Rolling Stone gathers Maerz

Former City Pages music editor Melissa Maerz is headed to Rolling Stone

It's weird how nowadays in music journalism, as you move up, it just gets worse. I mean this as no crack on Melissa, who's always struck me as a stand-up gal and great writer, but Rolling Stone hardly seems to be a paper to aspire to anymore. I guess their longer articles can often be good, and I did really enjoy their look at whether George Bush is the worst president in history, or merely one of the top five. Maybe they're like the reverse of Pulse--a music magazine where their political coverage is the best thing they do.

Still, though, their CD reviews have become laughably vanilla in recent years. Look at any given page of the reviews section and you'll find that nine out of ten CDs get three stars. Stars are so ridiculous when it comes to reviews; if you just want to know quickly whether a reviewer liked a CD, read the last sentence. How hard is that?

I always liked Maerz's piece on Friends Like These where she spent 10 days on the road with them.

Best of luck to Ms. Maerz. We at Signal Eats Noise are above mentioning your boyfriend.