No credibility

How is it that a magazine can review an entire album and assign a star rating to it, without actually hearing the album? Well that has happened recently by a big time magazine reviewing a big time band, yet they only heard one song from the album. The band is local Atlanta band, the Black Crowes and the magazine is the March issue of Maxim. The writer, who has not heard the album since advance CDs were not made available, wrote what appears to be a disparaging assessment anyway, citing “it hasn’t left Chris Robinson and the gang much room for growth.”

The magazine went on to give the album a two and a half star rating even thought neither the writer nor the editor could have heard more than just the single “Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution”. When approached for an explanation, the magazine described the review as “an educated guess preview.” What the hell? Not that I held Maxim Magazine up to high journalistic standards, but come on you just can’t make up things and print them as true. That is National Enquirer territory!

The Black Crowes manager has responded to this careless act by saying “Maxim's actions seem to completely lack journalistic integrity and intentionally mislead their readership.” Also he states “It speaks directly to the lack of the publication’s credibility. In my opinion, it’s a disgrace to the arts, journalism, critics, the publication itself and the public. What’s next, Maxim's concert reviews of shows they never attended, book reviews of books never read and film reviews of films never seen?”

I agree with him! I will stick to just looking at the pictures in Maxim and not reading or trusting any of their reviews.