Like a lot of magazines that cater to the fuddy-duddy set, the New Yorker has begun to make a play for some younger readers. No, they're not sponsoring a skateboard convention -- or even having a special issue guest-edited by those guys from South Park -- but the mag is putting its stamp on a new spoken word disc set for release on December 8.

What's so revolutionary about that, you might ask? Well, for starters, the powers-that-be have decided to hire on some intriguing orators for the project, matching Chuck D to the long-lost Mark Twain short story "Jim and the Dead Man" and bringing filmmaker Viggo Mortenson in for passages of Jack Kerouac's Journals 1948:1950.

To make matters more interesting -- or at least quite a bit noisier -- the producers of The New Yorker Out Loud have arranged for some decidedly new-school musical backing, including original compositions by L7's Donita Sparks and ubiquitous guitar freak Buckethead (who duets with X drummer D.J. Bonebrake on a number of pieces).

We'd suggest a sequel on which a gaggle of musicians actually read the material themselves, but the pool of pickers who've moved past comic books seems small enough to make that unlikely to happen.

DAVID SPRAGUE
(November 9, 1998)