the myopic devotion of a religious zealot poring over their scripture of choice, I am eternally resentful of the way Wenner’s backwards biases warped my own musical taste for the worse. Decades later, I’m still working to mend those shortcomings.

How not to interview Trump by Aaron Rupar

I’m not going to watch a Meet the Press interview with the lifelong criminal and noted second place finisher who our tragically compromised political structure allowed to be President of the United States. I’m also not going to deliberately strike my hand with a hammer. The principle of self-preservation and learning from past mistakes is the same in both scenarios. Based on Aaron Rupar’s assessment, published in his own Public Notice newsletter, is enough to convince me that the mainstream news media is heading for an unforgivable dereliction of duty in the upcoming election season by treating an individual facing dozens of criminal charges like he’s any other politician.