CHRYSTAL CLEAR

It’s interesting to know that “Rolling Stone” magazine still gets read by some very important people: This week, Barack Obama dismissed ISAF and USFORA commander General Stanley McChrystal for disparaging remarks about the President and other Washington residents as reported in Michael Hastings’ article “The Runaway General”. The incident has confirmed my suspicions that RS publisher Jan Wenner is pursuing a subtly subversive course with his magazine. The political reporting in “Rolling Stone” still adheres to the high standard you used to be able to expect from the magazine, always giving you the feeling that the writer had really got to the centre of his or her subject matter without being sucked into a PR vortex. In contrast, current music reporting in RS makes you wonder about the magazine’s editorial stance. The coverage given to casting show “American Idol” seems both excessive and sycophantic; which music writer Christian Weingarten puts down to the sorry fact that such copy generates clicks and thus makes RS more attractive to potential advertisers. This is definitely a case of the proverbial tail wagging the dog, but if RS can get some of the “American Idol” crowd thinking about American politics in a more critical way, that seems like a trade-off worth considering. One that in fact runs true to the ideals “Rolling Stone” gave up decades ago when the magazine started courting the mainstream rather than championing the counter-culture.

GOTCHA!

You can’t blame them for doing it. Every performer has stock phrases he or she uses on stage to communicate with the audience; the great art lies in making the crowd feel that that particular night is special for the artist. Justin Currie once told me that when his band Del Amitri supported Tina Turner in Glasgow, the stage was littered with notices reminding la Turner of where she was performing lest she address the crowd incorrectly. A sensible precaution in the light of the rate at which successful artists change location or even continent while on tour. When big names come to Zurich, they regularly apologize for not being proficient in Schweizerdeutsch and then inevitably stammer a few words of the local tongue for which they are rewarded with resounding applause. Fergie, the singer with Black-eyed Peas, made use of the apology gambit when I went to see the band play recently, but dropped an absolute clanger in the process. Shortly before launching into “Big Girls Don’t Cry”, she apologised for not speaking Schweizerdeutsch, got the expected roar from the faithful, but then made the mistake of saying what a beautiful language she thinks Schweizerdeutsch is. The reaction to that remark started to gain momentum but died away quite abruptly as the audience realised that Fergie obviously didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. Schweizerdeutsch is far too guttural to be called a beautiful language even with a lot of imagination, and the clanger showed Fergie’s banter for what it was, a set of stock moves she pulls every night, whether she’s in Barcelona or Zurich. As Michael McKeegan of Northern Irish band Therapy? once said, there’s a thin line between being a professional and a cynic, and this seems to be a case in point.