My poor MacBook. It’s been so reliable for so many years, I never really took the time to look at how she was faring under the bonnet. You can but begin to imagine if I tell you that when I looked at my tunes folder, there was 57 days, 6 hours and 14 minutes of continuous music available to me. Over 88GB in all. Whilst this is great for me, it’s probably not so good for her.

So I spent a little while moving it all onto an external hard drive and hooking it up that way. After an (undisclosed) amount of time, MacBook now seems a lot happier - though her happiness might also have something to do with me banishing Quark XPress from her system. It’s a sad parting of the ways with Quark after so long in good service but I can’t honestly remember the last time I used it for anything constructive.

The beauty of this is it’s now merged with the tunes that were already on there as back-up files. A quick saunter through reveals such gems hanging around (in the ‘B’ column) as:
Bang Gang - The Young and The Restless
Black Label Society - Give Yourself to Me
BulletBoys - Hang On St. Christopher

It’s gonna be a good day on the cliff face with such excellent company - and I shall hold my breath and wait for Mr Johnson to let me know I can probably throw away another 87GB and not miss anything of value (though I reckon there’s plenty of stuff here that he would like... anybody for Poison demos pre-Cat Dragged In? Bloody awful).

Off at a tangent, I mailed a spec pitch in to Rolling Stone early last week. I’m not sure what to make of that brand anymore. It was a good pitch. Without giving away all my eggs in a basket, it was current, far enough away to schedule in properly and of interest to the rock world at large. With direct access to the band and more exclusives photos of them than I have of my children, I would have thought it was no-brainer. If somebody had mailed me this pitch, I would have bitten off their arm as it basically requires no work from the editorial team.

The part of me that wants to write for Rolling Stone magazine (as opposed to Rolling Stone website) is the part of me that wants to say I write for the same magazine that Hunter S. Thompson, Cameron Crowe and Lester Bangs wrote for but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Ten days later, still no reply.

Looking at the big picture, it’s not the same magazine in any way, shape or form. It’s not even in the same ballpark. I picked up the latest copy at the weekend. The new format may have saved them a stack of cash but when I put it up against the last issues of Zero/Burn that we did, it sucks. The production values are not even close, it looks and feels like a cheap weekend supplement trading on past glories. Which I guess is all it is now (and maybe why they’re still going and we’re not).

Sadly, in the big scheme of pop-culture, saying I write for Rolling Stone carries a lot more weight than saying I thought Rolling Stone was so over-rated that I started my own magazine which kicked its ass from one side of the Atlantic to the other.

Come back Creem. We miss you.

Anyway, all is not lost. My head may have to rule over my head on this one, but I have two (big steel) balls that say “Fuck it. SPIN is an awesome magazine. I’ll go there instead.” Updates on this as something may happen.

Finally, I was looking at the entire (and I mean it) range of cover designs for the Sherlock Holmes books last week and I don’t think I would be lying if I said that 95% of them are dreadful no matter what the year of release is - and occasionally (surprisingly) some of the UK covers have been as bad as the US. Totally and utterly awful - but no, not quite as awful as the Poison demos. I thought I would redesign the whole series myself, so I started. Here’s a preview of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Only part way through but still... whoopin' ass?

Is this a good way to spend your life? Putting others to shame just because you can.

Hmm. See Gene Simmons post from Sunday about showing people where they will be buried.

Currently listening to: everything on the face of the planet - and to prove a point from my blog of a few weeks back, I happened to get Aerosmith’s Livin’ On The Edge and Kings and Queens next to each other this morning. Ain’t not nothing like the same band. Not ever never.