There’s a bit of axe-grinding disguised as sloppy journalism in issue 31 of Signal to Noise. It’s a review of the recent Radiohead album by a guy named Mike Zimbouski where he slams Robert Christgau’s statement about Radiohead being now The Only Band That Matters and the future of rock. The best you can say about this is he didn’t catch Christgau’s irony or apparently read the piece closely enough. But when he goes on to say that Christgau writes “as if no band matters if they’re not a) based in New York, or b) signed to a major label” then you can just see he’s just never paid attention or done the proper research. Check Christgau’s Pazz & Jop list for 2002. Out of the top 10 albums, five are on major labels (counting Nonesuch) and only two artists are NYC-connected. If you look at the entire list of 91 albums, there are only 27 on majors by my count and not more than a couple dozen from NYC (I’m not about to look up each one but that’s a fairly decent rough count). For 2001 top 10s there six majors and three NYC if you count Cachaito and glances at the other lists are roughly the same (except for 2000).