• by Larry Dobrow , Featured Columnist, September 1, 2005

I've reached an age where I'm only passingly familiar with the bands featured on the cover of Spin. As a fan of singer/songwriters who don't sing all that well - I'd sooner check out a garbled bootlegged cassette of Bruce Springsteen's bathtub farts than anything in the Coldplay oeuvre - I don't have the time to check out the sensation-of-the-month types that have traditionally populated Spin's pages. And anyway, I'm not sure that I'd want to, what with the tattoos and the loud drums and the hair and the fast cars. Kids today, don't get me started.

It's fortunate, then, that I actually bothered to read Spin's September issue before forming an opinion about it, as the mag has evolved considerably beyond its if-it-sounds-bad-it-must-be-good mindset. Yes, it still devotes the requisite pages to Franz Ferdinand and Death Cab For Cutie (hardly "edgy" now that their sales figures have crept into the hundreds of thousands), but the publication has upped its hip-hop quotient and added a pop-culture component. The overarching effect of the subtle shifts in coverage and tone? Spin boasts a healthy pulse for the first time in years.

Two features in the September issue tower above the rest, owing to their clever mix of music and nostalgia. "Requiem For a Beam" takes a warm look back at that near-extinct staple of '70s and '80s suburban youth: the laser rock show. It even exhumes art-rock demigod Alan Parsons for a few quick recollections. "School's Out," on the other hand, attempts to unearth the history of New York's since-shuttered Quintano's School for Young Professionals. The school was an off-the-grid, performance-oriented private high school that graduated Steven Tyler and Johnny Thunders - and, some graduates claim, also housed a male-prostitution ring.

Both boast sharp reporting and witty commentary from folks who were there, man; music is almost beside the point. Any number of titles hoping to reconnect weepily nostalgic 30-somethings with their misplaced youth - Rolling Stone, Esquire, even GQ - should be falling over themselves to produce features like these.

While Spin's music-only content doesn't approach those heights, at least it attempts to stir the pot a bit. With its small-band-goes-big central premise, the Death Cab feature could have been written 18 months ago. Too, the mag's labored list of the "25 most incredible rock star body parts" belongs on VH1, where it could be more easily ignored. But the lengthy examination of Houston's hip-hop scene and a cheeky Warped Tour diary from My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way more than redeem the dull bits.

The front-of-book "Noise" section is similarly hit-and-miss. Reviews of an Oasis show and the "Anger Management" tour (Eminem, 50 Cent, and others) entertain for different reasons: the former for its dynamic intro ("Liam Gallagher did an aloof splay-footed strut up the front of the Madison Square Garden stage, like a snotty young ad exec who'd just stepped out of the office for a smoke") and the latter for its low-key recounting of the circus-like atmosphere ("Em issued a 'formal apology' to Michael Jackson while donning a surgical mask and tossing baby dolls").

The half page devoted to commentary from four of music's preeminent video directors feels woefully squeezed, however, and the dude who writes the quasi-gossip column probably ought to bone up on old issues of Creem before attempting to ape its snark. Also, even with his oh-so-self-deprecatory proclamation that he is a "music nerd," I'm not sure what hobbit-boy Elijah Wood has done to merit two pages worth of coverage here.

In a nifty bit of revisionism, superhero pundit Chuck Klosterman devotes most of his monthly column allowance to deconstructing the September 1987 issue of Spin. I doubt Klosterman had this in mind when writing it, but the piece might be viewed as a stealth nod to the publication's continuing evolution - kind of a that-was-then-this-is-now thing. If that's the case, Spin circa 2005 seriously benefits from the comparison. It's a title well worth revisiting.