I'm not surprised.  First off, to completely upfront about this, I'm a 
former writer for Amplifier who left the magazine last fall, so take 
this with a grain of salt, but...yeah, I'm not surprised.  A couple of 
times towards the end of my tenure there, Joe Joyce spiked reviews of 
mine that were insufficiently complimentary towards records that had 
taken out ads and given the reviews to more complimentary writers, so 
this behavior logically follows.

Basically, the mag is currently on its...geez, I can't even keep count 
anymore, third or fourth I think...editor in the last two years, and 
this exchange smacks of desperation.  Joe is a smart guy, and I can't 
imagine that he would put something so astonishingly stupid in print 
if he weren't so incredibly desperate that he wasn't thinking clearly. 
The writing has been on the wall at Amplifier for a while now, and I'm 
sure that's affecting his judgment.  Still, it's sad to see.

S