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So, there I am, slavishly listening to the latest singles, forming opinions and writing them down for the world to see. Lowly, stupid blogger that I am.

The ‘big media’ way, the way they do reviews at at Maxim (and probably countless others who haven’t been caught), is to make up the review based on what you think the album might sound like.

That’s right, Maxim magazine writer David Peisner was caught red handed when he reviewed a copy of the latest Black Crowes album.

Why? Well, I’m glad you asked. The Black Crowes have stated categorically that Peisner couldn’t have heard the album (Warpaint, in case you care) because no advance copies were released to the media. So incensed were they that they decided to ‘out’ Maxim via their website.

You can’t beat good old-fashioned mud-slinging. Here’s some of the good stuff:

When approached for an explanation, the magazine described the review as “an educated guess preview.” Huh?

Black Crowes manager Pete Angelus says, “Maxim’s actions seem to completely lack journalistic integrity and intentionally mislead their readership. When confronted with the fact that they never heard the album they are claiming to ‘review’ in their music section–with a star rating, no less–they attempt to explain that it was an ‘educated guess.’ In an email correspondence, Maxim went on to state: ‘Of course, we always prefer to (sic) hearing music, but sometimes there are big albums that we don’t want to ignore that aren’t available to hear, which is what happened with the Crowes. It’s either an educated guess preview or no coverage at all, so in this case we chose the former.’”

I’ve often wondered how music journalists managed to churn out full album reviews so quickly. Let’s face it, you often can’t judge an album on first listen. Can you?

It’s not fair to the artist to get slated in a review when the reviewer hasn’t heard the album. They lose out in both reputation and sales. I know we’re not too sympathetic toward the artists these days, but there should be a bit of journalistic integrity as the Black Crowes’ manager claimed.

A number of commenters claim that it’s only Maxim, who cares? I’ll point you to my earlier point above - we don’t know how widespread this practice is and whether it stretches to more credible music mags.

Let me know what you think in the comments folks. And rest assured, I’ll continue listening to the songs before I review them!