What about how a protest issue in 2008 just seems, I don't know, kind of a day late and dollar short?

Not to mention Isaac Brock looks like he's been drinking for a week straight...

There are so many things wrong with this, but I just picked the one that sucks the most. Hasn't Barack Obama taught us anything?

So, which one do you think is more collectible?

Why not drag both to your desktop as a single jpeg?

also, musicians living in or hailing from the Northwest are disproportionately represented.

couldn’t you at least put Chuck D or Beth Ditto on there or someone? There’s plenty of room!

There should be a rimshot here.

Good advice, Grandy. I've now collected them both! I'm gonna hang onto them for a few years then auction them off to the highest bidder. Ka-ching!

(you can sell jpegs on Ebay, right?)

Are you joking? Stop writing forever.

Have you ever thought it strange that music making in general is disproportionately white males?

Why is that?

I loved their 2004 protest issue. I guess I'm relieved that that one seemed so much more urgent compared to 2008. Maybe that means I'm more optimistic this time around? My favorite was this weirdo one from the Fiery Furnaces, which killed me at the time:

http://seattle.metblogs.com/archives/furnaces_10032005.jpg

All white males. And 80 percent Portland residents, too.

Guess Mercer or Malkmus weren't available, so they settled for Mike Stipe.

how about they'll stop when the stranger stops covering every stupid white straight guy band that happens to wear the same clothes/haircut/attitude of one another. lame post. pot, kettle, black....

This is Mark Redfern, the Senior Editor and Publisher of Under the Radar magazine. I'd like to point a few things out.

First of all Ari hasn't even seen or read The Protest Issue yet, none of you have as it hasn't even shipped out from the printer yet. So it's being judged simply by our covers and press release, which is too bad. It would be nice if Ari had actually waited to read the issue before posting a negative blog on it.

It was never our intention to not have a diverse cover, it simply worked out that way for logistical reasons. We approached many non-white musicians and many female musicians to also appear in one of our cover shots and either those musicians weren't interested or weren't available.

It was actually a scheduling and logistical nightmare to work out both cover shots as it was. There are a lot of Portland musicians on the cover simply because one of the covers was shot in Portland, as we were having trouble working out a compelling cover photo with different musicans from different bands unless it was shot in one particular city with musicans from that city. We had originally tried to do something at Coachella and then something in NYC and both fell through due to scheduling problems with all the artists involved. We didn't even plan to have two great cover photos, it just worked out that way.

If any of you actually have a chance to read The Protest Issue then you'll see that there's an article on Hip-Hop and Protest that includes photo shoots with Chuck D, Talib Kweli, and Michael Franti. Then the following non-white musicians are also photographed for The Protest Issue: Sharon Jones (who we tried to get for the cover, but the scheduling didn't work), Ben Harper, Lightspeed Champion's Devonte Hynes, The Dears' Murray Lightburn, and Boots Riley of The Coup. Then there are plenty of women also photographed, including these bands that include female musicians: St. Vincent, The Duke Spirit, The Dresden Dolls, Shout Out Louds, Stars, Sons & Daughters, Metric, etc.

All the protest signs from the issue are being auctioned and the money is being donated to War Child International, a non-profit that helps children in areas of armed conflict.

We're just trying to do something positive with The Protest Issue and to encourage our readers to be politically aware and active, rather than just telling them about such and such hot new band. I don't think that there's anything wrong with that.

you're fishing to meet your blog quota.

in other news, i'm protesting the latest issue of 'murder dog' magazine due to their ongoing lack of half-asians on the cover.

Chuck D? lol

Fair enough, Mr. Stipe

Just like reaching your comment quota magazines must sell themselves with the pictured pop stars. I don't see what the big deal is.
You are either preaching to the choir or wasting your time on such a non issue.
If you think it's that easy start your own magazine begin one tomorrow and we will see where you are at in two years.

*Yawn* Pretty whiny of you ask me. I wonder how far we'd get if we applied the same standards to The Stranger.

Odd that you would judge a magazine by its cover when you seem so concerned with fairness. Perhaps if you had read the entire press release...

And what exactly has Obama taught us in regards to your issues with the magazine? Please explain.

you are pathetic.
you don't see ppl blogging about how unfair it is that the stranger completely ignores about 90% of the bands in this city. let's apply affirmative action to your stupid newspaper and see how you like that. in the time you took to complain about someone else's magazine cover, you could've discovered a new band worth writing about. but that would take effort and we all know that most of the stranger's music writers avoid that like the plague.