Until about two years ago, 7D ran a weekly music section feature called "Pop Ten," which listed the top-selling albums from local record stores around the state. For a variety of reasons — the decline of the indie record shop, the challenge of culling the charts in a timely fashion each week, the desire to use the space for features people might actually read when not on the can, etc. — one of my first acts as Music Editor was to nix the piece. The downside? Not knowing how the latest Skynyrd reissue was charting in Barre from week to week. The upside? More live reviews, interviews and general flexibility within the music section at large. I think it was a fair trade-off.

Anyway, what wasn't good enough for Seven Days apparently is good enough for Rolling Stone magazine. Go figure. And if you picked up the latest issue featuring the Jonas Brothers on the cover . . . um, you've got serious problems, man. However, you also may have noticed a few familiar faces gracing the back page.

In addition to Billboard and college airplay charts, RS highlights a different indie shop in each issue under the title of "Local Favorites." And this time around they chose our very own Pure Pop Records! Sweet. Here is PPR's chart for the week ending June 16, 2009 (look closely):

1. Mos Def — The Ecstatic
2. Grizzly Bear — Veckatimest
3. Dirty Projectors — Bitte Orca
4. Dave Matthews Band — Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King
5. Lowell Thompson and Crown Pilot — Lowell Thompson and Crown Pilot
6. Booker T. — Potato Hole
7. Coalesce — Ox
8. J Dilla — Jay Stay Paid
9. Ben Harper and Relentless7 — White Lies for Dark Times
10. Iron and Wine — Around the Well

That's right. Lowell Thompson and Crown Pilot picked one hell of a week to chart at Pure Pop, scoring some serendipitous love from the national paper (magazine) of music record for their latest self-titled disc — to be reviewed in next week's issue by the illustrious Casey Rae-Hunter, BTW.

Not only that, but they even nabbed a snappy blurb and accompanying pic (left). Here's what RS has to say about our local twangy troubadour (see if you can spot the typo!):

"The Burlington, Vermont, singer rounds up two home-state heros — Phish's Page McConnell and blues rocker Grace Potter — to help out on his latest CD of Gram Parsons-inspired alt-country."

Awesome.

Now, a couple of things jump out at me here. First, it's a bummer Lowell's latest was bested by Dave Matthews Band under a national spotlight — really, Burlington? Second, the first time in years that a VT band not named Grace or Phish gets a pic in RS and it's the "band against a brick wall" deal? *Slaps forehead*

Needling aside, this is pretty freakin' cool, for both Lowell and Pure Pop. And also for 7D's Steve Hadeka (second from left), who looks positively fetching framed by brick, doesn't he?

Seriously though, congrats all around!