In the first recorded instance of tact in its publishing history, Maxim has officially apologized to the Black Crowes for making up a bunch of stuff about what their album might have sounded like if they’d heard it. Says Maxim editorial director James Kaminsky in a statement released today:

“It is Maxim’s editorial policy to assign star ratings only to those albums that have been heard in their entirety. Unfortunately, that policy was not followed in the March 2008 issue of our magazine and we apologize to our readers.”

A pretty waffling apology, if you ask us. Kaminsky makes it sound like the issue at hand was less “our writer lied outright” than “we gave a specific star rating to a record we didn’t quite finish, and a policy was not followed by someone somewhere.” Note the Orwell-infuriating use of passive voice, the semantic judo move of saying it wasn’t heard in its entirety and the lack of calling out the writer by name (David Peisner, who has apparently also written for Metromix, which is owned by Tribune, which cuts my checks. I actually feel a bit bad for the guy in all this, as it’s not impossible that Maxim might have told him to go through with the fake review. Also, there’s this punishing bit of irony. “Blaming writers for the sorry state of music criticism today is sort of like blaming inmates for the sorry state of the prison system.” Indeed!).

One would think that if Peisner were a rogue reviewer firing off baseless opinions like a critical Yosemite Sam, Maxim would be first in line to distance itself from him, but the magazine didn’t here. There’s a whiff of malfeasance in the air to Maxim’s non-apology, but I guess this is where the magazine is drawing its lines for editorial honesty. Maxim’s not supposed to be the Economist or anything, but still. Next they’re going to tell me that their top 10 tips for talking your girlfriend into a threesome weren’t actually field-tested.

– August Brown

Photo: Glenn Koenig/Los Angeles Times