Magazine Roundup - Rolling Stone, 3/16/09

One of the ways I keep up with the world is by obsessively reading magazines. I think I get about 12 or so delivered to my apartment and for fun I sit at Barnes and Noble reading more. Sure the Internet holds almost all of the same info and articles, but I guess old habits die hard. That must be the same reason why 360 million CDs were sold last year, according to SoundScan. Who the hell is buying these discs?!? The article does point out some genre stats that country and R&B appear to be leading the way of the continued sales. Let's have a show of hands, how many of you have bought more than 10 physical CDs in the last five years? Back in the day I would probably have bought 5 or 6 a month. Maybe more. I can barely remember.

Back to magazines, I was flipping through the March 19 Rolling Stone. The one with U2 on the cover with a picture of Bono in eye shadow. Um, wasn't this a bit more shocking when The Killers and Pete Wentz were doing it back in 2003. Is this really what passes for rock n roll rebellion these days? Does anybody else get the backlash vibe that people are over this band a bit?

Anyway, there were a couple of items that caught my eye in the issue that I wanted to share. I figure I might be one of the last magazine readers out there, so here is what you may have missed if you didn't pick up the issue:

Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck May Tour the States

Ben Harper's new group, the Relentless Seven, are described as Lenny Kravitz fronting Queens of the Stone Age. Cool!

'The Beatles: Rock Band' will be released on September 9th!

The E Street Band may tour without Max Weinberg due to Conan's new gig beginning June 1st

The Bob Marley Estate appears to be majorly selling out having joined up with a retail branding company named Hilco to market coffee (slogan: Stir it Up! - I'm not joking), bedsheets, and a Grand Theft Autoish video game.

Get this super group (from an interview with Billy Joel): "At a party at Jon Bon Jovi's House, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Buffett, and Roger Waters were all there, and we all got up and played a Pink Floyd tune, "Wish You Were Here", "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Long Tall Sally".

I know most blogs have a large amount of their content consisting of republishing links to articles that they think are newsworthy. Hear at The Weight we go a step further by doing it the old fashioned way: reading and retyping. Take that, BrooklynVegan! Oh, I'm only kidding. I love that site. It's good to be back online!