Rolling Stone (1-year)

Summary: Don't order from this vendor!

The vendor for this subscription fails to deliver product. When I complain, I get a bogus excuse about the address not being deliverable in spite of the fact that all other mail and Amazon products ordered seem to find the way to delivery with no problems. Amazon itself is unable to get the product to me and is only modestly useful in mediating with the vendor. If you want regular delivery of a subscription, going through Amazon is surely not the way. I have been burned 2X...

Summary: Is This Playboy?!?

I hate to sound like the old guy who's a Puritan (I'm not really either), but what's with all the skin? I have young children at home who bring in the mail, and I was shocked to see a nearly nude Katy Perry on the cover (#1111, 8/19) and the next issue featuring three "blood"-splattered nude people on the cover (#1112, 9/2). It seemed like I was receiving Playboy, or at least Maxim.

Once I got past that and into the articles, I was equally disappointed. Granted, I have not really read Rolling Stone in something like 12-15 years, but what happened to your collective writing skills? These have been very disappointing issues and I will not renew.

On a positive note, there have been a couple of good articles. Also, it's great fun to catch up on musicians' happenings via magazine rather than online. All is not lost, but I really expected much more of Rolling Stone magazine. I question their ability to survive if this is the best they can do - and how sad to see Rolling Stone disappear.

Summary: More than just music

Rolling Stone is practically an American institution. While many people think it only focuses on music, there's actually a lot more to be found in the magazine: some of the best movie reviews around, political news, social issues, occasionally book and technology reviews. The music side of the magazine often tends to focus on older and/or more mainstream artists - e.g. you'll always find the latest news and reviews about artists such as Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead and so on - think Rock and Roll Hall of Fame artists. There's also plenty of news about younger artists, but if you want to track the newest and/or less mainstream artists, you may also want to check out Spin magazine (I read both) or of course any number of excellent music blogs. The music review section of RS is not as comprehensive as Spin's, but offers a solid selection - plus it's a biweekly magazine rather than monthly, so it makes sense that they'd publish fewer reviews in each issue. I also want to highlight the very high quality of the photography in RS, including some of the most iconic covers in music journalism. One note: RS doesn't try to hide the fact that it's pretty left-leaning in terms of politics, so if that type of political opinion offends your sensibilities, you may want to skip the "National Affairs" section or any of Matt Taibbi's excellent articles. On the other hand, I consider some of their investigative journalism articles must-reads for everyone. If, like me, you're into the history of rock music, check out the RS archive DVD's, which contain scanned, searchable versions of every single page RS has printed in its 40+ year history -- a real treasure trove of information (not included with a subscription, but fairly affordable and highly recommended). RS is one of 3 or 4 magazines I plan to subscribe to for life, and I highly recommend checking it out.

Note: even though the label on this review says I purchased this subscription at Amazon, I actually just took advantage of one of their specials to renew my subscription, which I've had for many years.