and it starts off on the right track…
from the Letters section in Magnet 75:
I’ve never quite understood why MAGNET readers take Andrew Earles so seriously. It’s an intentional shtick: 95 percent of the time he’s abrasive or idiotic, five percent of the time he’s actually amusing. I think those are the actual percentages he’s hoping to achieve. Earles reminds me of the frontman for the late-70’s San Francisco band No Alternative; he called himself Johnny Genocide. In the long periods between songs, Genocide would accost the audience by spitting, throwing beer cans and calling us “a bunch of fuckin’ fags.â€Â I always thought this was stupidly hilarious – even funnier when the audience became upset. When Genocide actually got down to playing his guitar and singing, No Alternative was a damn good pre-thrash punk band. Yet I could never quite take them seriously because of the spectacle they created. In the same way, I have difficulty taking Earles seriously when he’s doing reportage or reviewing outside of the Street Team column. That’s the real problem with Earles, not all these other reader complaints. How much of his non-column work can I trust? Eventually, No Alternative disbanded. Genocide went on to dye his hair black and start a band called the Swingin’ Possums, playing rough and exciting punky rockabilly. Genocide dropped the abuse shtick and let the music speak for itself. Earles might want to take a lesson from him.
– William Breiding
Somewhere
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