Signs of Life in Music and Culture - Hopeful and Helpful!!!

I recently read an interview with the editor of this magazine, Josh Jackson, and it impressed me enough to look for Paste at my local bookstore. Having picked up a copy and listened to the sampler CD it comes with, I can tell you it is well worth the price (I've already signed up for a subscription!). Paste deals with intelligent, well-crafted music - both faith-based and otherwise. By their own admission, the editors of paste find that "one of the most annoying things in music today is the complete segregation of genres within the industry", so they focus on all kinds of "good music", whatever genre it falls into. The sampler CD is excellent, and of course, covers a variety of genres and artists. The one I received had better known artists like Five for Fighting, Indigo Girls, Norah Jones and Edie Brickell, but it also introduces lesser known artists(and now favorites of mine), like The Lost Trailers, Starflyer 59, Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers, and Ben Kweller. The articles inside encouraged me to check out bands like Addison Road and Robert Randolph & the Family Band. All in all, it has been great for introducing me to some of the best 'unknown' music out there!

Also, in the interview, the editor, Josh Jackson says they try to make Paste a "magazine that doesn't objectify women, that doesn't glorify drug addiction, that tries to respect the artists it covers, and that writes about all of the grand themes of searching, of loneliness, of love, of darkness, of hope that popular music is often courageous enough to tackle."

One warning, as a previous reviewer has mentioned, reading Paste will cause you to spend some money, as you find hidden gems of artists and albums you hadn't heard before, and now really want to own! Amidst a sea of commercialism and crassness in music and entertainment magazines today, Paste is a weclome sign of how beauty, truth and artistry can still be celebrated and enjoyed in popular music.

Paste appeals to wide age span

I've forgotten how I got turned onto Paste; I think it might have been through an ad in Oxford American. Anyway, I'm a sucker for music magazines, so I gave it a chance. I was so surprised to discover that Paste was addressing the very artists and types of music in which my interest had evolved. And what's more, the CD that accompanied it was loaded with good music.

I might as well tell you. I'm 59 years old but still into music and still turned on by the new and the old. To make a point about Paste, it also appeals to my 24-year-old daughter and 37 year-old son-in-law. Why? Each issue is packed with information and features on the knowns and unknowns, written in a literate voice and in complete yet concise manner. It also is colorful and well-designed. The sampler CDs are not those throw-away kind either. Somebody spends a heck of a lot of time selecting the right artists and the right tunes. If you like mixed CDs, you'll enjoy these.
Through the articles and through the sampler CDs,Paste has turned me on to some wonderful music that the members of my family enjoy sharing.I hope others will give it a spin - no pun intended. If it is not what is happening, it is what should be happening. To use an expression from my generation and yours. It's what's cool.

Three Stars for a Good Idea

It sounds good--"signs of life in music and culture"--but the writing is definitely not up to par. Yet. I've been a subscriber for the past year and though I've been disappointed overall, I have seen some improvement in the quality of the articles over the year, although not nearly enough to get me to re-subscribe. I found I was more interested in their book and movie reviews than their articles on music and musicians. The latter tend to be short sugary praise columns on mostly very young and very white pop bands who are apparently popular on college campuses. The feature writing lacks soul (as do the CDs) and is about as profound as the average Amazon customer review, which we can get free! They try to cover too much in each issue and end up covering nothing really.

Having been a fan of much older music all my life (My parents' stopped buying records around 1978 but they had a little bit of everything--Gospel, blues, folk, rock...), I thought Paste might point me to some good music by my own generation. Alas. I've been consistently disappointed by the sampler CDs, usually finding that the only tracks worth revisiting are the ones by old vets such as June Carter Cash and The Subdudes. Most don't live up to the hype in my opinion. For instance, the blurb introducing "Melancholy Polly" by Allison Moorer on the latest sampler: "...Contains some fantastic, heartbreaking lines like, 'She is not a starlet with a red guitar / Just an easy target for a broken heart.'" Huh? Somehow I completely missed the "fantastic, heartbreaking" part when I listened to the song. Maybe I've been spoiled for too long by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, but if the likes of Moorer, Ben Kweller, Five for Fighting, Howie Day and many others are any indication, we're in for a long dry spell in the world of popular music. There are some real "signs of life" here and there (Jolie Holland! And they did a rather good feature on Robert Randolph recently), but Paste isn't very good at sifting the grain from the, well, you know. Like I said, they've shown signs of improvement so far and there's no reason why they shouldn't continue to get better. Could be that they're just young and there's nothing wrong with that--gotta start somewhere.