It has to be said that you'd need to be drugged up beyond salvation to stand even the slightest chance of appreciating the wank that NME deems worthy of coverage at the moment...

"This award goes to the people who can read the NME from cover to cover, alright?"

Mark E. Smith, Brats 1998.

Having just read through a stack of 1980s issues I can confirm it has taken a *massive* slump since Andrew Collins et al bowed out. If Stevie Chick or any one of those sods currently filling the pages with that less-words-more-pix-and-sarcasm style could achieve anything as good as 'Culture Vulture' I would be gobsmacked.

*sound of gauntlet thudding*

Even aside from the quality of the writing (which is awful), there is a fundamental problem with the actual ethos behind the publication. It seems that these days, music takes a back seat while 'issues' take precedence, even if the issues in question are a) largely fabricated and over-inflated and b) hardly topics of hot debate anyway (legalise cannabis? Yeah, fuck off back to 1966 then). This is all a cynical method of trying to attract those elusive 'more readers', when the grand irony is that if they actually covered music more - and maybe put a few bands, say Starsailor or Ladytron - who people are getting excited about at the moment on the cover - then readership would probably increase.

If I want to read something political, I'll buy a political publication. If the day should ever come when I actually require a 'lifestyle' magazine for any reason, then I'll buy "Loaded" (and probably spend hours looking at the Rachel Stevens photoshoot before I got round to reading the lifestyle articles). NME should not lose sight of the fact that it is supposed to be, first and foremost, about music.

*thud of gau... oh hang on, we've done that, haven't we?*

Monty Smith, Ian Penman, Danny Baker (Actually an incredibly funny writer in his day, especially his single reviews when he just took the piss), Julie Burchill, Tony Parsons(Im serious!), Charles Shaar Murray, Mat Snow............Them were the days. Gone forever, of course.

>'Since our teenager special was published in our last issue, drug use has dominated the week's news...'
>
>Right. So we're supposed to make some kind of "connection" here are we? I see.

In fairness to NME on that point, the exact quote is "Teenage drug use dominated the media last week following NME's youth survey and the arrest of three members of S Club 7 for cannabis possession." I think the expected interpretation might be that both are examples of drug news in the media and not that the first is linked to the second.

That said, it would be reasonable for a reader to draw the conclusion you've come to, and therefore the first two paragraphs could have been rewritten to avoid this. Which, up until recently, I would have done...

But they did do a lot of "issues" issues in the 80s - teenage suicide, etc.

Stephen Dalton's still there - surprising he didn't get a Guardian Arts job years ago.

But that sentence is deliberately phrased so that we infer a connection. That's what's annoying about it.

They've always done this, though. A few years back they interviewed Louise Wener from Sleeper (then famous for having "views")and asked her if she thought the BNP should be allowed party political broadcasts on television. She said 'Um, yes, probably...I mean, I think they're scum, but when you look at it, freedom of speech...' etc or somesuch nonedescript opinion. The following week, however, their news page ran a story about how the Anti Nazi League had 'reacted in anger' to her 'naive' comments. What was insulting was that the ANL had, of course, only done so because the NME had rung them up in the first place ('What do you think of Louise's comments?' 'What comments?' 'Erm, she said the BNP should be allowed on TV' 'Well, that's terrible, obviously...' 'OK, can we print that?').

I preferred NME when it was on Radio 4...

>I preferred NME when it was on Radio 4...

Smartarse.

>"It has to be said that you'd need to be drugged up beyond salvation to stand even the slightest chance of appreciating the wank that NME deems worthy of coverage at the moment... "

Yep, it's utter toss at the moment. It seems to have dive-bombed just in the last couple of weeks, since it had it's redesign. The teenagers issue was a joke - oooh they're all pissed-up on booze and crack. Except, presumably, the ones who buy Westlife and HearSay CDs and get straight 'A's.

Why do we have to put up with coverage of mindless nu-metal? Why are we being told Destiny's Child are any good?

I'd dearly love to stop buying it, but it's handy for knowing what LPs are out on Monday. And it occasionally reviews worthwhile albums, like Nick Cave this week.

I would definately agree that the NME has regressed to the pathetic "issues" front cover cop-out that they employed so regularly in the 80s, when they also had bugger all to write about.

What particularly gripes me is that when the NME ran the infamously shit "Youth Suicide" cover in the 80s, a far more deserving Lawrence from Felt was interviewed across the centre pages. The words "piss-up" and "brewery" spring to mind.

Having said that, the NME's championing of tripe such as Terris and Starsailor, bands who no-one REALLY likes, relies more on their commercial potential or ability to offer promises of "changing the world". (Yeah right). At the same time, a truly, truly excellent band like Hefner are given modest praise but are criticised for being rendolent of David Gedge and not pandering to the "sonic tractors" of Godspeed! You Black Emporer (see also the "sonic cathedrals" of moribund early 90s shoegazers and hope a similar fate in is store for Sigur Ros).

But maybe that's just me with my arses and elbows inserted correctly...(natch).

Paul

They're shitting themselves because they are now the only title in what used to be a fairly well established category. Going back a decade, you had the look-alike Sounds. Also Melody Maker, which was (hard to believe) the more pretentious version. Then Select came along, as a monthly glossy version.

Sounds was the first to fold, ages ago, then Select a while back, and most recently Melody Maker. Sounds was just a pointless carbon copy (like 7-Up or Lee jeans), but Select and Melody Maker both went down the tubes for the same reason: they tried to appeal to drugged-addled festival goers in stupid hats. Unfortunately, such people can rarely read. Now the NME is going the same way.

Anyway, even if it was worth reading, why pay for it?

http://www.nme.com

Sounds wasn't a carbon-copy of NME.

It was far more rockist, treating goth and death metal and old-hat hard rock with as much credence as The Wedding Present and The House of Love.

Ironic that its halfway house-ness (not a rock mag, not an indie rag) was what made Sounds the first to fold. Notice that the NME has decided to solve its problems by abandoning the pasty bedroom indie crowd and chasing the dreadlocked face-pierced fratboy rock ghastliness of Yank New Metal.

How long, then?

By going on constantly about how good hip-hop is, while at the same time going on constantly about how good 'nu-metal' and Terris (who never stood a chance anyway after everthing that has appeared (not that i like them though. obviously)) are, NME has lost any identity, or fun. I'm tempted to stop buying it, but it's the best way to find when albums are released (usually, although recently, i'm not so sure...)

And why did they stop 'banging on', just to bring in something exactly the same but why a tabloid style editor title?

It's a shame. It probably sounds wanky to say it, but I think my sense of humour when I was at sixth form college owed more to NME's Thrills pages and Munnery's 'The Truth' column than anything else. (Bent Halo, do you know if any of the Alan Parker columns are posted anywhere on the web?) Also, "The Changing Face of...", "Bismillah.. yes, we will let that one go", classics all. I still read it every week (old habits die hard), but nothing in it has made me laugh (or, more significantly, made me go out and buy a record) for about eight years. And what was all that shit they printed last year (well after April Fool's Day) about Shaun Ryder joining the Beatles? Honestly.

The latest April Fool was limp.

The Alan Parker columns are out there, though I've no idea if they're on-line. Corpses Towers holds a few in the dusty records room.

Not to mention the pathetic attempts to create new 'scenes' every couple of weeks (New wave of New Wave, Queercore, Romo, and now the New Acoustic Movement). It's like Lester Bangs never fucking happened.

New Wave Of New Wave actually *did* happen for a bit, before mutating into Britpop. On that occasion I feel they genuinely were just holding up a mirror to what was going on, and in fact it did seem to take them by surprise somewhat. One week they have Evan Dando on the front, the next there are nine or ten bands they suddenly have to start covering...

Mmmm. Was listening to Kinky Machine only last week.

Kinky Machine turned into the equally useless Rialto, who were also dropped.

Velocette never got any coverage, grrr.

Don't like to blow my own trumpet (oh but I do) but it was I who commissioned Simon M to write his gem-like Alan Parker column for the NME (just before I left in disgust at the apointment of Steve Sutherland as new editor in late 1992), but even then I didn't wield sufficient executive power to actually get it printed every week - those who remember it will also recall that it was usually shoved at the bottom of a page towards ther back of the paper undcer the crossword, and if we needed the space for a "turn" (ie continued end of a feature which no-one would read), AP would be dropped. I think I got Simon to do an Edinburgh report too. Thems was the days. (After myself and Maconie and others departed, Surtherland used to mock our "era" as "people sitting around in smoking jackets making jokes about pop music" - what a terrible world that would be, eh?) I can't possibly comment on the paper's decline since I left as it would sound like sour grapes.

Q was rubbish by the time you'd finished with it.

It was rubbish to start with, but that's not the point.

>Q was rubbish by the time you'd finished with it.
>
>It was rubbish to start with, but that's not the point.

More detail, you anonymous person. Not that I give a toss about the old mag any more.

>New Wave Of New Wave actually *did* happen for a bit, before mutating into Britpop. On that occasion I feel they genuinely were just holding up a mirror to what was going on, and in fact it did seem to take them by surprise somewhat. One week they have Evan Dando on the front, the next there are nine or ten bands they suddenly have to start covering...

In my best Smash-Hits-circa-1986 style:

1. Elastica
2. Menswear
3. Ummm...
4. That's it!

The worst of the worst of the worst crap "scenes" was without doubt Riot "Grrrl." The main ingredient needed for a "scene" is plenty to write about. Just don't try and enjoy listening to any of the records, oh dear me no. How boring and "muso"!

The best thing in Q magazine was Tom Hibbert's "Who does ... think he/she is?" interview column. You could buy a book of them at one point. And he used to write for Smash Hits in the mid 80's of course.

>In my best Smash-Hits-circa-1986 style:
>
>1. Elastica
>2. Menswear
>3. Ummm...
>4. That's it!

4. These Animal Men
5. Sleeper
6. S*M*A*S*H
7. Echobelly
8. Supergrass

...and I could go on!

Admittedly not exactly the greatest line-up in the history of music ever (with a couple of very obvious exceptions who continue to be fantastic), but they all had their moments. And it DID happen, and did catch the music press almost unaware, and no amount of the trademark Peter O foot-stamping obscenities that I have come to admire you for will change that fact.

>The worst of the worst of the worst crap "scenes" was without doubt Riot "Grrrl." The main ingredient needed for a "scene" is plenty to write about. Just don't try and enjoy listening to any of the records, oh dear me no. How boring and "muso"!

Yes, but Riot Grrrrrl did give us Huggybear's 'Herjazz', for which it can easily be forgiven.

I always liked the fact that a few people shouted at each other during The Word qualified as front page news... "This is happening without your permission" - woo!

The split LP HB did with er... Bikini Kill(?) was pretty good.

Voodoo Queens? Possibly not Too Pure records' greatest moment.

It's saying something when even the Xmas NME specials ain't worth reading, no more the pub quiz with Cud and Thousand Yard Stare... bah!

>>In my best Smash-Hits-circa-1986 style:
>>
>>1. Elastica
>>2. Menswear
>>3. Ummm...
>>4. That's it!
>
>4. These Animal Men
>5. Sleeper
>6. S*M*A*S*H
>7. Echobelly
>8. Supergrass
>
>...and I could go on!
>
>Admittedly not exactly the greatest line-up in the history of music ever (with a couple of very obvious exceptions who continue to be fantastic), but they all had their moments.

That's what I meant - a scene is typically one good band and a lot of cling-ons who dress similarly and go to the same pub, plus some completely unrelated good bands who get included by journalists trying to justify their theory. For my money, the good band in NWONW was Elastica. I saw them playing in a tiny club the week before 'Line Up' came out and it was fantastically exciting. And the award for excellent misfits goes to Supergrass.

"You've blackened our name. You should be ashamed!"

And then of course, there's the previously established band that jumps on the wagon. Step forward... Blur!

>Yes, but Riot Grrrrrl did give us Huggybear's 'Herjazz', for which it can easily be forgiven.

I think that was a fluke. It sounded like a speeded-up Fall record... (in a John Peel voice) which is, of course, no bad thing.

>And then of course, there's the previously established band that jumps on the wagon. Step forward... Blur!

Not _quite_ bandwagon jumpers... they were playing 'Popscene' live in 1991...

And "Popscene"'s connection with NWONW is...?

Riot Grrrl wasn't really a scene though. The bands existed before the name, it was just an easy way of pigeonholing girl-punk bands. Many of them are still around - look to Sleater Kinney (ex-members of Heavens to Betsy) and the recently reformed Bratmobile (new CD out now on Lookout). So there.

On the subject of NWONW, when I was 15 I loved These Animal Men. I suspect I'd be less keen now. Maybe it's time to dig out that copy of Too Sussed...

>And "Popscene"'s connection with NWONW is...?

That it was a New Wave Of New Wave record before most of the other bands had even formed.

>Maybe it's time to dig out that copy of Too Sussed...


I'm ahead of you there!

"She came home again, she was drunk and not my friend..."

Has everyone here got that record then?

Riot Grrrl was an American movement first, the NME got excited about covering its UK offshoot. They chose Huggy Bear as figureheads, if anyone's interested, because retarded NME scribbler Everett True used to share their flat.

Huggy Bear's "Weaponry" album (after the hype had died down) was quite good though. Like Cornershop, they got good as soon as the inkies started ignoring them and they could concentrate on the music rather than reiterating their manifesto for bored journos.

And don't forget that the Spice Girl's "Girl Power" thing was just a popped-up version of Riot Grrrl, spayed and neutered, borrowing the language and rhetoric and dressing it in a push up bra.

(BTW, the female fans I knew at the time of Grrrl found it very empowering to go to "hardcore" style gigs where they genuinely felt safe and in control, and for that it shouldn't be sneered at.)

"Riot Grrrl wasn't really a scene though. The bands existed before the name, it was just an easy way of pigeonholing girl-punk bands. Many of them are still around - look to Sleater Kinney (ex-members of Heavens to Betsy) and the recently reformed Bratmobile (new CD out now on Lookout). So there."

Bratmobile reforming? Huzzah!

The Bratmobile Peel Sessions album is brilliant, worth it just for the (30-second) lazy cover of "There's No Other Way" that beats the unnecessarily long original, and doesn't have the wanky guitar solo that the grrls rightly didn't bother to play. Brilliant stuff.

Shampoo did a "Girl Power" single & album a month or 2 before SG got started, in summer '96. I heard somewhere that Helen Love were the first band to ever use the phrase in a recorded lyric, but I have no idea if that's true. HL are a 1-idea band anyway.

If Andrew Collins drops in on this thread again, can I just offer belated (by about 10 years)commiserations on you and your family not doing too well on "Telly Addicts". You must have been devastated. Even when you met Rod Stewart at the Q awards, I bet this tragic event was still playing on your mind. Oh, and can you confirm that Steve Sutherland sounds like Bill Oddie when he speaks? Happy 36th Birthday.

......."Her Jazz" sounded like Silverfish doing the Batman theme. Everett True looks like Jim Broadbent. And Batmobile were ace. I wonder what The Lunachicks are doing nowadays?

>If Andrew Collins drops in on this thread again, can I just offer belated (by about 10 years)commiserations on you and your family not doing too well on "Telly Addicts".

We scraped through to the semis, mate. I was shit though. This one got me: who went from the Bangkok Hilton to the Hotel Du Lac? (Those fucking studio lights!)

>Oh, and can you confirm that Steve Sutherland sounds like Bill Oddie when he speaks?

Never thought about it before, but yes. I resigned a perfectly well-paid job because of him (Sutho, not Oddie.)

Who are you, with your pseudonym?

Actually, Im Ben Sinister! What larks!

>Riot Grrrl was an American movement first, the NME got excited about covering its UK offshoot. They chose Huggy Bear as figureheads, if anyone's interested, because retarded NME scribbler Everett True used to share their flat.

That was Melody Maker. Everett True was their resident middle-aged self-publicist, widely hated by all bands at the time. Well, Miki from Lush and some others I heard talking about him at gigs. He'd probably get an erection reading that now.

But that story perfectly illustrates what I mean by scenes.

TJ, the point is, "Popscene" was retrospectively converted into the prototype of NWONW after the scene had been invented. When it was actually released, it fitted quite obviously into Damon Allbran's obsession with the Kinks. It even had trumpets on it. It was "You Really Got Me." The actual link between Blur and NWONW is that bird from Elastica. Blur are basically a blend of Barret-era Pink Floyd (particularly his singing voice) and Ray Davies. I'm not having a go at Blur, I think they're excellent, particularly "The Great Escape" which is massively underrated. But Damon definitely plays the "scene" game for all he's worth. In his time, he's copied the Stone Roses, My Bloody Valentine, Oasis and Radiohead. He's only at his best when he's copying what he really loves (Kinks and Syd Barrett.)

>TJ, the point is, "Popscene" was retrospectively converted into the prototype of NWONW after the scene had been invented. When it was actually released, it fitted quite obviously into Damon Allbran's obsession with the Kinks. It even had trumpets on it. It was "You Really Got Me."

Can't agree with that at all sorry. More like a fusion of Can, The Buzzcocks and Memphis-era Rolling Stones. In fact, I can't detect much Kinks-ness in it at all. And I don't quite follow this "trumpets=Kinks" line of thought. None of their 'influential' singles featured brass of any sort, and in fact the only Kinks tracks I can think of where trumpets feature prominently are on that lousy 'live in the studio' album with the MIke Cotton Sound.

> The actual link between Blur and NWONW is that bird from Elastica. Blur are basically a blend of Barret-era Pink Floyd (particularly his singing voice) and Ray Davies.

And Bowie, The Sex Pistols, Magazine, Wire, Gary Numan, Can, Neu!, XTC, Nick Drake, Scott Walker, Pavement, Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Madness, Folk Implosion... Blur's influences are, quite simply, vastly wider ranging (and far better assimilated) than those of certain other bands who get away with ripping off one band outright...

> I'm not having a go at Blur, I think they're excellent, particularly "The Great Escape" which is massively underrated. But Damon definitely plays the "scene" game for all he's worth. In his time, he's copied the Stone Roses, My Bloody Valentine, Oasis and Radiohead. He's only at his best when he's copying what he really loves (Kinks and Syd Barrett.)

Fair enough Peter O, and I _know_ it's only your opinion, but it is a) a sweeping one and b) something of a contradiction. You seem to be veering between saying Blur jumped the bandwagon of NWONW, and then saying they had nothing to do with it whatsoever.

No offence intended (and I'm sure none taken), but if I'm going to have a good verbal ruck about Blur, I do like to know exactly what I'm arguing about...

I wonder what The Lunachicks are doing nowadays?

Still around, on Go Kart Records. They toured the UK earlier this year (or it might have been late last year) and they appeared in the film Terror Firmer which was on Channel 4 recently.

"No offence intended (and I'm sure none taken), but if I'm going to have a good verbal ruck about Blur, I do like to know exactly what I'm arguing about..."

Why wasn't "Never Clever" released?

Other news: judging from his review of the the most overpaid pub band's latest album (Stereophonics), Steve Sutherland's mid-life crisis seems to be continuing into its 4th year...

>Why wasn't "Never Clever" released?

Because after 'Popscene' bombed, the record label halted work on the intended accompanying album, and ordered Blur to write some new songs. It did later show up as a b-side, though.

But that would make it too easy. The ins and outs of Blur aren't really what I'm guffing on about. All I'm saying is that "scenes" are mainly weak theories fitted onto a lot of foolishness by journalists in a long-defunct niche weekly "Rock news" publication genre.

What are Can like?

""scenes" are mainly weak theories"

The NME are appalling when it comes to creating stupid little scenes - New Acoustic Movement - what's that all about?
Ha. I'm also having fun looking through relatively old NME and the fronts covers in particular - "Terris - the band of 2000".
It just makes you want to shout "stop giving us bands we don't want!". Yeah, but listen to the soul.

And this week's non-story is? REM dismiss Eminem as "prepackaged". (The subtext being "Men as old as your dads* are slagging off our current hero (well, sort of)! Why not write in and inaccurately say they've recorded nothing good since Automatic For The People?")


*Though not as old as Sutherland, I suspect. I think he's about 45. Andrew?

Did you see that bloke from the NME on watchdog? ho ho... Stickin' up for the kids yeah!

>And this week's non-story is? REM dismiss Eminem as "prepackaged". (The subtext being "Men as old as your dads* are slagging off our current hero (well, sort of)! Why not write in and inaccurately say they've recorded nothing good since Automatic For The People?")
>
>*Though not as old as Sutherland, I suspect. I think he's about 45. Andrew?

The "Almost Famous" issue of NME has him as having started at NME (ie Melody Maker) in 1980. He apparently has a degree in English literature as well, which would put him in his mid-forties or later.

With regard to the subtext, I must admit that personally I don't see it that way. I do think it's a non-story though.

On the other hand, someone has to protect us from THA MAN who puts all those wanky bollock men on Radio 2 such as David Gray. RIGHT ON!

On the other hand, someone has to protect us from THA MAN who puts all those wanky bollock men on Radio 2 such as David Gray. RIGHT ON!

PS. I'm a fire starter!

Steve Sutherland is 45 this year. He became the editor of NME in 1992, after a lot of contrived Whizz-Kid v Chip-ite style rivalry betwixt NME and the Melody Maker (of which the Suthster had previously been a long-standing contributor, not sure if he ever got to be ed.). Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke royally ripped the piss out of him for this,and Andrew Collins resigned, mainly because he was scared of Sutho s big red-and-black pet snake. As Collster was leaving the NME office for the final time, a pre-balding David "Clark Kent" Quantick opened the door that Collster was just about to walk through. The door knob hit him in the eye and gave him yet another accidental shiner, much to the chagrin of his mum. Do you see what Ive done here?
......I wonder what Cath Carrols doing nowadays.....and Odd-Ball, for that matter.

Sutherland was the man who reviewed Vic Reeves' album "I Will Cure You" (Island, 1991) in the Melody Maker and kept referring to him as Prick Reeves! Hilarious! No wonder he hates any journalists who (ha!) try to be funny, eh? (Sadly for him, 95% of good British pop journos have been able to do jokes.)

Similarly, I remember reading Melody Maker in 86 just after EMI signed Sigue Sigue Sputnik for "£4m" (more like £80,000, apparently). Sutherland wrote the sort of pieces which were so ridiculously and laughably OTT that you could imagine him after the event saying, with a shrug, "Yeah, well, of course those bits weren't *meant* to be taken seriously". Twerp.

Ahhhh, so can we blame him for the travesty that was Transvision Vamp?

>Ahhhh, so can we blame him for the travesty that was Transvision Vamp?

That was Chris Roberts' fault, though he's another suspect in the takes-himself-too-seriously camp.

"Similarly, I remember reading Melody Maker in 86 just after EMI signed Sigue Sigue Sputnik for "£4m" (more like £80,000, apparently). Sutherland wrote the sort of pieces which were so ridiculously and laughably OTT that you could imagine him after the event saying, with a shrug, "Yeah, well, of course those bits weren't *meant* to be taken seriously". Twerp."

And of course NME retaliated with Paul Morley's "Would you pay £4m for this crap?" analysis of SSS...

>"Similarly, I remember reading Melody Maker in 86 just after EMI signed Sigue Sigue Sputnik for "£4m" (more like £80,000, apparently). Sutherland wrote the sort of pieces which were so ridiculously and laughably OTT that you could imagine him after the event saying, with a shrug, "Yeah, well, of course those bits weren't *meant* to be taken seriously". Twerp."
>
>And of course NME retaliated with Paul Morley's "Would you pay £4m for this crap?" analysis of SSS...

Point taken, but I don't think Morley is guilty of taking *himself* or pop too seriously. And at least he hasn't spent 20 years trying in vain to be where "ver kids" are at. Plus, Nothing is great.

(btw Morley on A Good Read, R4, 11pm)

"Nothing is great"?
Do you have to be so cynical? I mean,really, the youth of today. I blame that Chris Moyles-you never used to get Mike Read acting the way he does.


(I know the title of the Morleybook. Look, somebody had to come out with this,OK?)
(The reply to the previous posting, not the book, I mean)

>pre-balding David "Clark Kent" Quantick

What on earth does that mean?!

....That there was a time when his hair wasnt thinning, and, what with his glasses and all, he looked a bit like Supermans alter ego.Happy to oblige.

In the NME's 40th birthday issue (1992), Quantick claimed he'd got a job for writing a letter to them complaining about an article favourable to Bob Seger.

Stepehn Dalton also claimed to have got work from an Angst letter, whilst Andrew Collins put it down to some fanzine he'd done.

>In the NME's 40th birthday issue (1992), Quantick claimed he'd got a job for writing a letter to them complaining about an article favourable to Bob Seger.
>
>Stephen Dalton also claimed to have got work from an Angst letter, whilst Andrew Collins put it down to some fanzine he'd done.

True. (You see, dreams can come true!) One issue. Sold about 20 copies. Called 'This is This'. Had an article about water metaphor in Lloyd Cole's lyrics, one about Tony Hancock and a biting parody of Gerry Sadowitz's then-Time Out column.

Yes I have.

I recently found a Level 42 review by Quantick, from one of his first issues in 1983. Joy itself. It will appear on SOTCAA soon.

Ish.

>I recently found a Level 42 review by Quantick, from one of his first issues in 1983. Joy itself. It will appear on SOTCAA soon.

Ah, but have you got the review of Jamie Wednesday (pre-Carter USM), in which Quanto coined the phrase "pop will eat itself", later adopted by the underrated Midlands beat group from the Midlands.

No, nor have I.

(Oh, and I will reply to your email.)

I should note here, for the record and not in any way as a limp attempt at advance self-promotion, that myself, Stuart Maconie and David Quantick are planning a three-man assult on Edinburgh this year with an evening of rock anecdotes from the golden period of the NME 1987-1992. Talk about narrowcasting! (Further details to come.)

We were planning to plug it anyway!

>myself, Stuart Maconie and David Quantick are planning a three-man assult on Edinburgh this year with an evening of rock anecdotes

Will you all be gazing somewhere over the audience's right shoulders and reminiscing about how actually it was all just risible and you never liked it anyway? Or will that just be one of you?

>Will you all be gazing somewhere over the audience's right shoulders and reminiscing about how actually it was all just risible and you never liked it anyway? Or will that just be one of you?

I think we'll be saying it was all great, except for Lou Reed. Haven't actuially written it yet or anything - but then I don't suppose Cambridge Footlights have either and I bet they've thought of a title for the brochure.

>
>Why do we have to put up with coverage of mindless nu-metal? Why are we being told Destiny's Child are any good?

At the moment Destiny's Child seem to be the only group able to combine success with producing songs of any quality whatsoever. Being a manufactured band they are anathema to those who perpetuate the 'rock snob' attitude displayed in your comment. While I am not against 'worthy' musicians like Nick Cave etc etc, I believe it is wrong to ignore pop acts when they finally do get it right. Like TLC a few years ago (although I'm unsure of their beginnings) Destiny's Child are continuing the Motown tradition of music that is both manufactured AND damn catchy. Listen without prejudice

It's "Rock snob Why Don't You?"

Before they close it down, go to Napster and spend a night spooling off your favourite twelve Destiny's Child-style floorfillers from the last year (Kelis, MisTeeq, Jameliah, whatever), whichever ones you grudgingly grunted "s'OK, I suppose" to when it was playing in someone else's car.
Burn it to a CD and tell me you want to listen to anything else for the next week.

Kelis and Jill Scott rock. A lot of their R&B contemporaries are still bloody bland, though.

(The only thing that gives me solace is the thought that somewhere out there Chris Morris is probably listening to them all backwards trying to detect stanic messages.)

And of course "satanic".

I think we all know where to look to find "stanic" messages...

I remember Sutherland's particularly snidey review of Maconie's Blur book a while back - he couldn't deny that it was good (giving it 7/10) but felt the need to insert lots of personal abuse (something about his irritating writing style or something - this from S. Sutherland, the man whose writing style is possibly more irritating (not to mention patronising, arrogant and condescending) than anyone else's on the planet)
Forgive my ignorance but what was the nature of the feud betwixt Collins and Sutherland?

>Forgive my ignorance but what was the nature of the feud betwixt Collins and Sutherland?

1992. Popular, rotund, football loving NME editor Danny Kelly leaves for pastures Q. Various NME staffers publicly apply for job - in name of continuity at what was a great time for the NME - Steve Lamacq, Stuart Maconie, Andrew Collins, Gavin Martin, James Brown and Brendan Fitzgerald (the people's choice, non-nonsense Antipodean Deputy Ed). None of whom even got the courtesy of a second interview - instead we were all shocked to find that MM deputy ed Steve Sutherland would be "crossing the floor" from Melody Maker to be our new boss - just weeks after a pathetic live review in MM which he wrote saying that Suede were all that MM stood for (grace, glamour, originality) and Kingmaker were all that NME stood for (lumpen, crappy stude rock). It was typical of his useless writing style and his imagined "feud" between the papers - both owned by IPC and one floor apart in the same building. We at NME did hate the MM, but mainly because they all crossed an NUJ picket line that very year, despite our pleading of solidarity. So we were going to be run by a scab who'd tried to turn NME vs MM into column inches for cheap effect. And we'd heard he was a tosser. Lamacq and Mary Anne Hobbs resigned at exactly the same time as the announcement. I resigned later that day, only to be talked back into working under Sutho for a few weeks, which I did - hated it, hated him, hated the atmopshere, and I eventually left. (Stuart followed a month or two later once Lamacq and I were installed at Select and could offer him a lifeline. James Brown stayed at IPC - they gave him carte blanche to start his own magazine - the rest is history.)

I don't hate Sutherland. I just think he's a fortysomething who pretends to be down with the kids. I hope I'm never like that.

There has been a fair amount of Maconie bashing in Thrills recently, inevitably attacking his 'I Laugh At The 70s/80s' contributions.

Honestly, it's like dismissing everything Danny Baker ever wrote on the basis of 'Pets Win Prizes'.

And 'Win Lose Or Draw'.

And 'TFI Friday'.

And his football videos.

And his chat shows.

.....mind you, "Win, Lose or Draw " was actually quite good- "My sumptuos apartment, overlooking the rent". Cracked me up every time. Now you know whats wrong with the country.

To the Maconie bashers,

I don't really want to overwork the Maconie/Baker parallel but there is a clear line in that both are great critics who have compromised their reputation with either average or suspect work.

Of course shows like 'The Bottom Line' and 'Pets Win Prizes' are inexcusable. Baker would be the first to say this. 'Win, Lose Or Draw' I never watched and, yes, 'TFI Friday' was to a large degree horrible, but note how much further it dropped when Baker left.

None of this robs him of the quality of his journalism. Not an ounce of it. His 'Sniffin' Glue' work is great (buy the omnibus now!) and I've had the pleasure of reading most of his NME work in the recent past. On top of that his appearances in Q were always a highlight, whenever he graced it with his presence.

Search out tapes of his Radio 5 breakfast show 'Morning Edition' (Justin has been very kind in this department), or the Radio 1 show which ran between 1993 and 1996. His economy as a DJ is astounding, always aware of when he is about to overegg an item and incredibly well connected to his audience. As for his other radio work, his two editions of 'Room 101' are joy unconfined. I'm sure Justin and TJ can step in with examples a-plenty.

From my understanding, there does appear to be a vast gulf that opens up when an NME, or indeed any, critic moves into television. Baker has made a series of bad moves, but on the whole has always thrown himself into them with an attitude that shows a love of the medium and the audience, rather than just placing himself on an undeserved plateau. Davina MacColl is far more offensive because she merely thinks that she is talented, based on the wholly incorrect assumption that because she could form a sentence as an MTV presenter she can do anything and be everywhere. Baker has never been so vapid, and at least has had the dignity to step down as a TV performer and concentrate on writing.

As to Maconie, there is a huge list of great work. Andrew would be better skilled at explaining what happened after their gold run together, but even a cursory listen to his work on 'Hit Parade', 'Mark Radcliffe', 'Evening Session', 'The Treatment', 'Mediumwave' and his own shortlived 'Album Show' will demonstrate his capabilities as an engaging presenter and *highly* informed critic. Go further back to his scribblings for Q, NME (Thrills when it was funny) and more evidence reveals itself.

There then followed, in 1997, 'Collins & Maconie's Movie Club' which lasted two or three series on ITV before being axed. I still remember the proud announcement of this show on the Mark Radcliffe programme by Andrew, hinting that all options were open to them. I've no idea what happened afterwards, other than the �we weren't blonde� theory, but the cancellation did seem to rob Maconie of his main outlets. He's soldiered on with radio work but once that direct line between 'Evening Session' and 'Movie Club' was broken, a loss was felt by anyone who had grown used to him as an integral part of Mark Radcliffe's show � he was, and still is, one of those people you just *expect* to be great.

But here is the parallel. Maconie and Baker have both launched into TV inadvisedly; perhaps to eek out a living, or more likely to find their feet. Of course '100 Greatest Moments From TV Hell' was a dog. I was mortified to discover Stuart had written Zoe Ball's script, and I do agree with the thrust of almost everything in Joe and Mike's article. But even they wouldn't dismiss his work in toto. See below, in Mike's thread for 'Stuart Maconie's Critical List', a perfectly valid if line-toeing show which would brighten up any Saturday night.

A little story now, about 'I Laugh at the 70s/80s', as related to me by one of the contributors. He informed me that each vox pop simply involves the contributor being asked to sit in a chair, in front of a blue-screen and have a series of subjects barked at them � �Boys From The Blackstuff!�, �Network 7!�, etc � and they are then expected to come up with the goodies. If they have a carefully planned argument then they are buggered, and even if they manage to state their case it can easily be fiddled with in editing. One particular item damned a popular beat group of the period, with this unnamed contributor shocked to discover that all of his positive comments about the singer (a good friend) had been crudely edited. The series is dreadful: unimaginatively edited and appallingly researched by people who genuinely don't give a fuck. Blame them instead. Maconie was the least of it.

This Stuart-bashing is just tiresome. To dismiss his every action in the present without even bothering to put it in context or rationalise *why* he is doing it, is deeply stupid, especially if it's for the sake of a rather lame joke as has been the case for several months now on NOTBBC foraa. There *are* better targets out there.

Returning to the issue of NME's current state, I can visualise omnibus editions of the writing of Baker, Maconie, Quantick, in the same way that Parsons and Savage have been rewarded in recent y

...Parsons and Savage have been rewarded in recent years (add to the list). They all have a quality which towers over the current writing staff on the 'paper. Tell me that in twenty years time we'll all be buying 'The Complete Stevie Chick' or 'Johnny Cigarettes: The Collected Drinking Anecdotes' and I'll laugh, bitterly.

And Davina can fuck off.

BH

I agree that Danny Baker's radio shows were brilliant, and I'd be a happy man if he were back on air. Ditto Maconie on Radcliffe. And they're both good journalists. I think for me that's what makes their abysmal TV work all the more galling - you know they're better than that.

On one particular episode of "Win Lose Or Draw" (Im sorry, but its under-rated)one of the R-list celebs-Tommy Boyd,maybe - had to draw loads of things in quick succession, one of which was "The Pope". The celeb declined, to which Baker replied "You passed on The Pope-you AND Henry The Eighth...."
Baker has always been a funny man who made bad (but probably lucrative) career choices. Maybe the end finally came when he saw fit to become the stooge of Evans....

Johnny Cigarettes has written good and funny things in his time. I just thought that should be pointed out. I am not him though.

Not long after he started at NME, Cigarettes did a series of articles called "Get A Life", which were his zany, sideways look at aspects of modern life. I often wondered if he was recycling old stand-up routines. Anyone know?

Exactly, MOST of them are crap. Some aren't. And no, I wouldn't want to listen to it for a week, but I would rather the charts were dominated by not-so-crap rather than completely crap bands.

"All them down there as well, they went to the CURDS man!"

I have despaired at Maconie's involvement in I Love The 80s (and that Theakston interview in GQ a couple of months ago made me visibly cringe - I hope Maconie has now been offered better work than writing links for the next series of the execrable A Question Of Pop). But, quite apart from his sterling work for NME and Select down the years, his 1999 Blur biography was wonderful and frank, and his Northern Soul series for Radio 2 was highly enjoyable (for any doubters, think about this: it could have been Sean Rowley. Be grateful).

As for Baker, I am still not sure there's been a funnier piece in the music press in the last ten years than his "Two record collections" piece (Q, late 1991). Serious serious suggestion: anyone know who his agent is? I feel it's high time Baker's material for NME was rediscovered via an anthology. Apart from his tremendous Jacksons piece for the NME (1981) which appeared in the Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy (title?) compilation volume a few years book, none of it survives. Scandalous.

I forgot this bit in the above message: Bent Halo very kindly gave me a copy of a Radcliffe show from late 1996 with Peel sitting in as guest host. With a panel of Stewart Lee, Richard Herring and (yes) Stuart Maconie, it is zoo radio at its most entertaining and hilarious. Includes Peel's peerless "being nearly beaten up by two of The Goodies" anecdote.

BH also gave me a copy of the very last Baker show from R1. Equally marvellous. To all those who lost interest in Baker after "those" Daz/Mars adverts, or Pets Win Prizes: you have no idea what you missed out on. (TV Heroes, BBC1, 1993-94, for one thing. Not everything he did on telly was disappointing.)

>Bent Halo very kindly gave me a copy of a Radcliffe show from late 1996 with Peel sitting in as guest host. With a panel of Stewart Lee, Richard Herring and (yes) Stuart Maconie, it is zoo radio at its most entertaining and hilarious. Includes Peel's peerless "being nearly beaten up by two of The Goodies" anecdote.

That was one of the most joyous bits of radio ever transmitted. "And I was saved from these marauding rampaging Goodies...by Robert Plant"

>That was one of the most joyous bits of radio ever transmitted. "And I was saved from these marauding rampaging Goodies...by Robert Plant"

Although I loved the show when Radcliffe was fronting it, I also used to love it when the guest presenters stood in, as they were all (without exception) ideally suited to the tone of the programme.

And, of course, there was the time when Lard stood in for an absent Mark Kermode to present 'Cult Film Corner'...


Hey, 93 posts! This is turning into the 'Best Local TV Programmes' of the SOTCAA forum. NIIIIIIIIIIIIICE!

"And, of course, there was the time when Lard stood in for an absent Mark Kermode to present 'Cult Film Corner'..."

One of my favourite Mark&Lard moments was when Kermode (who I've never liked) was gassing on about the marvellous use of incidental music in, I think, "Midnight Cowboy", in particular some very poignant scene or other. To which Radcliffe said: "Yes... we've got that haunting music here..."... and then played some cheesy organ music.

Oh you had to be there... but I could never take Kermode seriously ever again after that moment.

>That was one of the most joyous bits of radio ever transmitted. "And I was saved from these marauding rampaging Goodies...by Robert Plant"

RICH: "You were being attacked by Tim Brooke-Taylor and you needed ROBERT PLANT to help you?!"

(sound of entire room howling)

"...and of course, I'm not one to blow my own trumpet, but" [pa-pa-paaaaaaaa, papa-paaaa-paaaa-papa-paaaaaaaaaaaa]

Weyhey, back to M&L again! Fits in nice with the Maconie stuff as Stuart filled in for the last week of the programme as I recall. I'm sure I've got on tape somewhere the phone call to Mister Collins from Lard dobbing Stuart in for working on the show, and suggesting he needs a new 'oppo'. An mp3 will follow if I find it.

And if Joe would like to bump up an mp3 of the aforementioned John Peel section I'd be forever grateful in a very special sort of way. :)

Just remembered (going back 2 weeks or so) that the Huggy Bear/Word incident was splashed all over the front of the Muddly Maker, rather than the NME. The ET connotations should have made me think. Sarah Cracknell once dissed him on a Radio1 St. Etienne concert, after a particularily scathing review of the wonderful "So Tough" LP.

He must still have been so bitter about Alan McGee melting down all his unsold copies of '73 In '83...

He did indeed fill in the last week - last record played: To the End by Blur. Very poignant.

>And if Joe would like to bump up an mp3 of the aforementioned John Peel section I'd be forever grateful in a very special sort of way. :)

The show's on my list of encodement priorities. Bent - do you have the full broadcast there or will I have to edit 'Boys Are Wired Wrong' by Sten in from my white-label acetate?

I'll try and send a Real file of the Goodies anecdote down the line for Rob to stick up this weekend though.

GET TO BED!

>Bent - do you have the full broadcast there or will I have to edit 'Boys Are Wired Wrong' by Sten in from my white-label acetate?

Not the full broadcast, but I was very careful with the edits. Absolutely all the chat is left in, plus theme tune, et al. I don't know what your copy is like...I can supply some of the missing records, oh, and Eilart Pilarm is fully intact on my copy ("He looks the simpleton").

There are four Lee/Herring appearances (all of them) available for MP3age this end. When my CDR is finally sorted, I'll be making a start on the Graveyard Shift double CD (circ.70hrs)...

>Not the full broadcast, but I was very careful with the edits. Absolutely all the chat is left in, plus theme tune, et al. I don't know what your copy is like...I can supply some of the missing records, oh, and Eilart Pilarm is fully intact on my copy ("He looks the simpleton").

STEWART: (cackling at the CD cover) For anyone listening, he looks like the big baby man from Shooting Stars.

My copy is edited in much the same way. I think Mike's is stretched over about five or six tapes. I'm sure we can rebuild it with a bit of effort.

And if we get stuck we could always write to Peel for the full playlist ("...it was a reggae track - I think it had the word 'Jah' in it...").

It's nice to know that some people had the nous to realise that these shows would be so important 5 or 6 years or so down the line. Actually, I remember them reading out a letter from someone who taped every show, and dubbed all the music onto one tape and all the other stuff onto another!

So why doesn't anyone do this with the Chris Moyles show? Eh?

(ps. cheers joe!)

Marc Riley programmed the playlist for the Peel shows, allowing John a handful of indulgences here and there (hence Sten). I'll contact Marc and see what he can do. Thank God I have the tx date, that's all I can say.

Riley has little memory of the Graveyard Shifts though: "All that stuff is in boxes somewhere...", said he. I'll bribe him with the complete Creepers on CD or something...

Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai had a letter read out during the Peel/L&H show, which would probably make the Chemikal Underground obsessives sweat from every pore.

Joe, do you mean we have three copies between us? Were we all editing out the rhythms?

BH

Whilst the tapes are nearby, those L&H shows in full:

20/06/95 MR, Lard, Richard Herring, John Hegley & Nigel.

30/07/96 MR, Stewart Lee & Lisa Germano

16/10/96 John Peel, Stewart Lee, Richard Herring & Stuart Maconie

10/12/96 MR, Lard, Stewart Lee & Richard Herring.

Here we are then. Three lovely minutes of it.

http://mudhole.spodnet.uk.com/~frogger/corpses/peel.rpm

(This clip also includes something which will amuse Don Was...)

Nice one Joe, ta very much! It's a great anecdote, even after all the airings...

Bloody hell, the Bill Oddie Dandelion single, On Ilkla Moor Naht'at, backed with Harry Khrishna... I'd totally forgotten about that. The follow up to 'We Love Jimmy Young b/w Irish Get Out'...

What program do I need to play this? I don't seem to have it.


>Here we are then. Three lovely minutes of it.
>
>http://mudhole.spodnet.uk.com/~frogger/corpses/peel.rpm
>
>(This clip also includes something which will amuse Don Was...)

Real Audio's "Real Player G2". It's free at:

http://proforma.real.com/real/player/player.html?src=010413realhome_1,010413rpchoice_h1&dc=424423422

The new issue is a contender for the weakest I've ever seen. The news section is becoming a PR-fest for Eminem (translation: Pleeeeeeze come and be interviewed by us. Since Robbie stormed out in 98 (his one sensible action in the last five years of his life), we haven't had another pop star that we can try writing supposedly interesting stuff about). This week, we get "Eminem inspires gay porn lookalike". What happened to items like "Records coming out", then?

Also, cretinous replies galore from Mark Beaumont (or Steve Sutherland Junior, as he's fast becoming) on Angst whenever anyone dares to suggest that NME is balls these days. Admittedly, Jean Encoule argues that Parsons, Burchill and Bushell epitomised a better era for NME (try Baker and Morley and we might be getting somewhere), whereupon Beaumont slags them for being on the telly, and (ha!) old. What is particularly remarkable about Beaumont's ripostes, though, is that they are clearly the outpourings of a man who knows he has two options in his life: either writing badly-thought out singles reviews for The Guardian Guide in about five years time, or still being at the NME. Neither of which is progress. He even signs off with "It'd be like people in 20 years time reminiscing about Jim Wirth...", which is probably intended to be amusing, but isn't, because:
1) He sincerely wishes that "The Class Of 2001" will be remembered fondly in 20 years.
2) Jim Wirth is no good in any case.
3) I would be extremely surprised if the NME is still here in five years, the rate it's going.

Rant over. But I've saved myself a stamp.

>What are Can like then?

They doo right.

>>What are Can like then?
>
>They doo right.

Well, I want more...

and more and more and more...

Everybody...

"3) I would be extremely surprised if the NME is still here in five years, the rate it's going."

It'll be 50 years old next year. Maybe IPC will give it one last revamp. Or just switch off the life-support.

The Sutherland/Robbie thing was pitiful, just a ridiculous prima-donna throwing a tantrum because a popstar couldn't be bothered to talk to him. Maybe Robbie's agent had seen the latest sales figures and booked him to speak to some Belgian fanzines instead.

>Since Robbie stormed out in 98 (his one sensible action in the last five years of his life)

are you suggesting robbie is dead! say it ain't so or i shall have to phone the samaritans.
nnnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What's wrong with *this* NME thread, then?

INcidentally, after hearing about the Collins/Maconie/Quantick reunion for Edinburgh, I'm delighted to be able to predict a marvellous residency for Edinburgh August 2011:

"Chick/Empire/Beaumont - Eminem's The Only Album We Can Remember"
(A Reminiscence From Rock's Millennial Cul-De-Sac)

Meanwhile, Stephen Dalton will be reviewing cigars for The Mail On Sunday, and Victoria Segal will call a new single "vacuous" on page 9 of The Leaflet in The Saturday Telegraph.

Steve Sutherland, of course, will be collecting glasses in a student pub in Hackney, and shouting the names of unpopular rock bands every now and again.

I don't care, I'm carrying on with this thread. I'm just looking forward to finding some of my other ideas and opinions get pilfered virtually-word-for-fucking-word to start other important-looking NME threads further down the page.

It's not just the NME which appears to be getting thinner. The new Q features near-identical articles on Ash and Depeche Mode, and a Travis interview that I will never ever even glance at. The Ant & Dec interview, though, is pretty good. But the whole magazine took 20 minutes to read. And cost three quid.

And the Depeche mode article is exactly like all other Depeche mode articles.

On the subject of Depeche Mode in Q, I was wondering it was the same article as the "Ultra" era interview/therapy session thing with some new pics tacked on........

Pity poor little Gahan Jnr.

Sob.

>On the subject of Depeche Mode in Q, I was wondering it was the same article as the "Ultra" era interview/therapy session thing with some new pics tacked on........

Not quite, but Dorien Lynskey's piece basically regurgitates the facts unearthed in Phil Sutcliffe's actually-newsworthy Ultra piece. That's the way with music writing. You just reycle the story from The Last Album and update it with details of The New Album. (Which is why you have to leave the world of music journalism, otherwise the magic starts to rub off.)

Did anyone else think that the new Q was unnaturally obsessed with drugs? I mean, why bother having a special Drugs Issue as they did a few months back? It smacks - ha! - of childish voyeurism to me. isn't Q supposed to be a grown-up magazine?

I speak as an ex-contributor, now underwhelmed reader.

"But the whole magazine took 20 minutes to read. And cost three quid."

That's terrible value for money. NME costs just over a pound, and also takes 20 minutes to read.

andrew> is it grown up? i dunno, last time i read it i think they had a review of daphne and celeste in it.
grown up = boring i feel. fanzines are where it's at.

>fanzines are where it's at.

The internet are where it's at.

Q4music.com better than Q.
NME.com better than NME.
Other unaffiliated websites better than both of them.

>>fanzines are where it's at.
>
>The internet are where it's at.
>
>Q4music.com better than Q.
>NME.com better than NME.
>Other unaffiliated websites better than both of them.
>
>

There are still some fanzines that are better than any website. And no, I _don't_ neccessarily mean mine...

That Q Drugs issue was embarrassing in its attempt to woo "ver kids". Faintly disgusting, actually, not for moral reasons, simply reasons of value and interest.

I reckon you can trace the death of the music press back to August 1997, and the release of Be Here Now, the album that received five stars or ten out of ten from just about every paper, shit scared that they wouldn't get any interviews from Oasis (or no doubt, other Creation artists) if they showed any sign of disdain at what was (let's face it) an overlong piece of piss (in both senses of the word). Reviews that said "tuneless", "unimaginative", "turgid lyrics" etc. somehow ended up with full marks. Funny how the big guns almost never end up with poor marks, even though the reviews might suggest that. (A recent example: John Aizlewood's pretty good Manic Street Preachers review in the last but one Q, which somehow gets bumped up to three stars. This, given the review that precedes it, makes no sense whatsoever.)

I once heard Taylor Parkes, who reviewed "Be Here Now" for Melody Maker, say that he was told to warn them if he didn't like it, so they could give the job to someone else. In the event his review got edited anyway ie. the critical bits cut out.

But then again, an album like BHN (like U2 albums, like Bon Jovi etc.) will sell pretty much regardless of what any critic says about it.

I've noticed in a lot of music papers (though the NME is particularly guilty), that they will give *really* low marks to any band that's clearly past its prime, and not in the interest of its readership, whereas a favourite of the readers will get a middling mark, even if the reviews are both saying "It's crap". (Perfect example: Neil Finn's 2/10 and The Stereophonics 5/10, on the same page, I seem to remember.)

I'm obviously not going to include Johnny Cigarettes giving a Stereolab album zero out of ten, because he was clearly a twat who knew nothing.

>Other unaffiliated websites better than both of them.

Can you suggest some? Last week's NME was my last but I still need to know what's coming out.

>I'm obviously not going to include Johnny Cigarettes giving a Stereolab album zero out of ten, because he was clearly a twat who knew nothing.


Agreed.

Similarily, Melody Maker Gave 'Kid A' a reallly low mark and bad review, bacuase they wanted to be controversial and not really for any other reason it appeared. Near the end of its life of course.

>
>>Other unaffiliated websites better than both of them.
>
>Can you suggest some? Last week's NME was my last but I still need to know what's coming out.
>

As is the way with these things, www.freakytrigger.co.uk has gone into hibernation. That was my favourite pop website, that was. Try it in June sometime, when they'll hopefully be back up.

Now I want to know good pop websites too.
What's best for news, and what's best for bile?

www.drownedinsound.com was quite good, obviously not as good as the last resort, but sean who did that now writes for drownedinsound.

btw by fanzines, i was classing fansites in that area too, as many fanzines are now web based, or have web editions.

gotta go someone i know has just won tickets to see the manics in dublin. shall i go?

Can I just join in with agreeing that Johnny Cigarettes is/was a twat? As is anyone who calls Stereolab "soulless" yet admires the tedious chest-beating of The Verve, Oasis, etc.

FACT: "Refried Ectoplasm" by Stereolab rocks harder than AC/DC. But in a different way.

>FACT: "Refried Ectoplasm" by Stereolab rocks harder than AC/DC. But in a different way.

Seconded.

If you like pop and filthy gossip, you must subscribe to popbitch. It's a great weekly fix and it gives you the midweek chart positions if you care about such trifles.

Try emailing them: [email protected]

Was EVERYONE listening to Refried Ectoplasm yesterday? Bizarre.

I've heard it so often I don't need to play the record anymore, I can just remember what it sounds like. That's the test of a truly great album.

'Animal or Vegetable (A Wonderful Wooden Reason)' - cor!

Not a feeling I have towards the NME this week. ONE POUND THIRTY. Where will this all end...

And Michael Jackson's head on Fred Durst's body! Back to the Sport again - "Pop star's fury over fake snaps..."

I'm seriously contemplating ending my twelve-year readership of the NME.

>If you like pop and filthy gossip, you must subscribe to popbitch. It's a great weekly fix and it gives you the midweek chart positions if you care about such trifles.
>
>Try emailing them: [email protected]

Currently closed to new subscribers. I'd give it a week.

What, a week till it's back up, or a week till it's shut down?

I used to subscribe to popbitch, but it didn't take long before I decided I didn't care who's snorting what drugs off whose tits.

Tell you what, it saves money just reading it in WH Smiths.

The new NME is much like last week's, in as much as the news section is dominated by rap stars shooting each other ("which is, like, really exciting" for pale, wan dickheads), another non-story about Eminem, a letters page slagging off anyone with misgivings about the paper's direction (which to anyone with a quarter of a mind, is southerly with a fucking bullet), and an interview with Janet Jackson for everyone who bought last week's issue for the Destiny's Child piece.

OH yes, what's on the mobile phones of people in....ZZZZ

actually i agree with mr collins for once. popbitch is great. well worth it if you can get it. you can still send in a request it just takes them ages to process it cos they don't have a very good server, or something.
nonetheless they keep sending repeat posts, which is getting a bit annoying.

Johnny Cigarettes once wrote a column arguing that all albums should be exactly forty minutes long, presumably so he has to spend less time actually listening to them. He also gave the Cardiacs "Sing to God" 0/10 in Vox. What a fuckwit.

And he also thought "This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours" by MSP was a great album, which proves he should not be hired to review anything at all.

The actual reason why albums should be 40 minutes long is that then it'd be easier to fit them on to one side of a C90.

Fair enough, but his argument was that no-one could possibly have the attention span to listen to anything for longer than that, which I find slightly insulting. The majority of albums are 40-45 minutes long anyway, so the whole thing was pretty pointless, much like the unlamented Mr. Cigarettes.

Is he still employed by any of the music papers? I sincerely hope not.

Went to Loaded, apparently. Despite having a go at it whilst an NME man.

Still,must have bills to pay, Regaine to buy, etc. He used to appear on "Exclusive" on C5 when it was hosted by Julia Bradbury, so he'll do anything at a price.

The new NME (9th May) is very poor quality indeed.

The Fred Durst/Michael Jackson picture somehow managed to top the previous week's 'Non Existent Mogwai T-Shirt' story.

And the Mogwai article is bleak, come to think of it...one week after the "frail beauty" offence in the LP review. Has this particular phrase overtaken "sonic cathedrals" as shorthand for 'sounds important, so I'll like it to appear clever'?

Has anyone actually stopped buying NME since the relaunch or are we all trundling on regardless? 'Fraid to say that I am.

Yeah, me too.

"Sonic cathedrals" was only ever used by Steve Wright's Pretentious Music Critic, wasn't it? Then the music press belatedly acknowledged the joke. That's my recollection... Andrew Collins would be the man to know, since it all happened during his tour of duty.

Thankfully, my parents own a newagents, so i don't have to pay for this toss every wednesday. Does anyone know how many people went from working on melody maker to the NME? there's usually someone i've never seen before doing a terrible review of the singles.

Ahem sorry:

Thankfully, my parents own a newagents, so i don't have to pay for this toss every wednesday. Does anyone know how many people went from working on melody maker to the NME? there's usually someone i've never seen before doing a terrible review of the singles.

>Yeah, me too.
>
>"Sonic cathedrals" was only ever used by Steve Wright's Pretentious Music Critic, wasn't it? Then the music press belatedly acknowledged the joke. That's my recollection...

The likes of Tom Hibbert and Neil Tennant used to regularly take the piss out of such phraseology at Smash Hits round about the time that U2 were becoming rather too popular for my liking (84/85ish).

>Has anyone actually stopped buying NME since the relaunch or are we all trundling on regardless? 'Fraid to say that I am.

The work copy has not appeared in recent weeks, so I read it in WHSmith's, Streatham High Road. Takes about four minutes usually.

>Has anyone actually stopped buying NME since the relaunch or are we all trundling on regardless? 'Fraid to say that I am.

I gave up on it about two weeks ago. The New York issue was the last straw.

>Does anyone know how many people went from working on melody maker to the NME?

Only two, as far as I recall: Mark Beaumont and Andre Paine. NME had vacancies that corresponded to their MM jobs.

Steve Sutherland is a significant oversight on your part, onlooker.

>Steve Sutherland is a significant oversight on your part, onlooker.

I guessed on reading Peter's post that he was interested in the people who moved to NME when MM closed. I couldn't hope to name all the people who have ever moved from MM to NME. Sorry for any confusion that has arisen.

So the others must just be people they pull in off the street then? Glad to see they managed to grab the really twattish ones from MM then. Still, it can be that hard to get a job on the NME can it: "What so you think of Eminem?" "Well, it's just a bit of a laugh isn't it?" "Congratulations"

>Sorry for any confusion that has arisen.

Maybe it was me. Syntax and a bad head do not combine.

Is it just me, or has the NME got slightly lax in their album review section? I've bought a couple of albums recently which i'm pretty sure haven't been reviewed at all, but have in all the monthly magazines i could get my hands on.

"The New York issue was the last straw."

In case anyone's wondering, The Strokes are just a dull Velvet Underground tribute band, nothing more than that.

>>Does anyone know how many people went from working on melody maker to the NME?
>
>Only two, as far as I recall: Mark Beaumont and Andre Paine. NME had vacancies that corresponded to their MM jobs.

There were quite a few more freelancers though: Peter Robinson, John Hall, Alex Needham (?), and several more I think...

>There were quite a few more freelancers though: Peter Robinson, John Hall, Alex Needham (?), and several more I think...

Well, fair enough if they're freelance; however, I'm fairly sure that John Hall had already worked for NME, and I think that he and Peter Robinson were recruited to work for NME.com in the first instance, rather than NME.

Wasn't Alex Needham features editor of The Face immediately beforehand?

>>>Does anyone know how many people went from working on melody maker to the NME?
>>
>>Only two, as far as I recall: Mark Beaumont and Andre Paine. NME had vacancies that corresponded to their MM jobs.
>
>There were quite a few more freelancers though: Peter Robinson, John Hall, Alex Needham (?), and several more I think...
>
>

Peter Robinson had left MM a while before to do NMEpop.com or whatever they call their patronising pop bit (trying to make the sub-S Club Boom! out to be good, indeed) and other freelancers did do stuff for NME to start with, but then most of them stopped getting asked to do stuff. I only know the whereabouts now of Sarah Bee, she writes for Playlouder.

>In case anyone's wondering, The Strokes are just a dull Velvet Underground tribute band, nothing more than that.

Not quite... their single 'The Modern Age' is fucking amazing, and to be honest it reminds me more of Joy Division than it does the Velvets.

Shame the Strokes are getting NME hype really, as they are immediately treated with suspicion. They are VERY trad (Modern Age EP comes straight outta 1976) but I think they are cracking. And the pic the NME uses of them (the ON/I love NYC one) will surely be regarded as one of the great rock photos, if they do go on and become one of the great bands. a big IF of course.

Is Peter Robinson the same one who did that excellent KLF fanzine back in about 1992? I presume it isn't the same one who wrote the Richard Briers sitcom Goodbye Mr Kent.

"Not quite... their single 'The Modern Age' is fucking amazing, and to be honest it reminds me more of Joy Division than it does the Velvets."

Well, we'll have to disagree. "The Modern Age" is the one I've heard, and it sounded terribly VU to these ears. Not that that's bad in itself, though I don't see why they're getting the coverage, apart from there not being much else going on at the moment.

not heard it either, but they look pretty damn cool.

Whats happened to Everett "Jim Broadbent" True, then?

Last seen writing stuff at www.tangents.co.uk

Also has his record label now, apparently.

nme.com just won a best website award, which probably explains a lot. No-one gives much of a flying one about the printed word, then. Mind you, hardly surprising, given this week's NME. Absolutely dreadful Thom Yorke piece which seriously tests you on who's worse - The Artist or The Interviewer (Sylvia Patterson, I think). Some protestation about the lack of hip-hop TV shows. It seems to be getting smaller. That's about it, really.

I haven't bought this weeks issue and won't be parting with the cash. It's the end of the road for me. I suspect that I'm eight years late.

ahem

This is a bloody good thread, so I'd just like to reactivate it by suggesting that Mark Beaumont's decision to give Single of the Week to Kid Galahad's mediocre sub-baggy effort typifies the lamentable state of the NME. Now continue!

This week's Pet Shop Boys piece not only made Tennant and Lowe sound dull, but suggested it was a bad idea for the twosome to embrace Latin while everyone else went Britpop in 1996. Yeah, sure.

>This week's Pet Shop Boys piece not only made Tennant and Lowe sound dull, but suggested it was a bad idea for the twosome to embrace Latin while everyone else went Britpop in 1996. Yeah, sure.

That was me. Forgot to leave my name.

> Is Peter Robinson the same one who did that excellent KLF fanzine back in about 1992?

Yes. Also an ill-advised and short-lived Utah Saints one.

> I presume it isn't the same one who wrote the Richard Briers sitcom Goodbye Mr Kent.

No.

I worked for NME between 1988-89.

It was good fun to work there but they have always been up their own arse. In late 1988 NME and Melody Maker moved from different offices in Commonwealth House near the legendary Oporto pub and were rationalised into one floor of Kings Reach Tower along with the No 1 magazine (bit like Smash Hits but crap).

It appealed to my warped sense of humour that some of the deadly serious muso's who bleated on about the god-like nature of Morrisey for NME then had to sing the praises of Bananarama for No 1.

Strange Fact No368 - I think the bloke who was sacked from the SUnday Mirror for forcing the cancellation of the recent football court case was the editor or No 1.

I'm back at NME this week. I'm sitting on the 25th floor of King's Reach Tower as I write...

Er, lucky old you. That place was diagnosed with sick building syndrome years ago. Best get out while your lungs are still functioning.

Do they still do the fire drills at Kings Reach where you have to run down all the stairs ? Happy Days

>Do they still do the fire drills at Kings Reach where you have to run down all the stairs ? Happy Days

Are you Jayne of Sarah and Jayne? Wow.

This week's NME - page after page after page of dance music news (including a FULL PAGE on someone crying about Ibiza or Aiya Napa or something), before we finally get to some news about a guitar band, and even that's just Catatonia.

'Alternative music'? Yeah right.

>This week's NME - page after page after page of dance music news (including a FULL PAGE on someone crying about Ibiza or Aiya Napa or something), before we finally get to some news about a guitar band, and even that's just Catatonia.
>
>'Alternative music'? Yeah right.

Well, thank fuck I haven't read a copy of NME since 1983.

Latest Issue's Big Story: "Some American Records Sound A Tiny Bit Like UK Garage".

Hope you've been enjoying your free CD just as much as i have TJ

nme should be trying to cover music outside the mainstream.the problem is there is too many people working there sucking up to record companies.sure mention garage but theres a hell of a lot of magazines that cover it in full detail.

i put a post on nme's website saying that i had been buying it since 1984 & was now seriously going to think about canceling.this was about the miami issue.the one with miami spelled in coke on a girls breasts.i compared it with heat.this did not go down well.my post was removed.
i put a post on critising their coverage of popstars,it was laughed at.it seems that the only thing important to the editors of nme is trying to alienate their core readers.

i dont want to read about popstars in nme.nor do people 13 years younger than me.there are magazines out there that fill that purpose.
it is true that the fall of nme can be traced to "be here now".this album pretty much killed off british guitar bands.but there is bloody good bands out there.filling space with shite coverage about basement jaxx taking drugs is of no intrest.
the only way nme can recover from decreasing sales is to fall back on its core readership.ipc do seem to be in deep shit.the other option is to do with what happened with 2000ad.basically some well meaning company takes it away from ipc & gives it a better home.

sacking all the sad bastards at the same time though!

The problem with the NME post-Britpop is that they tend to see music simply being either pop or irrelevant.

Pop culture isn't a hemogenous whole. In the UK there are at least three distinct cultures - Dole, Art School and Stage School - which produce our artists. It is wilful ignorance to pretend that "it's all the same".

The only way pop music has ever evolved is by taking elements from OUTSIDE the pop mainstream and making it more accessible. Think Eminem and Hip-hop, Madonna and 80s disco/house, even the Beatles and Eastern music. Pop isn't self-sufficient - it NEEDS the underground.

>The only way pop music has ever evolved is by taking elements from OUTSIDE the pop mainstream and making it more accessible. Think Eminem and Hip-hop, Madonna and 80s disco/house, even the Beatles and Eastern music. Pop isn't self-sufficient - it NEEDS the underground.

Nick Heyward once put it very succinctly when he said "what _I_ regard as pop music became indie".

I'll be at the NME offices for the whole of tomorrow. Anyone have any myths they want to shatter? I for one need to know what really gets played on the NME stereo.

>>The only way pop music has ever evolved is by taking elements from OUTSIDE the pop mainstream and making it more accessible. Think Eminem and Hip-hop, Madonna and 80s disco/house, even the Beatles and Eastern music. Pop isn't self-sufficient - it NEEDS the underground.
>
>Nick Heyward once put it very succinctly when he said "what _I_ regard as pop music became indie".
>

Some of the best pop I've heard in a while is present on the Shoeshine records sampler - neatly divided beween TFC-esque guitar-pop and alt-country-ish Lambchop-type musings. Tremendous pop musc for 1.99, and probably about 500 copies sold. D'oh!

> Anyone have any myths they want to shatter?

That the staff really believe their magazine will still exist this time next year.

>I'll be at the NME offices for the whole of tomorrow.

What brings you to the NME offices then?

>What brings you to the NME offices then?

Quantick research (see a million posts ago). They have an on-site archive of every issue.

Can you just saunter into the office then, or have you got to ask first (i just can't really see how anyone there would care if someone turned up)?

It took some arranging, yes. It's not usual practice.

>I It's not usual practice.

... although you might not think so after reading their recent issues, etc etc.

> Anyone have any myths they want to shatter?

That the staff really believe their magazine will still exist this time next year.

They always thought that IPC would never close Melody maker because it was THE magazine that musicians looked in if they were looking to join a band and look what happened.

If NME falls below the sales and ad revenue levels that are expected it will close - really doesn't matter what the quality of the journalism is.

When I was there you always felt that the management suffered the music titles and thought the true quality titles in the stable were New Scientist and Womens Own

>> Anyone have any myths they want to shatter?
>
>That the staff really believe their magazine will still exist this time next year.

Well, I think it'll hold on (but what do I know, eh?). You're right about the sales and ad revenue though. NME's last six-month ABC circulation figure is 70,003, down from 76,000-ish in the six months before that. I have no idea how much further it would have to fall before it's closed - Melody Maker flirted with the 30,000 mark before closure.

>Do they still do the fire drills at Kings Reach where you have to run down all the stairs ? Happy Days

And what should happen within ONE HOUR of my being in the building? Karen Walters, the editor's secretary, assured me that walking down 25 floors did not endanger anyone's life because it would take at least 40 minutes for the fire to reach us. Which is some ray of hope, I suppose...

Fun day out was it?

>Fun day out was it?

Bring the kids! And have them do some interviews.

Am I the only one left on the forum actually buying the NME? It's not a classic issue this week, I have to say. Yet more overdone eulogising for the The Strokes, but also the news snippet that the new Stereolab album will features "lyrics taken from Chris Morris' controversial TV comedy show Jam".

>Am I the only one left on the forum actually buying the NME?

I packed it in a couple of weeks ago after the Thom Yorke interview. It was the way more space was given to the fact that Yorke was speaking to the NME again, as if this was a significant cultural event, than was given to any kind of interview. A shame, because Sylvia Patterson is quite capable of good journalism.

Is the air of apathy and resignation as palpable in the NME's offices as it is in its pages? I like the idea that there are 25 flights of stairs to kick Steve Sutherland down.

>It's not a classic issue this week, I have to say. Yet more overdone eulogising for the The Strokes

I think I must have missed something on that front myself, they just seem like a bunch of middle class kids wanking themselves red raw over Lou Reed's sunglasses to me. Oddly overproduced records for a bunch of supposed punks, too.

>Fun day out was it?

Fascinating. I will have to disappoint you on a few counts, though � the NME is not a Bosch landscape, peppered with terrified freelancers forced to like Eminem in order to eek a wage� some of them are okay.

With regards to Mogwai's myth-shattering request, I get the sense that at the exact moment nme.com can find a way of making serious money (subscriptions, percentages on record sales, whatever) the print version will be put to sleep forever.

The NME stereo is controlled by Andy Capper, current live editor, who in Angst recently dismissed a 40-year-old's complaint as to the insubstantial writing staff by claiming that their ring tones feature was popular with �YOUNG people�(Justin mentioned this many posts back). He's intense with his views and turns out to be a massive Whitehouse fan, which gave us plenty to talk about, largely revolving around an article he offered to the NME about the group, only to have it refused. In case you don't know Whitehouse are an extreme electronic group whose lyrics largely concern sexual violence, serial killers, sodomy and such like. I was glad that he saw the humour in their work, although the features editor didn't.

Piers Martin comes across as a genuine music lover, not short on opinions, and never more than a foot away from an Oval promo. Kitty Empire was pleasing too. John Robinson seems to think he's still in the NME office of the Eighties, whilst James Oldham is a quiet bloke, and a marginally more photogenic version of Lamacq at that.

Steve Sutherland, however, is a tosser, eager to be everyone's friend when he doesn't realise quite what he's done to the paper over the past ten years � he has no idea how much he has fucked it up. The above freelancers are okay people (I went nowhere near the subs), who do actually debate stuff in the office and seem to think things through, although what disease has been bred in order to hear conversations like the following I do not know:

ROBINSON: You shouldn't have any problems with 'Angst' this week � there were a lot of intelligent e-mails, I thought.
OLDHAM: I know, but I haven't got a star letter� so I made one up about homophobia in rap.

Another fave:

CAPPER: Are you at the 'On' Show tomorrow night?
EMPIRE: Not if I can help it!
(they laugh)

Okay, so some of this is regular old office cynicism, but it is in direct contrast to the new-music-luvvin mood that the paper attempts to convey. I don't expect them to all dutifully descend on the venue with Dictaphones in hand but I do expect them to have a spine on the matter of bands they actually want to support. If the reason for the above is that they don't like the audience then they can fuck off backstage, surely?

To be honest this is all quite hard to rationalise when I spent the day off work to visit IPC, was grateful for it, but more pertinently I was sat amidst the freelancers as I dived through the complete 1983-85 issues for my research. When I giggled at something I read, I could feel their scowls on me which set a strange mood. From working through back issues of NME solidly from 1977-92 (anyone remember 'c.r.e.e.p.show'?) and laughing out loud all too regularly, these visits I've been taking to NME passims have gathered overpowering evidence that the paper has no real character left, let alone substance. Yesterday I was provided with a worrying amount of perspective.

Oh, and speaking of substances the new Spiritualized album is complete drivel.
That's something else I learnt.

Bent

>James Oldham is a quiet bloke

Hmm!

I'm glad this thread is still going. The fact that people are still concerned enough about the NME to keep the thread alive is reassuring in a way. I'm not sure it deserves it, though.

I put an album out last year, and remember the excitement of reading the press reviews, fervently chasing the delivery van to get the first hot-off-the-press edition of the NME. Reading the whole magazine seemed terribly important. Its judgement seemed serious and vital to any success we might have.

I'm about to release a second album now, and am having initial discussions with the PR bods about getting press. One of them said, after hearing the record, "It's a good broadsheets album, but I'm not sure what the NME will think..."

And, to my horror, I found myself replying, "You know, if I gave a shit what the NME thought, I'd buy it."

I used buy the NME every week, and digest every word. I haven't seen a copy in about a year now. It's covering a subject in which I am hugely interested, and a year ago, its opinion would have mattered the world to me. Now, with the demise of Select and Melody Maker fresh in the mind, it seems that its grip on power has slipped to an all time low.

I feel sad about that.

Flicked through a copy at lunch - even worse than last week, if you can believe that. The main story is about the likelihood of Britney Spears and some toss from N'Sync collaborating, and what fantastic benefits this may provide for the history of pop music. Further on in the issue, they have a go at Sophie Ellis-Bextor for having the temerity to promote her forthcoming album by going out in public.

Fuck that. Whatever your opinion of her current music (or indeed of her old music), Sophie's done her fair share of lugging a guitar round dismal venues and having her singles ignored by Radio 1, and so if she's having a bit of success with a different direction (and personally I thought 'Groovejet' was fantastic) then I say good luck to her, and I'm certainly far more interested in hearing her new material than daydreaming about some mythical collaboration between two dull glampolished pop stars who don't write their own songs and which may not even happen anyway.

What _is_ going on???

nme.com is currently claiming an "exclusive" to do with Radiohead. It turns out that this amounts to a few poor clips from the Later TV show from the week before last. So if you like Radiohead, you've already got them on tape, much higher quality video with NICAM sound.

To make this seem even more ridiculous, if you go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/later, you can actually download two tracks that weren't included in the TV show.

That Britney story is also available online for your enlightenment, though be warned - you may find this teaser irresistable:

To read how he told Britney "you need to listen to some cool stuff if you want to be the next Madonna", see this week's NME, on sale in London today (June 19) and the rest of the UK from tomorrow.

I still get the nme every week - i think i mentioned somewhere above that i live in a newsagents a lot of the time so it's free(ish). This week, i could barely find anything to read, and none of the features, mostly on Hiphop/rap artist, grabbed me (particularily 5 pages about Travis).
Re: The Strokes - after hearing them on the free CD, i realy can't see why the NME are going so mad about them - they're like the new Terris (or Campag Velocet etc..)

>Re: The Strokes - after hearing them on the free CD, i realy can't see why the NME are going so mad about them - they're like the new Terris (or Campag Velocet etc..)

Those bands got promoted in NME because NME people liked them and, presumably, thought they deserved to be better known. Isn't this what people want?

Campag Velocet were promoted because one of the writing staff owned their label, Rabid Badger. The gushing was so absurd that even Private Eye felt the need to report it.

Compare that to, say, Sean O'Hagan writing for the paper when Microdisney first appeared, aided with no gushing, just carefully worded articles

>Campag Velocet were promoted because one of the writing staff owned their label, Rabid Badger. The gushing was so absurd that even Private Eye felt the need to report it.

That'd be Simon Williams, Rabid Badger being an offshoot of Fierce Panda, whose records NME often reviews evenly and without hyperbole. I think they genuinely did like Campag Velocet, wrongly or not. They carried on hyping them when they left that label.

>Compare that to, say, Sean O'Hagan writing for the paper when Microdisney first appeared, aided with no gushing, just carefully worded articles

Different Sean O'Hagan. Confusing, I know.

Eh? He never seems to question it when I bring it up.

Oh, and Campag Velocet were deeply bollocks at the time of the initial hype. I saw them live once too often, not only existing as support band cattle but also looking the part. A case equally applicable to the baffling fuss over Terris and The Strokes.

>Oh, and Campag Velocet were deeply bollocks at the time of the initial hype. I saw them live once too often, not only existing as support band cattle but also looking the part. A case equally applicable to the baffling fuss over Terris and The Strokes.

Do you want NME to reflect your opinions precisely at all times, though?

That's not really my point, but in deference to your question, no, I don't find it necessary for me to find agreeable articles about music in NME. The great appeal of the paper from time immemorial is a healthy element of dissent and contention. The current incarnation is typified by flippancy, bombastic language (largely Swells imitations) and the kind of amnesia that makes their backing of favoured artists resemble hasty scrawls on a pencil case, rather than sincere opines. Of course much of this was the case ten or fifteen years ago, but my worry is that the current writing staff are desperately trying to keep with the times rather than concentrating on what the NME has always done best, which is insightful comment and a healthy dose of humour in what they do. Nowadays the humour is poor (cf: Justin Timberlake/Britney news story, the ever-more-desperate annual Student Guide) whereas the insightful comment, if any, has to battle against a slimming word count. In the late-Seventies you had virtual dissertations in each issue � in word count and often in gravity � which I by no means expect to see the rebirth of, but you do start to ponder at which point Sutherland decided that text was unprofitable. The shift in the media climate over the past ten years seems to have encouraged this descent.

Where this malaise extends to in terms of band coverage is a general 'pinch of salt' factor, which unrelentingly encourages the reader to see/hear the latest On artist (eg.Terris, Campag Velocet, The Strokes), only for them to be totally let down by those high expectations when they actually do. This comes round frequently � some white kids slapping guitars are given a huge pedestal every few months and the readership is taught to give a huge sigh of relief, only to be crushingly disappointed once they get past the initial piece of gushing text and actually sample the sod. This seems to apply to the groups who are 'discovered' by the paper, rather than those who creep up without any expectation (eg.Mogwai, GYBE!, V/VM) or have had a fair amount of time before stepping into the limelight. Perhaps it is unfair on the likes of Campag Velocet, perhaps they deserved better, and they did develop a small following, but in those examples I myself couldn't see the fuss in the first place.

My crucial point, and a rather obvious one I'll admit, is that music is the first thing you discover for yourself. It's not prescribed to you by parents or issued on a plate by the government, with carefully coded legislation on what you will get into at each stage of your life. The radio is useful, as is the music press, but the mass appeal that the NME strives to place in the hands of Terris et al is not achieved, and their approach is lacking. Better to let it happen naturally with each new release: a cogent argument here, a dissenting one there. The NMEs true failure is in being unable to offer these arguments, to encourage debate or ossify one's own opinions in a way that would make it the flagship journal of new music.

I find it heartening that other people agree in not being able to see what the fuss is about The Strokes. To be fair, NME did print a dissenting letter, but other than that it's been ludicrous bollocks all the way.

It's hard to understand why, other than that they desparately needed a "proper" (ie. guitar-based) new group to bang on about, and so The Strokes had to do.

They are OK as a reasonable pastiche of old bands, but nothing more than that.

Incidentally Bent, did you witness the hilarious meeting in which "Thrills" got written, with unforgettable scenes of the writer's sides splitting at their own comic invention? Just wondered.

Unruly: your version of "Stay Another Day" was really good, I thought.

Once again, I step up to provide the dissenting voice...

I make no great claims for The Strokes. They are not going to resolve middle-east conflict, feed the starving or produce the next "Pet Sounds". However, I have liked both of the singles so far, and need no greater justification for liking them than that.

'Hype' is irrelevant to me. I listen to the music and decide for myself whether I like it or not. If didn't adopt that approach, I wouldn't like half the artists that I *do* like.

And anyway, as suggested by my above posts, I'm far more comfortable with the NME overhyping a halfway decent guitar band than I am with them printing wank about Ibiza, Craig David, or what Britney Spears might possibly do in someone's wildest dreams.

Laudable sentiments about music, TJ....

>And anyway, as suggested by my above posts, I'm far more comfortable with the NME overhyping a halfway decent guitar band than I am with them printing wank about Ibiza, Craig David, or what Britney Spears might possibly do in someone's wildest dreams.

I completely agree with you about the latter, but just out of interest (and *not* to provoke an argument), why do you think NME shouldn't cover Ibiza or Craig David?

If they covered his music, that'd be fine, but they spend more column inches talking about his stubble than anything else. it's the attitude that stopped me buying it, not just the artists it covers.

>I completely agree with you about the latter, but just out of interest (and *not* to provoke an argument), why do you think NME shouldn't cover Ibiza or Craig David?

Well, I didn't actually mean that they shouldn't be covered full stop, but my reference to "printing wank about them" was in direct reference to the fact that because they are vaguely fashionable, they are *always* featured in the news pages whether there is actually any real news about them or not. If they found something interesting to say about Craig David or Ibiza, I'd have no problem with them printing it. When they are just running full page stories that boil down to "some American records sound a tiny bit like UK garage" and very little else, though, it does annoy me slightly.

And this, I have to stress, isn't necessarily limited to pop and dance music - there was a hideous half-page non-story about Mogwai recently.

>>why do you think NME shouldn't cover Ibiza or Craig David?
>
>Well, I didn't actually mean that they shouldn't be covered full stop

Ah... I see now. Totally agree. I haven't really read the NME for years now for the same reason. Every time I pop my head round the cover they seem to be filling it with nonsense about whoever is fashionable at the time - it used to be Blur and Oasis, and now it's their lame attempt to appeal to 'the kids' that they are always on about.

Just as an aside, I think we've now broken the record for a forum thread, knocking the previous record' into a cocked hat. That's beret in a way.

But do postings like that one (or this one) really count?

Maybe.

>Just as an aside, I think we've now broken the record for a forum thread, knocking the previous record' into a cocked hat. That's beret in a way.

Yeah, but isn't that just because you haven't deleted it? You could have put it to death months ago, couldn't you?

Eh? I don't run this forum, despite my ruddy complexion.

It's a mere stripling compared to Doctor Who, Local TV, Subbes and other Great Redwoods towering over the TV Forum, though, isn't it? Their attention spans are so much longer over there.

(PS Thanks, Jon.)

Suiii, not Subbes.

I get easily confused.

>It's a mere stripling compared to Doctor Who, Local TV, Subbes and other Great Redwoods towering over the TV Forum, though, isn't it? Their attention spans are so much longer over there.
>
>For "attention spans are so much longer", read "they are much more self indulgent."Love your version of "Will My Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight?", Butty.

"I don't run this forum, despite my ruddy complexion."

What about your bloody legs and sodding arms?

BTW: the Moldy peaches album is *almost* complete shite.

Unruly: are you actually the singer, or just a guitarist?

singer. but I'm singing much better on the new record. because I learnt how to do it properly in the past year. promise.

http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,7496,509521,00.html

Jesus! Having known several NME freelance journos and photographers in the past, the effort / pay ratio offered by IPC is pissy at the best of times, without them trying to tie you to an exclusive rigths contract.

(I know we're consistently rude about NME journos on here, but think about how long it takes to do a single capsule live review - chasing PRs, getting records, reading up on band, turning up early at gig, watching show, getting home, writing up, submitting, rewriting etc - all to earn under £40 for the average non-photo live piece)

Now they have a supposed success in NME.Com, IPC are trying to milk it for as much money as possible. This will probably stop any talk of 'interesting' music, and turn it into crap news about rubbish pop music, which is what has happened to NME, in a vain hope it will appeal to a mass market.

Thats how i see it anyway.

On the subject of the online NME, I can't help feeling that the necessary slickness of the online magazine mitigates against it championing great crappy little bands. It's somehow believable for a lump of 64 sheets of bad paper stock to be going on about tiny weeny bands, but the corporate tightness of the website feels too rarefied - as if it would never be seen dead down the Bull and Gate.

This is akin to Neil Young's refusal to have lots of his back catalogue released on CD, but it's just a gut feeling.

The raison d'etre of the NME has changed over time. I mean, Cliff used to win best male artist in the polls a long, long time ago. Some time in its history, presumably when good and bad music overtly started to exist, it must have begun to champion the lesser known acts.

This may have been for a variety of reasons, but most likely is that it was to publicise acts not known to the public. Such a policy would be nice, were it not open to such obvous abuse. BUt it is.

The NME was probably happiest in the late seventies with the advent of punk, when what had become its music (in much the same way as SOTCAA has 'its' comedy) became so despised by the middle-class. Obviously, the journalism at this time was of an acceptable level as well.

Obiously, there have been great bands, both before and after this time. The NME was always interested in promoting artists in whom it believed. But then New Order happened. The Mondays happened. The Stone Roses happened. Blur happened. THEN Oasis happened. 'Their' bands started becoming popular. En masse.

The NME was far more comfortable with 'their' bands scarping into the Top 30 if they were lucky. As recently as 1994(?) Steve Lamacq was ecstatic when 'Caught by the Fuzz' entered at No. 43. Just a few years later, this would have been a failure.

Inevitably, the record-buying public tired of Lush, Sleeper et al. 'Their' music was no longer the most popular variety. Only the best few bands survived, most of whom had pre-existed Britpop anyway. And so, for a terrible few years (during which my, and I presume many others intersts began to fade) they tried to influence the public to buy more of the same rubbish that they had before. But the public would not buy.

And now, as the NME resorts to Destiny's Child on the front cover, we are left with the shell of the NME. It cannot possibly exert the same influence as it once did. So what does it do? It tries. NME.com is just an example of this trying. But it tries too hard. There was a time when I was proud to be seen with the NME in my hand. NOw it's redundant. It has to champion bands it doesn't believe in. I mean, how can a paper that used to champion The Smiths possibly promote Elbow, or Terris, or Coldplay wih as much conviction. It can't, and it doesn't.

In fact, the NME's most useful phase was the late 70s, and its Zenith in the mid-90s. But it abused its power in the mid-90s, by promoting all manner of shit. The 'I don't care how many records I sell' ethic went out the window.

If you ever go to the Good Mixer, and I hope you don't, then you get the horrible feelign that everbody there might be the drummer in Rialto

"...everbody there might be the drummer in Rialto"

Which Drummer? (A band, i notice, cruelly missed from the multiple drummers discussion had elsewhere)

Now, someone explain the appeal of Sleeper to me...

Oh, thats easy. A lot of students wanted to shag Louise Wenner.

I'm sure 'Inbetweener' got NME Single of the Week. And it was all over Radio 1. And, compared to anything else they released, it was Sympathy for the Devil.

The student thing is good, too.

Most of Sleeper wanted to shag sweet Louise,too. In fact, most of them did. Went through them like a dose of salts, did Wenny
{Bz George, this is relevant and contemporary, isnt it?}

Is (Was?) your name Sonia MAdan? With some bllody middle name that I've forgotten. Aurora, was it?

I'd forgotten about the Sleeperblokes, though.

Well, most people did. Even when they were up there on the stage, playing.

What sort of a name is Wener, anyway? And, if that WAS your name, you'd go out of your way to be either exceptionally good, or exceptionally quiet. Something that la Wener conspicuously failed to do.

Oh, come on, shes a good girl.
*SLEEPER SONG TITLE JOKE!:}*

She just went for exceptionally breathy instead - and the last thing i want is some asthmatic woman resperating over some generic white boy indie shite. In fact, i want none of those things. Now Lush, on the other hand...

Look, someone snuck in thier and completely ruined the flow of my comment. Ah well.

Didn't their bassist commit suicide, or something?

Drummer wasn't it? Chris Ackland was his name, i think? Well, that's enough half truths for now..

You may very well be right. I always said that the rhythm section looked a little unstable.

Reported in the days of the NME when it actually used to bother with news (phew, back on track now), as opposed to the nonsense it pedals now (with further coverage, no doubt, on the web site). Very annoyed to discover they didn't review the Luke Haines gigs in the mag only to discover that, actually, they probably did at NME.com, but i can;t actually find it. Oh, and there's some news there about another gig as well. Bastards.

It was the drummer. Quite a sad event, actually. I used to quite like Emma Anderson, despite her resemblance to Emma Freud, but that Miki, oooh full of herself she was-proper little madam!
Incidentally, The Pale Saints lp from 1992, and the second Echobelly LP are two of the most dated records in the world.

Yeah, never a good thing.

But this illustrates my point. By reading the NME in 1994, you could actually have thought Echobelly were any good. No wonder nobody pays any attention to them now, is it?

Youd be hard pushed to be into a group solely through reading the print version of the NME nowadays. Its all vapid lifestyle lite, very much in the style of the once decent Select magazine, before that went tits up. Nobodzs seriouslz expecting the NME to last for much longer, are they?
The sad thing is Im not really arsed either way. Theres always UNCUT. {Ian Penman!Chris Roberts! Huzzah!}

BUt I would have been arsed a while ago. Just not now. NOw it'd be a relief.

Yeah, same as when Melody Maker mercifully breathed its last. Theres also the fact that we re getting older. Eeeeh, it were all The Wedding Present Round ere when I were a lad.

I think my age precludes me from passing too strong a judgement. HAving first started to buy the NME in about 1993 aged fourteen, the NME's music was on the up, culminating in Blur Vs. Oasis and Britpop. And I was one of those sorry fools who bought whatever they, Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley told me to do.

I mean, all that time ago, I'd probably have sworn blind that Travis and COldplay and whoever else were the greatest things in the whole world. It makes me angry that they did abuse their position back then, that they did tell people to buy all manner of rubbish. Which is why I wouldn't touch a copy of it now.

"If you ever go to the Good Mixer"

Don't. It's a shithole.

"you could actually have thought Echobelly were any good."

There's a Best Of Echobelly coming out any day now, so someone must still like 'em.

Actually there was a brand new Echobelly album out a while ago, which was widely ignored. Didn't even get the sniggering "why do they bother?" coverage that the Shed 7 comeback got. A bit like the Jesus Jones comeback of 1997, in fact.

Gene have a new album due soon. Now, them I will stick up for. They did write some great songs, though they did have formulaic indie twaddle as well.

This, and the last 2 posts, would have been better off as one entity. Unfortuantely, thge thoguhts came to me sporadically. Anyway, this strand has a position to maintain these days.

I won't have a word said against the Sheds, mind.

Which, given the amount of words actually said against them, goes some way to illustrate the effect I have on people.

When I first joined Amnesty International, I wrote my debut letter to some evil foreign dictator, and proudly signed it "Chris Acland" as a sort of intensely private joke between myself and myself� A few months later, he was dead�

Suicide? Pah�

Lush appeared in the NME once dressed as the cast of Man About The House. Chris Acland made a stunning Richard O'Sullivan. He is sadly missed, if only for that.

(See, it IS a comedy forum after all.)

Lush are sadly missed because they were incredibly underrated, and were clearly capable of great things that they never got to achieve.

Speaking of Great Lost Bands, Menswear did actually have some decent songs.

But this was the NME at its worst, i.e. promoting their friends, 'their' people. That's what made the whole thing so calculated and cynical.

I think it was Melody Maker that did more of the big push for Menswear, NME were a bit cynical about it. But it's all long past mattering now, anyway.

I did mean Lush more than Menswear. But you're right.

>Lush are sadly missed because they were incredibly underrated, and were clearly capable of great things that they never got to achieve.

Apparently Miki now works as an IPC sub-editor...

Emma Anderson had a band called Sing Sing, who might still be going.

I thought Miki was doing a solo album, so maybe it didn't work out.

Whatever happened to the Louise Wener "solo project"? The world waits...

I passed quite a pleasant summer standing in Miki Berenyi's way at Throwing Muses gigs.

Ah, happy times...

>Whatever happened to the Louise Wener "solo project"? The world waits...

Well, shes having to take lessons to actually drive the minicab first......

BTW, the one-time bassist of MBV, now slapping the strings with Snowpony, actually DID end up driving a mini-cab for a short post-MBV while. And top Diane Keen lookalike and non-smiling minimal geetar contributor Belinda Butcher ended up getting married to me and having my children. One of these things is not true at all, Im afraid.

Favourite pop day jobs:

XTC (non Partridge members): delivered rental cars for years.

Throwing Muses: Bernard Georges and David Narcizo ran a bicycle repair shop.

Mark Eitzel: librarian


Erm, can't think of any more. Contributions, anyone?

>Erm, can't think of any more. Contributions, anyone?

The excellent, but entirely unknown (except to me) New Orleans lounge singer Glyn Styler worked in a porn shop, but then the mafia took it over. He can't get any money to finish his record so he sells mattresses at the moment.

He did find the time to star in Doris Wishman's latest film ("Satan was a Lady"), though. Don't suppose anyone's seen it?

Cha Cha Cohen runs a casino in Vegas.

Art Garfunkel set up an on-line alice band company, apparently.

Grant Hart from Husker Du is now a chef.

No, that was Greg Norton, the bassist.

Veering slightly back to the subject of this thread, Andy Dawson, one of the contributors to the NME's execrable 'Thrills' page, works for Directory Enquiries. Fucking well deserves it as well.

>No, that was Greg Norton, the bassist.

Sorry.

is this the end of 'Sounds of the Sixties'?

Jeff Beck is still making music today.

I thought I'd contribute my bit for this thread. My comment's don't (on the whole) concern the "paper"'s content, which, IMO, got so bad that in January I stopped buying it.
I've dabbled with design for years and when my dad bought me this week's NME I couldn't help notice quite a few glaring flaws in the new revamped design and while I don't call myself an authority on design, these errors really were striking . So I'll list some of those I noticed.
1. COVER.
*Use of "MACHINE" font - angular, tall, presumably to convey "Hard," "Tough" image/brand - outdated font (I used to have it on my old Mac Quadra 3 years ago), overused and above all, _tacky_ as hell
*Lack of adherence to a certain unwritten law of layout: COLOUR UNIFORMITY. Never use more than one shade of black / white together on a page - the "black" in the main photo and the "black" of the logo-border (which is unnecessary anyway because the logo has its own red background. The black appears only to exist to carry the "Award winning" strapline below - why can't this float over the picture, like the NME logo used to?? Maybe I'm nit-picking) Was this cover colour-proofed in any way, or even checked at all? I put this down to laziness.

2. INSIDE.
*Heavy reliance on outmoded, rounded edge box format - used over and over again through the pages - I assume this is what they call "Synergy". Whatever, it just adds even more to the "music _magazine_, not music _paper_" feel
*Bright colours - to grab attention for weak journalism? to prevent reader from falling asleep?
*ANGST page: image (of Travis) accompanying star letter fills 20% of page. It's obvious why they've done this, I won't go into it.

I could go on but after 6 minutes of flicking through the paper I found I couldn't endure any more. Okay, I'm sure my points are obvious to some but I wanted to point out these flaws because for me the paper's presentation (or style) is a symbol of the direction it's going in. It's over-designed. It's awful. Don't get me started on the content.

I couldn't give a monkey's what the NME looks like, within reason. Although the more consciously stylish (or apparently not) it becomes, the further it veers from its roots and its role.

The point is that it's rotten and commercial to its very core. It's the Oliver Cromwell of music papers. In a mad way.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, I sat next to Steve Sutherland on the train yesterday morning. Staring at adverts for land in California he was...

(It might not have been, but he had a V2 bag so I'm hedging my bets.)

What a pointless message.

Ah, but a pointless message with your name in red still has a certain something, i think

I dont really read the NME any more, and I eat a lot of toast. Theres pointless for you.

http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/0,7495,513257,00.html

Going A4 and glossy? What kind of idiocy is this? And what exactly do they mean by "one-shots" - Travis Special Poster Magazine or some such? Good god...

"Going A4 and glossy? What kind of idiocy is this? "

It's what made Melody Maker what it is today...

Wot, like me you mean?

Yes, but remembered with less affection.

(NME still in existence at Christmas: 2/1 and falling.)

What, you mean we won't get to see their hilarious skit of the pop news of 2001?

It'll be... right... er, based on Big Brother... with The Strokes... and some another band... um.... Britney's Top Tips... er... Radiohead's Favourite Cracker Jokes...er... can anyone remeber what was in the charts this year?

Bloody hell. It's like watching a blind zombie lemming stumbling towards the cliff edge.

And then being thrown off by Steve Sutherland disguised as Walt Disney.

Like a sort of grinning two-faced Mickey Mouse assassin.

Wahey! We're past the 300 postings mark! Now we CANNOT BE STOPPED!!

Anyhow. I gave the Strokes another chance, I bought their 2nd single, it was even less remarkable than the 1st one. No more.

>Anyhow. I gave the Strokes another chance, I bought their 2nd single, it was even less remarkable than the 1st one. No more.

I like their songs, but the relentless hype is really spoiling it for me, which is a pity. It's a bit like when everyone found out what a twat Brian Molko was (although they got very crap musically after their first album, too), and everyone went off Placebo. This time, it's the irritation of hearing a perfectly good band (or "tribute band" as the local music paper here accurately put it) and then being told about how utterly astonishing they are with absolutely no dissent brooked. At least there are some anti-Starsailor rumblings in the NME from some of the writers.

I can see why the NME want a band who are the complete package, but The Strokes aren't it. They're jaunty and poppy. Not edgy or hard (and the attempts in the NME article to paint them that way were ridiculous). They look like a Britpop band pointed at a NYC '76 artpunk dressing up box. Nowhere in the mythology of the likes of The Ramones, The Stooges or the VU does it mention meeting some of your fellow band members at a private school in Switzerland.

They're not the best band of their generation. They're not even the best band in New York. They'd be the best band in York, perhaps.

I said I won't have a word against the Sheds!

I heard the Strokes album during my second visit to the NME on Tuesday. It left me completely cold.

>I heard the Strokes album during my second visit to the NME on Tuesday. It left me completely cold.
>
I'm at NME this week, and can reveal that this week's issue will contain hot Strokes news on page 4...

>I'm at NME this week, and can reveal that this week's issue will contain hot Strokes news on page 4...

Anything to do with a rescheduled tour, by any chance?

>is this the end of 'Sounds of the Sixties'?
>
>Jeff Beck is still making music today.

Great series, but those end captions were the birth of Theakstonism.

"The Who did their album Tommy in the 1960s"

>>I'm at NME this week, and can reveal that this week's issue will contain hot Strokes news on page 4...
>
>Anything to do with a rescheduled tour, by any chance?

Wait and see...

The Strokes are now bigger than Pontious Pilate?

>The Strokes are now bigger than Pontious Pilate?

It's rumoured that there just might be an incident backstage during their tour involving a music journalist (tbc) and a member of the band carving the legend "4 SKIN" into his own arm...

Seen and raised, TJ. Almost as much fun as eight hours of VH1 Classics recorded overnight.

"The Strokes are now bigger than Pontious Pilate?"

Bent, you're just not keeping up with the sensational Hard-Day's-Night-style phenomenon that is The Strokes Explosion. They're already bigger than Thaddeaus The Apostle. Now they've got Joseph Of Arimathea in their sights.

So, the NME...

>Lush are sadly missed because they were incredibly underrated

Speak for yourself. I don't miss them at all. They were muck, an unrealised 4 AD fantasy, Ivo's little whim that failed to live up to any promise. Lush were overrated, not underrated. The music press fancied the girls, that's all. All I remember were those weak little voices limply whining out drivelsome mimsy you couldn't quite make out . . . because the lyrics were so embarrassingly crap they had to be buried right down in the mix. Dreadful.

Didn't see the appeal of the girls myself. Emma looked like a nice, little middle class girl who would have been more at home working as a Primary school teacher, and Miki Berenyi had the most compellingly ugly mouth I've ever, ever seen. Heard she's a sub at TV Times now.

>and were clearly capable of great things that they never got to achieve.

They had long enough, didn't they?

I can't let that stand, Sir. No. Emma's songwriting was excellent. You may have been put off by their production, which tended to be dreadful after the first couple of EPs, Robin Guthrie helping to ruin their first album. Also Miki was a very weak singer, like a nervous choir boy dreading the approach of his Bishop sex master. I've got a snippet of them playing live on some shortlived BBC2 or CH4 programme and it's just mindboggling that anyone would stand and listen to that Godawful racket without throwing things at the band. But these are trifling matters when you have pop songs like 'God's Gift' from the 'Black Spring' EP, a joint effort from the lasses. The lyrics are mostly audiable, probably by Miki and are rather good: "Finger in every pie/Can't let a chance pass you by." But what a tune. It's very accomplished, and a perfect example of Emma's style. A potential pop classic, let down utterly in the execution, swamped in BOSS Chorus pedal. Guthrie made the drummer play electronic pads that triggered samples of his drum kit, because it was easier to record and he had no experience miking up a kit. The stupid sod. The end result sounds like one of those toy drum pad things you get from the Argos catalogue.

Given that this thread concerns the state of the NME, I think that its shameless championing of its feeble Camden mates is a major part of its downfall.

I don't have the in depth knowledge of Lush's production. I do know that the tripe that they put out in 95/96/97 was hailed by the NME. When it was precisely the sort of shandy-lightweight crap that they really ought to dismiss. It's not important, is it?

When you add Lush to the other rot that they suggested was good at the time, then you see what happened. the NME was, at that time, a Smash Hits of Indie. And you KNOW they hated having to put Steps at the top of the Indie Chart.

>I do know that the tripe that they put out in 95/96/97 was hailed by the NME.

Different matter entirely. They "reacted" to Brit-pop by changing style in order hop on the bandwagon like everyone else (see discussion 433 messages above about whether Blur should be included) and the results were inexplicably popular but didn't have any of the old Wilsonesque melodic magic.

>When it was precisely the sort of shandy-lightweight crap that they really ought to dismiss.

That phrase bothers me. Do you want lager-heavyweight? What does that mean? Nu-metal?

Sub-kenickie nonsense is what it means. Rubbish pop but done by their friends.

>I do know that the tripe that they put out in 95/96/97 was hailed by the NME. When it was precisely the sort of shandy-lightweight crap that they really ought to dismiss. It's not important, is it?

They did a lovely cover of "I Have the Moon", it's hard to hate them. Anyway, is it the NME's job to cover bands they think are important or bands they think are good? Which doesn't mean they should just cover their Camden mates, of course.

Both. Neither of which describes Lush.

Of all the things to happen : a discussion about Lush. Which is partially my fault. I apologise to all.

Fuck. Sorry Tom, try again...

Here's hoping......

Can i just point out that while the nation was discovering punk rock and rebellion, the NME was still obssessed with Gentle Giant and bloody Budgie. One had to buy Sounds (or better still, Sniffin' Glue, Ripped & Torn) if one wanted to be at the cutting edge. It wasn't until hip young gunslingers (!) like Parsons and Burchill were hired ('78?)that the NME got anywhere near hep. I reckon the heyday lasted 78 - 82 (ish). Unfortunately after that it was all Errol Goldust and Zootsuits.

Bring back Lunchie Bunsworth and The Three Dots...

i am hindered in my insight into the early punk era by my not having been born.

Given that the NME is largely a reactive thingy now, and apparently has been for some time, you do wonder what the point of it is.

It's a "new" version of the "Musical Express", i expect.

>It wasn't until hip young gunslingers (!) like Parsons and Burchill were hired ('78?)that the NME got anywhere near hep. I reckon the heyday lasted 78 - 82 (ish). Unfortunately after that it was all Errol Goldust and Zootsuits

I fear you are correct. I haven't bought NME since 1982 and I now read Early Music News. Everyone knows the early stuff's always the best!

1977 Annual Poll, NME:

Worst Group: The Sex Pistols
Best Group: Yes

>1977 Annual Poll, NME:
>
>Worst Group: The Sex Pistols
>Best Group: Yes

Oh, Jesus. NME were still wearing flares in 1979, I bet.

>1977 Annual Poll, NME:
>
>Worst Group: The Sex Pistols
>Best Group: Yes

Was that the writer's or reader's poll? The readers of the NME are constantly voting for godawful dadrock and mimsy acoustic dribbling to this day. The staff generally show better taste (at least to the extent of not voting for The Stereophonics and Paul Weller).

Readers Poll. I'm pretty certain it was NME anyway. Either that or Sounds... they all merge into one when you plough through hundreds of them. But there was a general feeling that none of the music press really gelled with the new wave until 1978, with the Maker lagging desperately behind. Mind you, the onset of punk did provoke some of the funniest letters pages in music press history. Readers were stubborn with their views on Led Zep, Crimson, Yes and so on. In fact one of my second-hand Sounds contains an entry sheet for the Readers Poll of '77 which is filled in, but was never sent off. Virtually every answer is 'Yes'.

I can confirm that the NME and Sounds were always up for a cover pic of Rob Alford in (lawks!) leather, or Bryan Ferry in a tennis shirt until 78, at which point it became The Skids every week. Or so it seemed...

I found a time capsule from 1978 in one of the rooms at college when I was still a student. It contained a massive pile of Sounds and NMEs.

I was delighted to find that, despite what they say these days, they didn't have a clue about New Wave or Punk. So I can back you up on this one, Halo.

There was a Blondie interview in one of them that sounded like it was written by Derek Kent (remember?), all "this spunky young filly is certainly easy on the eye..." type writing.

One of the issues contained an ad for Dire Straits on tour with Talking Heads in support, which was a delightful image.

They also seemed to have trouble deciding what was punk, what was new wave and what was pub rock. Not the "we were leading a new movement in music" crap they try and have us believe now at all. There was a real sense in all the copies I saw that punk and new wave had caught them and their readership utterly off guard.

"There was a real sense in all the copies I saw that punk and new wave had caught them and their readership utterly off guard."

Which is why they'll now champion any old "scene" or "movement" at the drop of a hat...

On the official Fall site, there is a huge bibliography section containing loads of old interviews. There is a very interesting one from 1986 in which MES recalls going for an interview in '78 with Parsons&Burchill (big Fall fans, apparently), only to discover they planned to put them on the cover with the catchline "The Fall: the band against the NF". Smith was furious at being made to dance to someone else's tune, and thus stormed out, didn't get mentioned in "the Boy Looked At Johnny", etc.

Search it out. Very interesting.

Also search out MES's tour diary from 1988, with some amusing remarks about Devoto. Not the sort of thing they would print today.

Which reminds me. I'm supposed to be transcribing a stack of early articles for said Fall bibilography. There's a large file of them to my left.

>There's a large file of them to my left.

I wish there was some way of clicking on that link.

Ah. bless. I pop into this forum for the first time in three months to check on the 'Brass Eye Special' rumours, and this lovely old thread is still going.

I'm hoping this thread becomes like a wheezing old dinosour, spluttering out useless information to apathetic readers and heading further and further up its own arse.

Juat like the NME then.
Sorry

Actually, i hope it becomes the 'best local tv' thing, and just sits at the top of the forum forever and ever, sometimes disappearing so people think its gone and can celebrate, but always coming back in the end.

Actually, I don't know if you noticed, but for many years they used to make up their own "movements" like The New Wave Of New Wave (gurn) and Romo. Probably so they could still claim to be at the cutting edge.
I preferred National Rockstar meself.

Oh, not to mention Camden Lurch

It certainly looks like a good manifesto pledge at the top of the forum.

Here's something I'm sure you'll all enjoy: the big main letter due to be printed in next week's Angst, which allows NME's forthcoming Ibiza/Ayia Napa coverage to appear in a positive light, was made up by Andre due to a publishers' request that Angst should be 'more on-message'.

This week's Angst looks like it was staff-written on the same principles...

Oh, and the reason that the Vice journalist has been introduced as NY live reporter this week is surely because everyone at the NME wants to write for the mag. Piers Martin was bandying the recent issue - featuring his political article - about the office like a four-year-old who's just done something good and is keen to impress.

>I'm at NME this week, and can reveal that this week's issue will contain hot Strokes news on page 4...

What a pointless story it was. Wasn't there some suggestion that the gig was akin to the Pistols/Buzzcocks/Clash at 100 Club? Mindless.

So why are you at the NME, Jack? Or are you "a helpful onlooker" after all? (sorry if I've missed something.)

>So why are you at the NME, Jack?

At the moment, I do all their sub-editing holiday cover (Martin Horsfield's away this week, so I'm in to cover him) and any extra sub-editing that arises.

"Piers Martin was bandying the recent issue - featuring his political article - about the office like a four-year-old who's just done something good and is keen to impress."

You mean like: "Look, mummy! I done a big poo!" ?

Entirely correct analogy, then...

>(Martin Horsfield's away this week

That name rings a bell... I think he was on the B&S list for a while.

Jon - if you are *that* Jon - I'm terribly sorry I never finished your Curve tape. There are two unlabelled C90s *still* sitting atop the cassette deck - one that went a bit wrong, the other a second attempt with some Dead Can Dance on it. Perhaps I should try again?

I've got the Curve EPs now, never mind.

Whatever happened to them, eh?

NME didn't invent Romo, that was Simon Price at MM.

He still mourns its passing.

>I've got the Curve EPs now, never mind.
>
>Whatever happened to them, eh?

They came back with that one big beat track which was used on an advert (Maxell> Sony?) in 1997. Then they went away again.

I'm not sure if that was the plan exactly, but it's what happened.

Tony Halliday was convinced that her Leftfield collaboration was the beginning of a whole new career.

Still waiting, love?

I'll bow to Andrew's superior knowledge since I never read the MM which was consistently dreadful.

And no staples either. Which was poo

I have the MM/Romo special, so Andrew is right.

Was that Orlando et al? There was a free tape, yes? Did it also have 'The Great Pub Rock Revival', by Denim, for no apparent reason?

I remember when Select "broke" the Romo story with a bemused one page article which pointed out that the whole thing had been made up. I don't think they mentioned it again.

That Romo "scene" was utterly laughable. I spent three weeks at Melody Maker in 1997, where I was patronised by Paul Lester ("You look like a member of Ocean Colour Scene") and subjected to quite the limpest handshake I've ever experienced from Robin "Hey, I'm a twat!" Bresnark.

Well, the NME seemed to like it.
Does anyone recall the dreadful rags that were created to fill the void of a journo strike in the late 7o's? (National Rockstar, New Music News et al).

> I spent three weeks at Melody Maker in 1997, where I was patronised by Paul Lester ("You look like a member of Ocean Colour Scene")

I knew Lester in passing, saw him at gigs, that sort of thing, not exactly friendly just hot hostile. Anyway, some time after leaving the NME, he and I were on the same Music Week Awards judging panel for something or other, and he came in late. I had long hair at the time (so did he) and he said, by way of a light-hearted greeting across the room, "You've copied my hair."

That's what a conceited twat he was (and presumably still is). I wonder what it said on his t-shirt that they felt the need to "censor" when he was a lame and now bald pundit on C4's Top Tens? Perhaps "Uncut". [A magazine we at Q waggishly nicknamed "Ucunt" and "Halfcut" - in honour of its editor - when it was launched. Glad I've put all that stupid rivalry behind me now.]

>That's what a conceited twat he was (and presumably still is). I wonder what it said on his t-shirt that they felt the need to "censor" when he was a lame and now bald pundit on C4's Top Tens?

It was the 'Kangol' logo. They showed it in an trailer for it's original transmittion.

>> I spent three weeks at Melody Maker in 1997, where I was patronised by Paul Lester

>I knew Lester in passing, saw him at gigs, that sort of thing, not exactly friendly just hot hostile.

I met Paul Lester while freelancing at Uncut last month (spot my name in this issue's credits). He didn't seem very popular there.

Without too much effort, I reckon we can all put in about 20 posts a day on this strand.

Dickon from Orlando formed a new band Fosca, who are now recording their 2nd album.

Ex-MM people always go on about how NME "more conservative" than them. But apart from romo (which still got a few favourable mentions) the 2 papers covered the same stuff. I don't have any trouble remembering Cast, OCS etc. on the cover of MM.

Riot Grrl was an entirely fictitious "scene" as well.

Incidentally, Andrew, in 1991 you claimed that The farm were "excellent". Do you stand by that?

I meant 20 posts between us, not 20 posts each. That would be demanding too much.

>Incidentally, Andrew, in 1991 you claimed that The farm were "excellent". Do you stand by that?

In among their moments of sheer awfulness, which admittedly were nearly all of them, The Farm managed a couple of sublimely brilliant tracks tucked away on their second album.

If you think Andrew Collin's appreciation of The Farm is, in hindsight, a bit dodge, try this one. Alun Jones, editor of MM, went to see The Stone Roses play their last gig at Glasgow Green before they buggered off for five years - Jones promptly announced that the Roses were rubbish and that the future belonged to the Charlatans.

Now you can argue the toss whether Second Coming was shit or not (personally I think it's great), and I've got no qualms about admitting that Browny's got a somewhat eccentric vocal delivery, but to suggest that the Charlatans were better than the Stone Roses in 1990 is tantamount to saying in 1964 that The Beatles have had their day and Herman's Hermits are going to be the next big thing. I reckon. Though doubtless some Roses hating ponce will point out that Jones was actually quite prescient, in that The Roses fucked off, came back, and underwhelmed, while The Charlatans continued to chug merrily along. To which I say, no, you're wrong.

I fell asleep during side 2 of The Charlatans' debut album.

Something else about The Farm...

I've mentioned this on this forum before, but I don't know if anyone knew the answer.

Around the mid-80s, C4 showed a doc made by Miles Copeland (manager of The Police) in which he argued that capitalism was brilliant. As part of explaining this thesis he went to Liverpool to argue against a radical young left-wing band.

I didn't see the original show, but I did see "Right To Reply" in which the band's singer came in and complained that Copeland had stitched them up, editing their answers to suit himself.

Was the band The Farm?

They were certainly going in 1983. There was a R1 doc about Peel sessions years back which played a song they recorded in 83 called "No Man's Land", which was an early version of their top 3 smash "All Together Now".

>I fell asleep during side 2 of The Charlatans' debut album.

Maybe you did, but I don't feel that's anything to write them off completely for. "Some Friendly" was, admittedly, a patchy album at best, but its highpoints were genuine highs, and in one or two cases (notably 'You're Not Very Well') still sound sublime over a decade on. "Between 10th And 11th" had about the same rate of success, but I am prepared to step up to the plate on this one and say that I believe it was simply the wrong album at the wrong time, and doesn't deserve the mauling it has had since. There weren't many other bands mixing 'indie' with house and industrial rhythms back then, but that's all the 'rage' now, so they tell me.

"Up To Our Hips" was extremely impressive, as they had finally developed the confidence to let their influences shine through rather than hiding them under fashionable trappings, and Steve Hillage was an inspired choice as producer. "The Charlatans" is stunning, pure and simple. "Telling Stories" was wank, but in all fairness they had just lost their main songwriter in tragic circumstances. And "Us And Us Only" is an entertaining album from start to finish.

Maybe not the most epochal group ever to exist, but I don't think they really deserve sneering either.

But I did actually nod off during "Some Friendly".

I always used to say "I'll never buy another of their albums, but I'll buy the Singles Collection", because I haven't minded a few tracks over the years (though I haven't been taken with some other stuff I've heard). "Crashin' In", and so forth. Though I still haven't got round to buying "Melting Pot".

I was referring to SF in the context of the earlier post, about the definite "they're the next big thing" that surrounded them in 1990, and it was bloody disappointing back then when I got the album.

At that stage you couldn't move for chancers trying to stick a John Squire-type sound over the most insipid twaddle, and - I did try with that album, I played it again and again - but it seemed that the majority of it represented what was wrong with music, rather than a great example of the way forward. Good stuff: "Sproston Green" I still like, "109 pt2" showed they did have some ideas, and of course "The Only One I Know". Bad stuff: pretty much most of side 2.

I think they were the first of a string of 90s indie bands (Blur and Suede as well) to get (almost) total uncritical support up to their debut album, then quickly after that you only get little comments about them as a shorthand for being rubbish (Blur definitely went through that in 91-2). But they kept going and held onto a fanbase, and recovered from it all. Fair play to them. The Inspirals didn't.

Did the Inspirals just give up, or get dropped, or what?

>Did the Inspirals just give up, or get dropped, or what?

They split up after leaving Mute.

>>Did the Inspirals just give up, or get dropped, or what?
>
>They split up after leaving Mute.

Though Tom Hingley recently recorded a solo album, and plays the odd gig. When he played in Wigan a few months ago he played 'Dragging Me Down' and I felt like a 14-year-old again. It was lovely.

>Though Tom Hingley recently recorded a solo album, and plays the odd gig. When he played in Wigan a few months ago he played 'Dragging Me Down' and I felt like a 14-year-old again. It was lovely.

Tom's solo stuff is great, I must say. He also does a superb acoustic version of 'Two Worlds Collide', and his voice is as powerful as ever.

Jon's just mentioned it, so can someone explain to me the massive appeal of Suede's first album? - it's sounds alright to me, but i'm not frothing at the mouth about how 'exciting' it sounds like some crazed MM or NME journo - i prefer Dog Man Star (and Coming Up, thinking about it), I don't understand. (This of course, is all because Suede won the Mecry Music Prize in 1993, when clearly The Auters should've won it.)

The great Suede album is Coming Up imo. Though when they put out a singles compilation, that'll be good too.

Dogmanstar did seem to anticipate a trend for 'epic' strings on songs by indie bands, and did it far, far better than anyone else, before it was in anyway fashionable. They lost it after Bernard left, though, and the first LP seems a bit patchy a few years on as well.

They did do it far, far better than anybody else, didn't they. Everybody had a pop, though. 'Being Brave' was one that did it worse than most.

Slightly more gravity when Suede did it, though. Only bettered by those on 'Chasing Rainbows'.

So, Are Menswear still going then?

>Incidentally, Andrew, in 1991 you claimed that The farm were "excellent". Do you stand by that?

Yes. I even get a happy Proustian rush if I hear an old Farm track today. Innocent times. That band changed my trainers.

> That band changed my trainers.

Ah, but did they ever change theirs, etc.

Re Jack Welsby's accurate prediction of this week's letters page, did anyone else find that Andre complete missed the point of the letter from 'A Semi-Satisfied Reader', under the heading 'Indie...zzz'? The 'get hip daddyo' response seems to be automated by computer these days.

And 6 pages are printed upside down. Marvellous.

>And 6 pages are printed upside down. Marvellous.

That's because of the double cover - thus the Ibiza pages align with the Ibiza cover and similarly for Ayia Napa. I'm not sure that it works that well.

If anyone is interested in asking for the reason why getting NME journalists to make up readers' letters in order to keep the magazine on-message is a positive development in NME's history, address your letters to:

Mike Soutar
Managing Director, IPC ignite!
25th Floor
King's Reach Tower
London
SE1 9LS

>That's because of the double cover - thus the Ibiza pages align with the Ibiza cover and similarly for Ayia Napa.

But where does that leave the Madonna live review? I'm certain that was flipped round too. I've not got a copy to hand 'm afraid, otherwise I'd check.

>If anyone is interested in asking for the reason why getting NME journalists to make up readers' letters in order to keep the magazine on-message is a positive development in NME's history, address your letters to:

I might just do that.

I liked the bit when the kid whacked Lord Winston in the face with a wooden spoon. Funnier than the whole of last week's comedy output on the BBC put together.

>I liked the bit when the kid whacked Lord Winston in the face with a wooden spoon. Funnier than the whole of last week's comedy output on the BBC put together.

Guess what? Wrong thread! It's the drugs........

Completely pointless though, just turning a few pages over. This means you read the magazine, flip it over halfway through, and then have to flip it back to read the rest.
Not that i read the Ayia Napa/Ibiza stuff. Couldn't give a fuck.

Are NME's target audience supposed to be involved in some feud between people who go to Ayia Napa and the Ibiza traditionalists?

I wonder if anyone outside King's Reach Tower cares? Yawn.

Might buy this year's Christmas special. It could be the last one.

>Are NME's target audience supposed to be involved in some feud between people who go to Ayia Napa and the Ibiza traditionalists?

Yes, because their plight is oh so important and we should all be desperately concerned about it. Heaven forbid that someone might actually want to listen to music and say how much they like it.

>Are NME's target audience supposed to be involved in some feud between people who go to Ayia Napa and the Ibiza traditionalists?

I don't think 'feud' really comes into it. 'Easy way of covering both Ibiza and Ayia Napa' might.

So Solid Crew seem to have a real problem with the Dreem Teem, though.

That's because The Dreem Teem refused to play Oxide & Neutrino's music at last year's Notting Hill Carnival. Oxide & Neutrino are peripheral members of So Solid Crew, so it all stems from there. They even 'dissed' them on their album 'Execute'.

The Dreem Teem don't believe Oxide and Neutreno are 'proper' garage whatever that is. Who do they think they are, Paul Weller?

Anyway, bad news, Artful Dodger have split up

Has he?

>>Are NME's target audience supposed to be involved in some feud between people who go to Ayia Napa and the Ibiza traditionalists?
>
>I don't think 'feud' really comes into it. 'Easy way of covering both Ibiza and Ayia Napa' might.


But multiple covers are usually the way to divide readers into camps (Whizz Kids and Chip-Ite style). Like "Buy your favourite Beatle" last month in Uncut. That's what I was inferring from the split NME - that you could turn it round while reading it to indicate your loyalty.

I don't understand this dance culture anyway. It all sounds like Jean Michel Jarre to me. Bring back proper songs with proper words, and guitars. And rebecs. And tambours. And hautboys and plainsong.

>I don't understand this dance culture anyway. It all sounds like Jean Michel Jarre to me. Bring back proper songs with proper words, and guitars. And rebecs. And tambours. And hautboys and plainsong.

Great idea. I'll play a reinvented ocarina.

>>I don't understand this dance culture anyway. It all sounds like Jean Michel Jarre to me. Bring back proper songs with proper words, and guitars. And rebecs. And tambours. And hautboys and plainsong.

You want them to bring back 'Kiss From A Rose' by Seal?

The music selection is immaterial. The writing is the problem.

Jon wrote:

>Riot Grrl was an entirely >fictitious "scene" as well.

Hmm, not really. Riot Grrl wasn't fictional, but merely one strand of the American DIY/International Pop Underground, which wasn't and isn't a scene as such but more about small indie labels networking without a central power base.

It was also a scene in that bands shared members, equipment, tours, gigs, networks of fans, split singles, and, most importantly, had a unified philosophy.

Sounds like a scene to me - though the actual term may have been invented by the inkies.

According to:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1436000/1436715.stm

AOL are poised to buy IPC. I wonder what the consequences for the NME will be. Probably not good, I'm thinking.

AOL? And here was me thinking that the NME caouldn't possibly get worse. At least IPC got shot of Fleetway years ago...

>The music selection is immaterial. The writing is the problem.

Too right! Quality's dropped so far that this weeks issue hasn't bothered with the usual staff/writers list.

As well as those who disappeared during Sutherland's dumbing down/corporate ass-licking exercise (MaConie, Collins & Quantick)what's happened to Keith Cameron (great in NME & on XFM), Swells (seems to have been marginalised to the odd singles review) & Dele Fadele (although he did crop up this weeks reviewing compilations)?

Seem to have been replaced by media studes (all ex-MM) angling for a job with the Grauniad, or clueless failed muso twats like James Oldham (if anyone out there knows him, tell him you used to go to the Morning Star in High Wycombe, & that The Glass Needle sucked even harder than his writing).

>As well as those who disappeared during Sutherland's dumbing down/corporate ass-licking exercise (MaConie, Collins & Quantick)

Collins and Maconie left in 1992 (Sutho induction), I think. Andrew certainly did. Quantick stayed till Winter 1995, when his workload at Q and on BBC Radio meant that it his move was overdue. He was also sick of interviewing dull indie bands for a living.

>what's happened to Keith Cameron (great in NME & on XFM)

I *think* he's moved to the monthlies for good.

>Swells (seems to have been marginalised to the odd singles review)

He's always made infrequent contributions. He's a freelancer. He does have a choice in the matter.

>Dele Fadele (although he did crop up this weeks reviewing compilations)?

He's been a lot more active recently. He's been prominent in the live section for the last month or so. Met him whilst I was on my NME visits. Lovely bloke, if a little tired of the office.

>Too right! Quality's dropped so far that this weeks issue hasn't bothered with the usual staff/writers list.

It's frequently missing from the pages, from time immemorial.

> Lovely bloke, if a little tired of the office.

Is he still convinced that the French poisoned Ronaldo so that they could win the world cup? At the time there was no way to stop him ranting about this.

>According to:
>
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1436000/1436715.stm
>
>AOL are poised to buy IPC. I wonder what the consequences for the NME will be. Probably not good, I'm thinking.

Now Angst will be full of letters from people asking how to work their CD players.

>Collins and Maconie left in 1992 (Sutho induction), I think. Andrew certainly did.

I think Collins addresses this somewhere above; Collins went to Select and secured Maconie a place, so he left soon afterwards.

>I *think* he's moved to the monthlies for good.

Yes, Cameron is now reviews editor of Mojo and also contributes to Q/Guardian/others (probably).

>He's always made infrequent contributions. He's a freelancer. He does have a choice in the matter.

No, he is winding down his involvement. He spoke to the NUS Media conference a few weeks back and said he was 'moving away' from the NME to concentrate on novels, so interpret that as you wish.

>He's been a lot more active recently. He's been prominent in the live section for the last month or so. Met him whilst I was on my NME visits. Lovely bloke, if a little tired of the office.
>

He also 'moved away' a few years back, and certainly contributes a lot less than the early 90s (reputedly - I wasn't reading it back then, but I think he was one of the main writers whereas even now he's no more than peripheral)

i used to love the mark radcliffe 10 till 12 show and listened to it every night religiously. they introduced me to a lot of the music that i love now. i was very proud when they read my name and address out after i had won one of mark kermodes film competitions (henry:portrait of a serial killer). i was even more proud when they took the piss out of my address.

no-one i speak to nowadays remembers the show and when i mention mark or lard they go on about the watered-down breakfast or afternoon shows and i can never explain how much better the late show was.

highlights for me were; collins and maconie, mark lamarr, the bloke out of orange juice who lived in america, their edinburgh shows, some of the poets whose names i forget and just the general excellence of most of the guest and banter.

i see this time as a 'golden age' of radio one, certainly in my life. i remember listening to the chris morris show, fist of fun, alan parkers show and many others at 9.00 and then listening to m&l, often falling asleep to 'little star' by stina nordenstam or some other fantastic record that would never get played elsewhere.

i vaguely remember listening to the last few 'out on blue six' programs that radcliffe used to do before the graveyard shift, on a monday night if memory serves me correct.

im sorry for the length and ramble factor of this post but seeing people talk about this show brought back loads of memories and i felt the urge to splurge them out to people who may actually remember and understand what im talking about. i would also be eternally grateful if anyone who mentioned they were compiling an mp3 cd of the shows would burn me a copy, if they are still reading this far. my email is [email protected] if anyone can help

It was the best radio show I've ever heard (although I could have done without Mark Kermode's ridiculously opinionated, um opinions). There will always be a place in my heart for Mark and Lard whatever they're up to, but that show was incandescent, luminous, magnetic.

Did anyone think that when M&L finished their show ten minutes early a couple of weeks ago, contained some great banter when they pretended to be off air? I believe they could improve the show immensely by not pre-recording stuff, and not scripting so strictly.

i agree with everything rich said. there have been some great shows on radio 1 but mark and lard's graveyard slot was one of the best ever. i can't listen to the afternoon show because the drop in quality is so obvious, although i'm sure they are better than any thing else on the station at the moment. i particularly miss the poetry, if only Simon Armitage and Ian MacMillan had gone to the afternoon show.

I always used to wish that Nigel would not appear with Hegley.

And the sessions were smashing. and they played music that they liked. I think it's a little easier to perform well in those circumstances.

>i particularly miss the poetry, if only Simon Armitage and Ian MacMillan had gone to the afternoon show.

thats the buggers, been trying to remember their names all day. i wasnt that big a fan of armitages poems but he was an amusing guest. could have done without jools though (or was it joolz), bit too sixth-form sylvia plath.

i missed john hegley off my list of great guests, and lee and herring, as well as many others i expect.

i also remembered earlier that i still have compilation tapes of stuff recorded off the radio with bits from the show on them, as well as a few songs from the chris morris shows (most memorable is rock the casbah with morris playing along on a stylophone or something).

as for kermodes opinionated views; yes they were a bit too much sometimes but at least you could see he was passionate about his subject and all his opinions were his own. i would take that over most of the film critics around today. and i won a video and t-shirt in one of his competitions, so i cant diss him

Say what you like about Uncut, but some of the stuff on their CD's is/was ace. 'Mirror, Mirror' by Whiskeytown is the best song I've heard in ages (apart from possibly Sex Life, though that might well be just because it features Sarah Nixey singing about climaxing. Mmm....)

Their reviews are shite though - They gave Love Honour & Obey four stars when it was first released, as I remember....

Just to keep the NME kettle boiling, I seem to remember SWells being the asistant ed. for a while....and thus there were endless rantings about Fuzzbox and "Pure Pop". Could the rot have started there? In my younger days I always liked SWells's nonsense
but it did seem to become more formulaic as time passed.

>Just to keep the NME kettle boiling, I seem to remember SWells being the asistant ed. for a while....

Swells was never assistant anything. He's never been on the staff. Not a team player etc. The management (by which I really mean the editor and senior editorial team) always kept him at arm's length, but were too scared not to give him work. He'd just make such a fuss if you don't throw him the odd bone now and again. Most people burn themselvs out at the NME after about five years. Swells has been writing for the NME for about 16 years. And he too burnt himself out after five. Quite a funny bloke though when he's not showing off. Legend has it that - just before my time - the tracksuit trousers Swells was wearing day in day out were so rank, fetid and stained that James Brown threatened to call in the enviornmental health if he didn't go home and wash/change them. he was also nicknamed "Earthquake Wells" after a photographer in the next room on a foreign trip was unfortunate enough to hear him having noisy sexual intercourse.

He was on "Top 10:1981", which makes him the new Stuart Maconie.

I stand corrected...must've read the writers credits wrong.

Still, keeps the thread going, eh?

http://www.nme.com/NME/External/News/News_Story/0,1004,36518,00.html

Fuck the NME. Fuck 'em with a fucking baseball bat. Stupid, stupid, STUPID bastards. I hope they choke on their fucking Ibiza compilations.

"Music personalities" seems a bit rich. Phil Collins, yes, the all-purpose he's-shit target. (He is, but that's neither here nor there.) Richard Blackwood, who had a novelty hit. The others listed are not music personalities. And anyway, at least if they'd lured Ian Brown, Crispian Mills and Bobby Gillespie into doing something (not difficult, as they are all gibbering idiots), maybe it would have been rather more useful.

The self-importance of that piece is unbelievable. OK, so someone at C4 or Talkback sent them a tape. Big fucking deal. I don't care if the special is never shown. I really don't. Channel 4's face is not going to be saved by a one-off show. And similarly, the NME isn't going to be saved by running hysterical stories like this one. It's irresponsible, empty toss.

That link's not working right now. What's the gist of the story?

Does anyone recall their 'Gorillaz World Exclusive' of a few weeks back? It consisted of one still, seemingly taken at random from the new video.The best Thrills piece ever was Jarvis Cocker's DIY column: 'This Is Hardboard'.

"And anyway, at least if they'd lured Ian Brown, Crispian Mills and Bobby Gillespie into doing something (not difficult, as they are all gibbering idiots), maybe it would have been rather more useful."

Gillespie was last spotted attacking a gig-goer with a mike stand at a J Mascis gig he was guesting at. He really doesn't need anyone else's help to make a tit of himself.

Anyone else disappointed by the language and terminology that they used to 'preview' the Brass Eye special? "Sickest stunt yet" indeed.

Pretty normal for the "news" section of the NME, which has always been written in a curiously detached way. The headlines sometimes have puns, but the main body of each story assumes no intelligence on the part of the reader and never had much in common with the style of the rest of the paper.

Didn't enjoy the description of Morris as a 'rock n roll comedian'. I said 'ouch!' out loud when I read that bit.

Still, I know this isn't reflective of others' opinions, but I was quite glad to read some hard fact as to the content of the BE special. Sorry...

I am compiling a letter to IPC/NME because I want them to at least have omplaints listed, if you have constructive criticism please send to: [email protected]

Also, I've cut out bunches of posts on here, if for some reason you DON'T want your post to be copied, let me know and I will make sure to cut it out, otherwise, I would really like to send this stuff along as you folks have made some very good points.

I've been reading this post for ages never felt like adding anything, but now I feel like I'm not pulling my wait.

About a year ago I started doing some freelance music writing, and at the time, I desperately wanted to get to NME-level - like all good aspiring-muso-twats. Now, though, I couldn't care less.. I'm not so old I don't enjoy dance music - the Prodigy, if they could, were the first band I ever loved - but to me (and I know this is way off-message) there is good dance music and bad dance music. And it's not neccessarily a straightforward warp/happy hardcore split. The NME has never been about music, it's about ideology, and it makes me sad that they've abandoned this in favour of covering scenes just to sell copies - a move that will never work, because to the non-readers, the NME smells like a stinky glass of cider and blackcurrant left behind after a half man half biscuit gig at the Mean Fiddler. The 'cocaine breasts' issue was a horrific low, one of only two occasions in the last five years I've left the paper on the shelf (the other being the spring hip-ho issue - maybe ten years ago, guys..)

What's my point? Who knows. The NME makes me angry because it made me who I am today, and now we don't have anything in common; I didn't change, but somewhere along the line we drifted apart..



And I blame that cunt Sutherland

(PS - James OLdham, to his credit, was so right about Primal Scream's XTRMNTR - the november before release, he interviewed Gillespie and basically wrote that he wasn't walking it like he was talking it. And watching their fucking dull live shows in the spring, Oldham was vindicated in quite some fashion)

>there is good dance music and bad dance music. And it's not neccessarily a straightforward warp/happy hardcore split.

And with all that Ibiza / Ayia Napa stuff NME has lodged itself firmly in the 'bad' camp. The problem is, I doubt many of the readers understands the difference between, say, Herbert or Luomo or Photek as opposed to whatever crap Ministry Of Sound CD they hear from a car stereo in the street. Admittedly, their dance coverage has always seemed pretty clueless, but at least they made a pretence towards covering interesting, leftfield stuff. But Ibiza? Pathetic.

And I find Happy Hardcore less unpleasant than the relentless rise of interchangeable, shallow superclubs fuelled on mediocre obscenely overpaid Radio 1-approved DJs knee-deep in cocaine

If there is a difference between Ayia Napa and Ibiza stylee music, then my ears cannot distinguish it.

And, to be honest, if there is one, I couldn't really care less as this music says nothing to me about my life.

>If there is a difference between Ayia Napa and Ibiza stylee music, then my ears cannot distinguish it.
>
>And, to be honest, if there is one, I couldn't really care less as this music says nothing to me about my life.

Now, if I am reading this correctly, then this is the point I was trying to make. Regardless of the relatively large gulf in sound between Ibiza and Ayia N (4/4 vs 2-step), quality-wise they are pretty much indistinguishable in their poorness. I mentioned Herbert, Photek, Luomo, because these all make 'house' music that clearly is made in a cerebral, studio-based way, not to appeal to the unthinking Saturday-night masses. They can (or should) be able to sit in the pages of both The Wire and Ministry, but clearly belong to the former first and foremost, in the same way as Detroit techno would have done. The divide of good/bad dance music is NOT Ibiza/Ayia Napa in any way - the only poor analogy I can think of is that they are akin to Velvet Soup and The Office, different from one another but both equally rubbish. But to judge and dismiss all comedy on the basis of these would be sheer foolishness.

>And, to be honest, if there is one, I couldn't really care less as this music says nothing to me about my life.

Assuming this is a serious point and not just a deliberate Smiths reference - although I care not one iota for Ibiza or Ayia Napa - I've never understood this idea. Probably my favourite LP I own is Social Living by Burning Spear - what does a 25 year old roots album - essentially a concept album on Garveyism and Rastafari - by a committed rastafarian say about my life as a student on the south coast of England? Would I want to listen to an album about my life of being fairly well educated, healthy, able to get work easily, having a roof over my head and having no real problems to speak of?

It was both serious point and Smiths reference; as I was writing, the line came into my head an I thought it fitted quite well.

Whenever I hear Ibiza or Ayia Napa style music on the radio, it just does nothing at all for me. It doesn't engage me in any way. The only new music that really gets me going is the stuff by Pop Threat and Ciccone. There's plenty that I'll hum along to, but little that I really care about (apart from these two, the track that's really grabbed my attention this year is a 13 (ish) year old Pixies demo that I found on one of those file sharing sites. Just a bloke and a guitar.).

Maybe I'm just too out of touch.

http://www.dominorecordco.com/news/etipu/005.shtml

Is this the person you were talking about?

I wonder if he still fancies Alison Statton.

He's right, though. It's a wonderful record.

On a more general point, how is it that the NME (which used to take around 45 minutes to read from cover to cover) now seems to take roughly one-tenth of the time to scan? This is not my ageing process, merely a reflection of the shockingly dull writing contained within its pages.

And that they don't have proper articles in it anymore.

Oh look, i see they've finally bothered to review Luke Haines album, only about 4 weeks too late.
Actually, that's just a distraction for me from the main 'special' issue.Riots are wrong kids. Let's ask DJ pied piper and some faceless indie people what they think. Great.

Is that really what they're doing this week? Jesus.

The flippancy with which they are treating race riots is a little infuriating. "There's a riot going on... so where are you?" is their tagline, which suggests to me that they think it's all a big game.

Speaking as someone who lives in a city which in some areas and some respects is *still* recovering from riots that took place twenty years ago, I don't think that the topic should be written about in such a glib and sensation-seeking manner.

I think my home town (huddersfield) was possibly going to be where it all kicked off next (or so a load of panicking people who lived there would have you believe). If i see that Steven Wells round here, i kick his face in.

The actual item on the race riots isn't too bad by current NME standards, although the ridiculous presentation ("BRITAIN DIVIDED" screams the header; "Britain not divided at all" says the article, quietly) and the asking the bloke out of Elbow what he thinks is... well...

There's a handy preview of the repeats of H2G2 as well:

"Shown to mark the death of author Douglas Adams earlier this year, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will thrive as long as chemistry students walk the earth. Probably only third to Monty Python and Blackadder in the League Table of Irritatingly Quotable Catchphrases, the story of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent has endured well. Thom Yorke will probably be tuning in to this - after all, there's a character called Marvin the Paranoid Android..."

For those of you who don't read it any more. Thought you'd appreciate it. Oh, and Matthew Collings' "Hello Culture" is "excellent" and "inherently cool" and not "bilge", which is useful to know.

>"Thom Yorke will probably be tuning in to this - after all, there's a character called Marvin the Paranoid Android..."

I'm back working at NME again next week, by the way.

I know that the current long-term NME subs don't have a big in-depth knowledge of comedy.

Riots. I know what they're doing. We never did riots in my day (1988-1992) but the week we decided to "expose" Morrissey as a racist gave us all a buzz in the office - it was like being "proper journalists" for a rare couple of days as we pieced together what was, if not an actual "news" story, certainly more vital than just putting an interview with Kingmaker on the cover. Being a music journalist is not being a journalist - a painful truth we all knew - it's an easy, cossetted, spoon-fed life of Riley, so when the chance comes to do something "newsy", no matter how anodyne and forced it looks to us on the outside, the staff of pale young men will have got a real kick out of doing it. They probably all fell back and had a post-coital cigarette after sending the issue off to the printers, as if they were working for an underground Jewish paper during the first days of the Nazi era.

It's still bollocks though.

That's exactly the impression I came away from it with - that they were all overawed at getting the chance to try their hand at 'real' journalism instead of just making up non-stories about Radiohead all the time. The irony is that the end result was only 'real' journalism in that it reached the same depths of inconclusiveness and point-missing that you might expect if Heat were to write about race riots.

The fact is that this situation _does_ need incisive coverage, but treating it as something fashionable and placing it in a 'historical context' (which they attempt to do) will not help anyone.

>The irony is that the end result was only 'real' journalism in that it reached the same depths of inconclusiveness and point-missing that you might expect if Heat were to write about race riots.

I've just flicked through the issue concerned, and you've hit the nail on the head. There's something slightly sinister about the NME's love of urban disorder - a nasty love of the rebel aesthetic rather than a genuine acknowledgement of the problem. They think it's all a bit Clash, don't they?

Bobby Gillespie is a recent proponent of the same idiotic mentality. Horrible swaggering 'glamour politics' and lame attempts to create outrage with ill-thought out statements.

>The fact is that this situation _does_ need incisive coverage, but treating it as something fashionable and placing it in a 'historical context' (which they attempt to do) will not help anyone.

Exactly. The NME has always treated politics as a fashion thing since I first looked at a copy, circa 1989. Steven Wells is a perfect example.

Left-wing politics shouldn't need to be cool. They make rational sense.

"We never did riots in my day (1988-1992) but the week we decided to "expose" Morrissey as a racist gave us all a buzz in the office"

Andrew, something I've wanted to point out for a long while is that your review of "Your Arsenal" (pre-Finsbury Park) did NOT say that "NF Disco" was a racist song... but you didn't say anymore once the "flirting with fascism" party line on Morrissey was established. Was there any actual debate on that?

I heard from someone who attended the gig that Morrissey got the flag out to taunt the skinheads who were heckling him, in a "look, it's my flag too, nerr" sort-of way. Madness were laughing at this offstage too, appearently.

Incidentally, I thought "Your Arsenal" was mostly cobblers (the one before it was atrocious), but the witch hunt over THAT song was a pure example of what SOTCAA call "safety in numbers" - an official line gets taken up, and everyone jumps in without thinking.

Check Select magazine's issue reviewing the album (pre-FP gig) - Steve Punt and a load of other people failed to attack it. Punt actually said he thought it was a very thoughtful anti-racist song - which it was.

The initial feel of the NF onslaught from the press was surely that Morrissey was dabbling with a risky subject in a frequently innocuous way.

No, the point I'm trying to make is that the press didn't mind the song when they first heard it. Then they got a picture of him with a Union Jack and immediately the official line was that it was a dangerous racist song (earlier opinions instantly wiped from history, '1984'-style). Yet the story of the flag incident was completely different from the way it was written up anyway.

Dig up Ian McCann's review of the 2nd day of Madstock, where he comments on M's non-showing: it was a silly idea of him to do the gig and he got his comeuppance by being *rejected* by the frontline audience. But that undermines the line that he was now ensconsed in NF territory.

I entirely agree that Morrissey was stupid not to go out and do interviews straight away. He was stupid to do the gig in the first place. But, in so far as it was an instance of NME doing 'real' journalism, it was the 'real' journalism of a News Of The World campaign - ie. change their mind overnight, never mention previous opinions, pile on the outrage, etc.

I do seem to recall that the original review of "Your Arsenal" singled out 'We'll Let You Know' and 'National Front Disco' as songs that were patently comments on racism when they were listened to with the accompaniment of the lyric sheet, which inserted quotation marks in relevant and important places, but that this did not come across properly in the actual recorded songs, and advised Morrissey to proceed with caution...

I never said the Morrissey witch-hunt issue was real journalism, Jon. I said it was "real" journalism, ie. closer to journalism than the shit we usually did. I was at Madstock and the crowd were pretty dodgy, some of them - fat, middle-aged skins who looked like they hadn't come out of their North London pub since Madness's heyday. Whether Moz is/was a racist or not was less important than the fact that he was flirting with far right imagery - like a cultural tourist - and not going on record about his reasons, or his real feelings. He could have stopped that cover story with one statement. He chose to remain enigmatic and distant, compounding his error. There was an artificial excitement in the office over those two days (we dropped Kylie from the cover for Moz you know!) At first, as features editor, I refused to get involved, but I was ordered by my boss into the big emergency staff meeting, and once the decision was made, it was up to the senior staff (me, Danny Kelly and Stuart Maconie) to get the copy done, along with an excellent piece by Dele Fadele who is black and could therefore offer a perspective none of us NME white boys could. (Dele was furious about Moz's actions and needed no coercion to write.) All I did was compile Morrissey's faux-racist quotes from every interview he'd ever done, and collate the lyrics. My own personal opinion never appeared, but I was part of the staff and stood by the issue. It asked questions of an increasingly remote but still hugely influential artist who refused to answer them. There are very few issues of NME from that period that anybody remembers let alone still talks about. We did our job.

Then Stuart and I left and "reclaimed" the Union Jack for the Select British issue.

>Whether Moz is/was a racist or not was less important than the fact that he was flirting with far right imagery - like a cultural tourist - and not going on record about his reasons, or his real feelings.

Didn't he just wave a Union Flag around on stage at a Madness concert? Did I miss something? Seriously.

>He could have stopped that cover story with one statement. He chose to remain enigmatic and distant, compounding his error.

I *bet* that really got everyone's backs up.

>All I did was compile Morrissey's faux-racist quotes from every interview he'd ever done, and collate the lyrics.

'Bengali In Platforms' is way racist, but that was a cock-up, according to La Moz, who reckons he made up all the lyrics on the spot for that album. 'NFD' wasn't racist at all. To accuse it of being such is clearly the mark of someone who never got past the title (and made up their own theory about what the song is about).

>Then Stuart and I left and "reclaimed" the Union Jack for the Select British issue.

Didn't Geri beat you to it? Actually, that's one of the few issues I've got left. Wasn't there an inflatable pop star gift stuck on the cover?

Cheerio

>>Then Stuart and I left and "reclaimed" the Union Jack for the Select British issue.
>
>Didn't Geri beat you to it? Actually, that's one of the few issues I've got left. Wasn't there an inflatable pop star gift stuck on the cover?

I think he was probably referring to the notorious "Yanks Go Home"/"Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr. Cobain" issue from 1993.

>I think he was probably referring to the notorious "Yanks Go Home"/"Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr. Cobain" issue from 1993.

Oh, okay. Which is funny, 'cos the one I've got (which I think had Suede on the front) actually *had* an inflatable Kurt Cobain on it!

Cheerio

Andrew,

1. You had to collate "faux-racist" past quotes from Morrissey. Quite right, there have been some... "All reggae is vile", "To get in the top 40 these days you have to be black". But they happened a long while before '92 - why didn't you have a problem? It should have been addressed and settled long before. But Moz was an NME hero, so that line was kept on the back burner. Until it gets brought back to establish a new orthodoxy. And points that challenge that new orthodoxy get glossed over in the same way (points such as what happened at Madstock, non-outraged initial reactions to "Your Arsenal", etc.) Was Sutherland the editor at that point, BTW?

2. Interesting that people here condemn the very idea of covering the topic of the NF. By the same logic, Brass Eye Special must be reprehensible, without any of us needing to see it.

3. "National Front Disco" is about a lonely teenager who gets drawn to the NF because it offers a sense of belonging. He is wrong to do that, but the song is exploring the motivation for joining such a movement. I would say the exuberance of the choruses (reflecting the excitement of being in "the movement") are equally set off with the lamenting tone of the verses that indicate that it is domestic estrangement that makes "the movement" attractive (not any clear idea of what "the cause" might mean), and so the comment is made that NF participation is a form of immaturity. It certainly isn't endorsing it as a political expression. But the original Collins review did point out that the lyric sheet (not included) made this clearer than the track itself.

4. "Bengali In Platforms" is narrated from the point of view of a liberal who is in fact a racist. The point is just that he gives himself away. But again, it works better on the page than as a pop song.

5. Most of the rest of "Your Arsenal" is pure self-obsessed twaddle, which curiously got positive reviews. I'd say NFD was the only bit that showed genuine lyrical sophistication that the author had long been lauded for. But it could have done with another draft.

7. The earlier, "faux-racist" quotes were stupid and ignorant and he should have been made to answer for them. But the claim that actual songs are racist is wrong.

8. He was allowed to get away with them because he was an NME hero. Shortly after FP there was the hoohah over Nicky Wire's Stipe/AIDS comment. Funnily enough, Rob Newman didn't get ticked off for *his* comments on Freddy Mercury during the recent Newman & Baddiel tour - but they were cover stars, they were the flavour of the month.

9. Nowadays the received wisdom (repeated, for example, in NME last December) is that Morrissey showed his true colours by trying to win favour from a far-right crowd. Which is not what happened, so I've been told. And it doesn't fit with the actual songs that were instantly villified. And were not so villified before the incident.

An official line emerges, and suddenly there can't be any disagreement.

It's great to see this belated outpouring of anger at that Morrissey-racism story.

My reaction at the time was to dismiss the NME as whipping up a story out of nothing at all. What Andrew is now saying that this was basically correct. The NME was filled with juciy copy written with a terribly right-on superior tone, but it was in fact a journalistic game. "Let's get Morrissey for flirting with a dangerous symbol of nationalism" (as previously flirted with by the Jam, Slade, T Rex, The Who, etc., flagrant NAZIs, the lot of them.)

New magazine, new readers, new rules - suddenly Brett Anderson is clumsily pasted on to our nation's wonderful flag! Britain is great again because look! Echobelly!

Which use of the Union Jack would you say was the dumbest?

I hold to this day that Morrissey was practically *ridiculing* skinheads as amusing characters from old films and books.

Ignoring the NME was a perfectly valid response and proves nothing at all, does it?

Hope we can clear this up at last!

Hmmm... I think a lot of people here are letting Mozzer off a little lightly.

1 - Am slightly puzzled by the description of the song 'Bengali In Platforms' as being written from a racist liberal's perspective. Absolutely no indication of that in the song - and what about those vile lines about "life is hard enough when you belong here" (i.e. go home paki).

2 - Morrissey issued a press release concerning the album Maladjusted with the pseudonym Stoney Hando. Hando is the name of the lead skinhead character in the 1992 Australian film "Romper Stomper".

surely a little explanation wouldn't have been amiss?

>Hmmm... I think a lot of people here are letting Mozzer off a little lightly.
>
>1 - Am slightly puzzled by the description of the song 'Bengali In Platforms' as being written from a racist liberal's perspective. Absolutely no indication of that in the song - and what about those vile lines about "life is hard enough when you belong here" (i.e. go home paki).

How would you compare it to (say) Derek and Clive talking about coons and so on?

>2 - Morrissey issued a press release concerning the album Maladjusted with the pseudonym Stoney Hando. Hando is the name of the lead skinhead character in the 1992 Australian film "Romper Stomper".

An ironic reference to the previous whipped up controversy?

Hey, I'm too young to talk about Morrisey..

But I do want to talk about the riot issue. I don't know if any of you ever see the Irish mag 'Hot Press', but it's always been more of a youth culture zine than a music thing, but I've always thought it did a pretty good, if slightly over earnest job of highlighting political issues that Ireland's notoriously conservative media ignore. Things like dublin's heroin problem, the role of the gay community in ireland, recent problems with racism and refugees, the obvious terrorism issues and the horrific state of Dublin's Mountjoy prison.

Now, given that, I always thought the NME was missing a beat. Remember when Diana died, and to the NME's credit it was the -only- mass media publication not to toe the party line. Even the fucking Guardian pretended for a while. That was when I really went for the NME in a big way.

But given the ill-thought out, late attempt to tackle the riots, maybe they should stick to what they.. know.



Incidentally, Wells' little digs at Radio 4 really infuriated me. Not sure why..

But didn't NME run a story the immediate Tue/Wednesday after Diana died voicing trepidation that, following this 'tragic loss' (or words similar) meeja attention would now transfer to Noel G and his ilk? Whatever, I certainly don't remember it being anything other than a line-toing, 'we're all in mourning'-type piece.


The following week, of course, it had already become fashionable to state your boredom with Diana-mourning. It was only then that they published their boring anti-Candle in the Wind piece.

Radical or what?

I don't remember that.. going home tomorrow, must check big pile of old NME's..

Hope I haven't been re-writing history...

If it's any help in finding it, I do remember Primal Scream being on the cover. And the Diana aspect was a very minor part of the story, but I certainly remember it being a fairly non-threatening, 'aren't we all shocked and saddened by this tragedy'-type one.

>If it's any help in finding it, I do remember Primal Scream being on the cover. And the Diana aspect was a very minor part of the story, but I certainly remember it being a fairly non-threatening, 'aren't we all shocked and saddened by this tragedy'-type one.

Yes. And then they read Private Eye and thought "Oh shit, we don't look cool at all." I bet they considered doing a cover of her head stuck on a picture of Jesus on the cross with the headline "HAPPY NOW, ELTON?" to try and make amends and look more rock'n'roll.

"Remember when Diana died, and to the NME's credit it was the -only- mass media publication not to toe the party line."

Apart from Private Eye. And, er, The Spectator.

>Now, given that, I always thought the NME was missing a beat. Remember when Diana died, and to the NME's credit it was the -only- mass media publication not to toe the party line. Even the fucking Guardian pretended for a while. That was when I really went for the NME in a big way.
>
Private Eye had no time for such sentiments either. And at least they didn't try to push The Verve's The Drugs Don't Work as some kind of 'real' alternative to Elton's Goodbye English Rose (truly embarrassing editorial about this at the time).

Note to self: must read all postings in thread before posting own message.

Note to Andrew Collins: must look for old thread before starting new one.

"They've always done this, though..."

They certainly have. When I spent two weeks working freelance at NME (two of the worst working weeks of my life) I remember being in a 'news' meeting with the then news editor and editor (Steve Sutherland). News Editor and Editor decided there was no news and so Steve said, "Right, we'll have to make something up then. What can we kick off?" Or words to that effect.

You see, there just aren't enough real news events happening in the UK music scene to feed a weekly. In that moment I realised half the news I'd read in my student years worshiping the NME was all bullshit.

I heard a rumour (from a generally reliable source!!!) that NME was going monthly in September, basically giving up its weekly niche to compete against Q.

I reckon they'll be on a hiding-to-nothing (one of the only virtues of the rag is that it's at least weekly). Anyone else hear anything similar?

>I reckon they'll be on a hiding-to-nothing (one of the only virtues of the rag is that it's at least weekly). Anyone else hear anything similar?

Yes, on a news link a hundred-or-two posts ago.

>>I reckon they'll be on a hiding-to-nothing (one of the only virtues of the rag is that it's at least weekly). Anyone else hear anything similar?
>
>Yes, on a news link a hundred-or-two posts ago.

Is that the Guardian on-line article that got posted (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4211344,00.html)?

It only says there's a possibility of a design in the style of "bi-monthly music magazine, Rolling Stone", not that it's going monthly...

>Note to Andrew Collins: must look for old thread before starting new one.

Where are the toilets?

Is it too late to say I hate the new masthead?

Andy-baby, was the Morrissey racism story a load of old bullshit or not?

>Andy-baby, was the Morrissey racism story a load of old bullshit or not?

We reported the facts (flag, fat skins, dodgy lyrics), added some conjecture, a dash of opinion, joined the dots and waited for a denial. None was forthcoming. Et voila! The most memorable NME of the entire 80s and 90s. (Like, which other ones are we still talking about - and don't mention the Teenage Suicide issue!)

Do you call that bullshit? I call it filling a weekly newspaper. Like, if nobody had anything to say round here for a whole week, it wouldn't matter. An empty NME would be noticed.

>I call it filling a weekly newspaper. Like, if nobody had anything to say round here for a whole week, it wouldn't matter. An empty NME would be noticed.

It's okay, I understand. Gotta fill it with something, right? If there aren't enough facts, how about a little fiction? Who's gonna know?

I'm not sure i can bear reading the whole thread again to see whether it's been mentioned before � what about the "exposure" of Factory records as Fascist during the 80s sometime, including (I believe) the accusation that A Certain Ratio's name was an allusion to racial purity (whereas it's a line from The True Wheel by Eno)?

Didn't a C4 programme have Tony Wilson on to "answer" these charges (probably put together by the SWP-member office junior during a slow lunchtime)? Since the occasion was used to ttry to promote ACR, it's also possible that it was part of Wilson's macchiavellian plan.

Or something like that.

its good to see that this weeks NME is as up with the times as ever, lifting the lid on a hot new craze called 'bootlegging' which usually consists of mixing 2 records together and putting out on white label. you know, like they have been doing for about 15 years now

NME, down wiv da kidz

From nme.com:

"A Woolworths spokeswoman told NME.COM: "The Strokes' album has been queried, because we are a company that promotes family values. It could be embarrassing if a child was buying Bob The Builder's single and saw The Strokes' album next to it. It is not explicit in any way but we do have to think about who our customers are - we don't want to upset any parents." "

Why would any sensible child want to buy a crappy record by The Strokes?

>its good to see that this weeks NME is as up with the times as ever, lifting the lid on a hot new craze called 'bootlegging' which usually consists of mixing 2 records together and putting out on white label. you know, like they have been doing for about 15 years now
>
>NME, down wiv da kidz

First bootleg in the 'traditional' sense sighted in the late 1960s - "The Great White Wonder", a collection of unreleased rehearsal takes of songs by Bob Dylan, who I believe is probably viewed as some kind of irrelevancy from the past by the text-message fixated music journos of today with their finger on the cultural pulse.

I'll be off to find that elusive bootleg mixing Edward VII's abdication speech over the top of 'Do The Bartman', then...

This, I have to say, is a very disturbing development, and is tantamount to censorship on the basis of public image. Woolworths, it would seem, only stock what they would want to be seen to be selling. So how many other stores is this worrying practice in operation in?

A few years back, I remember reading that Woolies were only selling singles that had already been put on Radio 1's A-list. Don't know if that's still the case. Probably not, if The Strokes are on R1's A-list...

Hey Justin! Urgent message in your mailbox!

It's the Strokes' album, that features the naughty picture. Their singles actually look quite boring. And sound it, too.

I like The Strokes, and even if I didn't, I wouldn't see that as any reason to support corporate censorship.

As far as i remember, Woolworths only stock records that are 99% certain to enter the top 40 - as do supermarkets and places like that, and all these places of course, contribute to the figures that make up the top40. So the Strokes album should be stcoked in that case.

>As far as i remember, Woolworths only stock records that are 99% certain to enter the top 40 - as do supermarkets and places like that, and all these places of course, contribute to the figures that make up the top40. So the Strokes album should be stcoked in that case.

They also stock "classics" such as Life by Simply Red and Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits.

That reminds me, wasn't there a hilarious Radio 1 poll of the best 100 albums of all time in about 1992/93, with a Simply Red album beating Pepper to the top spot?

>I like The Strokes, and even if I didn't, I wouldn't see that as any reason to support corporate censorship.

It's not corporate censorship! It's Woolworths - they have a limited shelf space and specific kind of customer. Stocking records that that kind of customer likes will increase their revenue. That is unlikely to be anything by The Strokes.

Just because The Strokes have a powerful PR machine doesn't mean they *deserve* to be stocked by Woolworths.

Oh - for the record, Woolworths do not base their record selection on the Radio 1 playlist. It's more likely to be the other way round.

I don't know about Woolies, but I work weekends at WH Smith and they only stock what's almost definitely going to go into the Top 40 (singles) and Top 75 (albums). Anything likely to drop straight out again or isn't really suitable for Smith's they just get a few copies of, anything likely to sell loads (i.e. the new Now 49 album at the moment) they get millions of copies of.

There are only two albums in the current Top 75, one of which being the Now album which isn't in the CIN Top 75 as it is a compilation album, available in cassette. I get grief about that from customers every weekend.

Yes, nobody who works there knows anything about music (apart from me, and I work in Books most of the time). But then nor do the people buying their records from WH Smith and Woolworths.

>First bootleg in the 'traditional' sense sighted in the late 1960s - "The Great White Wonder", a collection of unreleased rehearsal takes of songs by Bob Dylan, who I believe is probably viewed as some kind of irrelevancy from the past by the text-message fixated music journos of today with their finger on the cultural pulse.

to be fair they were talking about bootlegs in the sense of taking an instrumental track of one song and adding an a capella of another. but then that is still an in no way new thing, going back as far as dance music itself. but then the nme didnt start getting interested in that until it had been going a while. and they still dont fucking understand it. or hip hop

Very annoying Catatonia review in this week's issue. Firstly, Jim Wirth compares their previous level of success to Robbie Williams. Even at their 'Mulder & Scully' / 'Road Rage' peak, Catatonia were never as popular as Robbie Williams, in either record sales or gig terms. I have no strong feelings on either artist, but the use of such a dubious 'fact' to bolster a review desperately seeking an angle is, well, desperate.
Secondly, how the badger's nadgers is Blur's 'Blur' album 'wilfully anti-commercial'? Yes, they moved away from their chirpy Britpop-isms, but their (well, Graham's) love of lo-fi was never a secret. 'Blur' is so 'wilfully uncommercial' that it contains the no.1 single 'Beetlebum' AND the so-successful-at-breaking-the-U.S.-it-was-even-on-The-Simpsons 'Song 2'.
Then he has the cheek to mention 'PR bullshit legend' in his conclusion. Hack, heal thyself!

Well, you can prove anything with facts. And if you can't, make some up. Cerys Matthews provides additional vocals on the new They Might Be Giants album, y'know.

Do WH Smiths still sell that many different albums? I know that in the past I've bought such never-likely-to-dent-the-top-40 titles such as Front 242's 05:22:09:12 Off, and the sales have always been good (I remember buying REM's New Adventures In Hi-Fi cassette and a Tori Amos CD for £2 each), but lately it seems to be a mix of NOW 612, those awful Ibeeeeeefa compilations and David Gray.

Top 75, ex Top 75 shoved out into stock, all the works of David Gray and Simply Red, lots of cheap compilations of the sort you might find in Asda (some containing real gems, mostly just Party Hitzzzz! from various eras) and quite a good classical section.

I loathe working there. We had to play a special game of Bingo today where we were given cards with two pictures of Clubcards, two pictures of 102 Dalmatians video pre-sell forms and one picture of the Recess School's Out kids get in free if you spend over £10 in store voucher. First person to tick all of these off and prove that they have got people to fill in Clubcard forms/pay £1 to pre-order Dalmatians etc won a chart CD album (single only, not double). I couldn't be arsed and got a wrist-slapping for having an attitude problem.
>
>Do WH Smiths still sell that many different albums? I know that in the past I've bought such never-likely-to-dent-the-top-40 titles such as Front 242's 05:22:09:12 Off, and the sales have always been good (I remember buying REM's New Adventures In Hi-Fi cassette and a Tori Amos CD for £2 each), but lately it seems to be a mix of NOW 612, those awful Ibeeeeeefa compilations and David Gray.

I'm quite proud of the fact that I used to play Fall and Photek CDs when I worked in John Menzies. Of course, then evil WHSmith moved in for the kill and we were gone. Oh well. At least JM were in the Fist Of Fun book and WHS weren't.

Did they have an official pronunciation of "Menzies"? Was it "Menzees" like the antipodean statesman or "Mingis" like the Liberal Democrat MP?

My Scottish Granny terrorised me into being unable to pronounce it other than "Mingis", even though I knew it sounded poncey. But she's dead now. So.

What the hell is it with work and 'morale boosting excercises' that rarely crawl above lowest-common-denominator level. At where I work, we recently had an Elvis impersonator gig in the canteen FOR NO DESCERNABLE REASON WHATSOEVER. It doesn't make anyone work any harder. Just about everyone took the piss instead of being in anyway 'impressed'. And (most importantly) I could hear it (quite loudly) from the office where I work, when I was trying to get some work done so I could go home at the proper time. Aargh!

Still, the NME, eh? At least Swells was on Thrills duty this week. Otherwise, oh dear.

No one has asked, in any sincerity - is the NME finished? What with IPC selling out to AOL Time Warner? They won't prop it up for long, surely, they'll reposition it, in a rolling stone style, move NME.com into AOL, fill the paper mag with links to internet stuff, the way they ruined Time magazine etc etc (plus surely, as was pointed out in some newspaper, no respectable company will miss the opportunity to cross-promote Warner stuff in the mag)

Will we care?

If the NME would only get some good writers, it wouldn't be finished. When Steve Sutherland was editor the attitude seemed to be smug, aloof and condescending - but at least the writers' opinions had some authority. Now they hype the Strokes and Starsailor, make Muse single of the week and charge ever-more for a small, poorly-written paper.

That bit about Michael Jackson's new LP in News this week - ten years ago, this would be a quasi-satirical piece; I've a horrible feeling this is serious though.

>It's not corporate censorship! It's Woolworths - they have a limited shelf space and specific kind of customer. Stocking records that that kind of customer likes will increase their revenue. That is unlikely to be anything by The Strokes.


On the other hand, Woolworths insisted that Virgin supplied them with an edited version of the new Janet Jackson album. They wouldn't carry the stickered explicit lyrics version (she says 'fuck' once, then groans a lot). But they sell Eminem and Dr Dre.

> But they sell Eminem and Dr Dre.

Does anyone know how well censored versions of albums sell? Where you have two editions which come out simultaneously, one 'Parental Advisory' and the other just consisting of one long beep, are their sales equal, or does the rude one dwarf the innocuous one? Who buys the censored ones anyway? Is it just grannies who want to ensure that their loved ones aren't exposed to any filth, unaware that junior has got an uncensored tape copy off his mates anyway?

I bought the censored version of Public Enemy's Fear Of A Black Planet from the sales the other day, without realising that's what it was. It would be more useful it the censored versions bore a sticker saying "CHILD ADVISORY: NO RUDE LYRICS" to warn us, rather than the other way round.

Things would be a lot better if the cuss-words were replaced with humourous replacements, a la Amiga Power.

"I want to ("Pet" - ed) you like an animal."
- Nine Inch Nails, Closer.

Or not, obviously.

Still, any others in an attempt to keep this thread going before the inevitable?

>I bought the censored version of Public Enemy's Fear Of A Black Planet from the sales the other day, without realising that's what it was. It would be more useful it the censored versions bore a sticker saying "CHILD ADVISORY: NO RUDE LYRICS" to warn us, rather than the other way round.

Are you telling me you can get cencored PE albums, well flip the game if the games sayin' nuthin'.

my favourite blunder was the introduction of the vacuous 'Whats on your ringtone?' feature, which received plently of complaint/ridicule... which was then followed by a Premium rate rigtones service... why bother removing the porno phones lines and apologising for that....

Andrew Collins? Is it true you and other NME blokes used to stand over poor, pretty, little Gina Morris 'helping' her write her features (while she wept) because none of you felt she was good enough? This is going way back to 91-93.

And then, bizarrely, La petite Morris's normally incomprehensible writing (non) style changed literally overnight and became fluid and actually quite readable (shock!). Was that because you guys had hindered her all along? Or was it that she actually learnt how to write from listening to you?

Just curious. I was into the music press because of my job at the time and as I came into contact with many of the writers and heard all the gossip, it was one of the many things that intrigued me.

By the way, are you married?

>And then, bizarrely, La petite Morris's

Are you sure you didn't just read about it in Private Eye?

>>And then, bizarrely, La petite Morris's
>
>Are you sure you didn't just read about it in Private Eye?

Huh?

Blimey, I come back from two weeks in Leeds and the NME thread's still going strong. Makes the heart swell so it does.....

I've never heard anything by the White Stripes. God, I wish I was dead.

Anyone got any comments on them? Their star-studded gig was round the corner from my house, but I didn't go. And apparently, they aren't brother and sister, but ex-husband and ex-wife.

>I've never heard anything by the White Stripes. God, I wish I was dead.
>
>Anyone got any comments on them?

Very good cover of Captain Beefheart's "The Party of Special Things to do". It could be said that if you've heard one White Stripes song, you've heard them all.

>And apparently, they aren't brother and sister, but ex-husband and ex-wife.

Mother-son will be the next rumour.

>Secondly, how the badger's nadgers is Blur's 'Blur' album 'wilfully anti-commercial'? Yes, they moved away from their chirpy Britpop-isms, but their (well, Graham's) love of lo-fi was never a secret. 'Blur' is so 'wilfully uncommercial' that it contains the no.1 single 'Beetlebum' AND the so-successful-at-breaking-the-U.S.-it-was-even-on-The-Simpsons 'Song 2'.

I do see your point, but at the same time I don't believe that success and 'commerciality' are necessarily entwined. I wouldn't call "Blur" _wilfully_ uncommercial - if that title belongs to any of their albums then it belongs to "13" (and arguably, in the context of the time that it was released, "Modern Life Is Rubbish"), but there was a distinct uncommerciality in its intent. The fact that some singles from it sold well does not necessarily turn it into a contrived attempt to cynically corner a market - it isn't beyond the realms of possibility for a Clinic single to somehow dominate the airwaves, capture the public's imagination and scale the top of the charts, but it would still be a 'difficult' record rather than a 'commercial' one.

"it isn't beyond the realms of possibility for a Clinic single to somehow dominate the airwaves, capture the public's imagination and scale the top of the charts, but it would still be a 'difficult' record rather than a 'commercial' one."

But it'd be great if it did, wouldn't it?

Pretty much agree with all of that, TJ. I'm just annoyed at the increasing trend in NME music reviews towards throwing such statements in as 'facts', when they actually contain, as you've demonstrated, scope for debate. Or, in the case of the Catatonia / Robbie Williams comparison, are just blatantly wrong.

>"it isn't beyond the realms of possibility for a Clinic single to somehow dominate the airwaves, capture the public's imagination and scale the top of the charts, but it would still be a 'difficult' record rather than a 'commercial' one."
>
>But it'd be great if it did, wouldn't it?

If Clinic got on TOTPs the kids would shit themselves, I mean that Op room get up freaks me out.

Clinic are fantastic, and I'm not sure that they always wear masks anymore. My sister saw them supporting Radiohead last year, and I'm sure she said they were naked, facially speaking.
Incidently, I got an e-mail from the NME mailing list today with a "secret" url for NME radio ( http://www.ginger.com/core/audio/nme if anyone's interested). So far I've heard DJ Pied Piper, Mis-teeq, Limp Bizkit and Angelic. Christ Almighty.

They had their surgical gear stolen for a brief period but I think they replaced it - they were be-masked at Reading '2000.

>They had their surgical gear stolen for a brief period but I think they replaced it - they were be-masked at Reading '2000.

and what a fantastic set that was. Much better than limp Bizcunt who were on the Main stage at the same time, yet if i recall correctly the NME said that Limp was the best band there.
Because they had confetti.

What ever did happen to Gina Morris? I'm sure it's not true she got her stuff written by the other staff - she went on to Select, and was a fairly prominent writer.

Bless you - as if writing for Select makes you a 'prominent writer'. And as if the fact that Morris went on to Select would entirely negate the fact she got help with her writing at NME.

Just because people write, or wrote, for NME / Melody Maker / Select, doesn't mean they could write well. The poor editors always had their work cut out for them, and could make an unreadable piece reasonably coherent.

Some writers were atrocious. I won't name names - I'll leave that to you lot. Often, they were weirdly proud of their lack of writing talent, because it meant they were just 'real fans', 'kids', and not anything like the dreaded 'jaded, old hacks' they accused the good writers of being.

Everyone at the time knew the guys at NME used to 'help' Morris with her writing . . . because she used to tell absolutely everyone and anyone about it afterwards. She didn't actually want their help, if I remember rightly. But it was felt that she needed it.

And then, as many of us noticed, her writing literally changed overnight.

Was it because the guys had been holding her back all along? Was there a showdown where she told them to stop? Or was it that they finally taught her how to string a sentence together?

Funny how you have to repeat yourself on this forum, and even then people will not quite get the point. Oh well.

Oi, Andrew, where are you?

>Incidently, I got an e-mail from the NME mailing list today with a "secret" url for NME radio ( http://www.ginger.com/core/audio/nme if anyone's interested). So far I've heard DJ Pied Piper, Mis-teeq, Limp Bizkit and Angelic. Christ Almighty.

Or, by the look of that URL, Chris (Evans) Almighty. DYSWIDT? Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Good.

But did the "guys" help with her singing on the early Stereolab singles?

>Oi, Andrew, where are you?

Sorry, I thought this place had been closed down.

I was features editor at the time of Gina's emergence at the NME. She was from Manchester ergo she was supercool to us soft southerners, and she knew lots of famous people like Tim Booth and Stereolab. I must admit I shamefully reacted against her initially - thought she was being "groomed" by the live desk (ie Steve Lamacq and Simon Williams) possibly, just possibly because they also fancied her - they are only human after all. The live desk was like a little republic within the NME, governed from the pub, where Lamacq and co would plot the downfall of music made by old people.

Anyway, I told Gina - after a try-out if I remember - that she wasn't good enough to write features. I was a bit of a wanker actually, and told her so in front of other staffers (I didn't have a little private office - no excuse though). Then I relented, feeling rather guilty, and warmed to her, and gave her a bit of features work - easy stuff, like "doing the singles" with a visiting pop star (basically glorified transcription). So you could say that after Simon and Steve had bestowed loads of attention on her, I did the same. I was trying to be a constructive, helpful features editor instead of a prejudiced closed-shop.

After I left in 92, Gina came into her own and displayed a natural skill with interviewing famous people, and under Sutherland, she was given cover stories and everything. Good for her.

We were woefully short on female writers (it's been a traditional problem at the NME), and so what if there was some "effort" expended to nurture Gina's style? James Brown used to tell me how to write when I started. There are things you can learn, it's not a load of fucking tortured artists in garretts searching for their muse. Or it shouldn't be.

Is Gina still Stewart Lee's other half? I'm out of the Hello! loop.

Andrew: Don't worry about Lloyd Cole Knew My Father (can't remember on which thread you mentioned your faint anxiety). If the Soho Theatre warm-up (rather than Loose Ends, but that's rubbish anyway) is anything to go by, you'll storm it in Edinburgh.

"Not Much Erasure". Love it.

>"Not Much Erasure". Love it.

You are very kind. I am now off to break a leg. See you all in Scotland on Saturday.

>>They had their surgical gear stolen for a brief period but I think they replaced it - they were be-masked at Reading '2000.
>
>and what a fantastic set that was. Much better than limp Bizcunt who were on the Main stage at the same time, yet if i recall correctly the NME said that Limp was the best band there.
>Because they had confetti.

....for brains?

>>I bought the censored version of Public Enemy's Fear Of A Black Planet from the sales the other day, without realising that's what it was.

Thinking about it, I also bought a US import of the KLF's White Room album, including the CD single of Justified And Ancient, which I was very pleased with. Until I played it, and found that What Time Is Love now starts "Kick out the jams rekcufrehtom!"

Very depressing.

That happens on my copy of the UK-released CD as well, which I bought on its release in March 1991. So presumably the radio edit is on all the album versions. Bizarrely, the full uncensored version (5'24") turns up on, of all things, Now Dance 90, which also featured 12" versions of Bassomatic's Fascinating Rhythm, LFO's LFO, You're Walking by Electribe 101 and The Young Disciples' Get Yourself Together. Yes, alright so it was fleshead out with crap from Technotronic (a megamix - erk), and The Adventures Of Stevie V. But - y'know - found it in a bargain bin for three quid. Can't say fairer etc.

Trying to find the ideal copy of each KLF song? You'll be at it for years. They certainly made the most of the period before the multi-format ruling.

>Trying to find the ideal copy of each KLF song? You'll be at it for years. They certainly made the most of the period before the multi-format ruling.

Does anyone remember those Deep Heat 2LP comps, they were actually quite good, one side would have KLF & brit stuff, then one side Nightmares on Wax & De la Soul, only prob is I can never find the good ones (about 15 were done the further away from 89 they got the shitter)

I've got a version of "Kick Out The Jams" by the MC5 which starts "KOTJs... Brothers and sisters", it's on a sampler from 73ish, I think it's the version MARRS sampled for Pump Up The Volume

I had a promo 'clean' copy of a 2 Live Crew compilation sent to me once, I kid you not. It was just like the Mark & Lard parody of censored Dre/Eminem tracks.

>I had a promo 'clean' copy of a 2 Live Crew compilation sent to me once, I kid you not. It was just like the Mark & Lard parody of censored Dre/Eminem tracks.

On one of those Tip Sheet type cds there was a edit of "So Watcha Gonna Do Now" by PE. "Talkin that gangster Zshup, talkin that drive by Zshup"

>"it isn't beyond the realms of possibility for a Clinic single to somehow dominate the airwaves, capture the public's imagination and scale the top of the charts, but it would still be a 'difficult' record rather than a 'commercial' one."
>
>But it'd be great if it did, wouldn't it?



Er, it did happen. The Second Line? That was pretty ubiquitous. I think being a Levi's ad jingle and getting heavy radio play counts as breaking the mainstream.

(Never quite got the constant Velvets comparisons with Clinic, when that single sounds so much like Can that Damo Suzuki could collect the royalties.)

>(Never quite got the constant Velvets comparisons with Clinic, when that single sounds so much like Can that Damo Suzuki could collect the royalties.)
>

It sounded a lot like "Requiem Pour Un Con" by Serge Gainsbourg to me.

>
>>(Never quite got the constant Velvets comparisons with Clinic, when that single sounds so much like Can that Damo Suzuki could collect the royalties.)
>>
>
>It sounded a lot like "Requiem Pour Un Con" by Serge Gainsbourg to me.

Well, only the drums...

>>It sounded a lot like "Requiem Pour Un Con" by Serge Gainsbourg to me.
>
>Well, only the drums...

And the off-beat 'pfft' noises, and some of the French lyrics resemble Clinic's gibberish words (the way Serge says "cet air la" sounds like the bit where Ade sings "say dira cumma cum"), and that funny electric organ noise in the middle of "Requiem..." has a similar rhythm to the ex-Pure Morning boys' "dicki dicki de marmalard" (or whatever it is they're saying).

No-one has ever agreed with me on this, though, so I don't expect anyone to start now, but I remain convinced it was a strong influence.

Someone's going to tell me now that the lyrics to The Second Line aren't gibberish at all and are all proper English words I have embarrasingly misheard.

>We were woefully short on female writers (it's been a traditional problem at the NME

But you had Barbara Ellen and Miranda Sawyer. They're doing well for themselves. And, ooh, they're both quite fanciable, too. Hey! Funny that.

"But you had Barbara Ellen and Miranda Sawyer. They're doing well for themselves. And, ooh, they're both quite fanciable, too."

Swayer: yes. Ellen: no.

Barbara Ellens from Rutland, you know.

>
>>"Not Much Erasure". Love it.
>
>You are very kind. I am now off to break a leg. See you all in Scotland on Saturday.

Well, no legs broken (no knickers thrown) and only 2 pages missed out. We enjoyed it so much we were quoting bits all the way home (including 3 hours stuck in the rain at Embra Airport waiting for our flight to finally board). Well done (and not that much recycled from the NUS talks either!). You really must improve your handwriting though, Andrew.... or should I say BA?

BTW the girls were all working for Kerrang! in those days...

>We were woefully short on female writers (it's been a traditional problem at the NME), and so what if there was some "effort" expended to nurture Gina's style?

I don't know why this is so, I know plenty of female writers who could/do write decent music stuff, they just all work for other mags. Certainly when I was training it was more the case that the NME was "unobtainable" because it was the NME (a holy grail, but not necessarily THE holy grail <g>), not because it was "a boy's club". I went off to Kerrang! who were very amenable to girls (!), then Raw, then Q/Empire/more! (geography being quite helpful in that combination). Maybe if I'd tried the NME it would have been worth it, but I never did. But then, I was a Sounds reader at the time...

I'm sorry I didn't stick with it as a career, in retrospect, but it does mean that I laughed at myself asking you lot to sign bits of paper yesterday... I recognised myself in about 3/4 of your show. Maybe that's why I wouldn't have made a good rock journo, I was always mentally more groupie than writer... everyone would have got 10 out of 10!

(If you do another show next year, I'll tell you the anecdote about B.G*l*e*p*e...)

Anyone know Kitty Empire's real name? My money's on it being Camilla or Pandora.

Anyway. Let's make a go of getting to 600 postings and beyond before this forum gets evicted.

>Barbara Ellens from Rutland, you know.

So am I. Which part's she from? (Yes, it's a small place, but there are at least two different towns)

>"But you had Barbara Ellen and Miranda Sawyer. They're doing well for themselves. And, ooh, they're both quite fanciable, too."
>
>Swayer: yes. Ellen: no.

The important bit wasn't how 'fanciable' they are, Jon mate, it was the 'Hm, funny that . . .' comment I made after it. I'd wondered if their fanciability factor stood their careers in good stead seeing as all the rock press commissioners were (probably still are) men when the lasses started. I only ask since according to Andrew Collins, being fanciable was what got Gina Morris work. Even though she wasn't considered good enough!

It makes me laugh but it's awful really. There must have been so many kids who wanted to write for the rock press (not now, of course) and little did they know that all they had to do was have a couple of boobs grafted on and turn up at IPC fluttering their lack of writing talent.

Anyone here rate any of the aforementioned as writers? Or are they just boring, old hacky fodder merchants?

>I've got a version of "Kick Out The Jams" by the MC5 which starts "KOTJs... Brothers and sisters", it's on a sampler from 73ish, I think it's the version MARRS sampled for Pump Up The Volume

Ooh.....now I listened to my copy of KOTJ last night, and there is a *very* obvious edit before "motherfuckers" (as a less obvious edit after, as the lead guitar kicks in) as if it's been edited back in from another source. IN fact it's so obvious I can't believe I never really noticed it before. Strange, as this is the 1991 remaster, so it would suggest that the original master tape has been cut to include the censorship.

>>I've got a version of "Kick Out The Jams" by the MC5 which starts "KOTJs... Brothers and sisters", it's on a sampler from 73ish, I think it's the version MARRS sampled for Pump Up The Volume
>
>Ooh.....now I listened to my copy of KOTJ last night, and there is a *very* obvious edit before "motherfuckers" (as a less obvious edit after, as the lead guitar kicks in) as if it's been edited back in from another source. IN fact it's so obvious I can't believe I never really noticed it before. Strange, as this is the 1991 remaster, so it would suggest that the original master tape has been cut to include the censorship.
>

My 1969 (ish) vinyl copy's got the obvious edit, 90's CD copy doesn't. (May be 1994, sleevenotes by Rob Tyner, big foldout poster inside.)
The "Brother's & sister's" is the 1st line of Brother JC Crawford's opening speech, hacked in to cover up motherfuckers. At the time of release, Hudsons & other US record chains refused to stock Jams (without the edit), so it may have been cut at the insistance of Elektra for later pressings.

>>"But you had Barbara Ellen and Miranda Sawyer. They're doing well for themselves. And, ooh, they're both quite fanciable, too."

>It makes me laugh but it's awful really. There must have been so many kids who wanted to write for the rock press (not now, of course) and little did they know that all they had to do was have a couple of boobs grafted on and turn up at IPC fluttering their lack of writing talent.

If I'd realised I'd have tried it. Of course I'd have had to wear more clothes... and dumb down the spelling/grammar... ;-)

>Anyone here rate any of the aforementioned as writers? Or are they just boring, old hacky fodder merchants?

I like Miranda Sawyer's book - Park and Ride. Made me laugh, although most of her journalism does that for less good reason. Barbara Ellen I've always had time for.

>Anyone know Kitty Empire's real name? My money's on it being Camilla or Pandora.

Christine, I think.

Ahem. Good evening. I am Momus, and I appear only to make chilling announcements edged in black.

AOL Time Warner today acquired IPC.

Apropos of nothing else on this thread,The Auteurs put swearing IN to the single version of Light Aircraft On Fire but left such language off the album.

Any other examples of such cavalier attitude to getting playlisted?

"The Auteurs"

Oh, don't, you'll set me off. Actually it's fun to note also, that the albums lyrics booklet contains the 'fucking' when i doesn't apear in the song. How strange.

Anyway the NME: it really is so shit this week that i almost think i've had enough finally. There was almost nothing that i wanted to read - less so than normal.

>"The Auteurs"
>
>Oh, don't, you'll set me off. Actually it's fun to note also, that the albums lyrics booklet contains the 'fucking' when i doesn't apear in the song. How strange.
>
>
The man's got a winning way with the word 'cunt' as well.

RIP NME. Gottabe. Come on, its not going to make it to Christmas, is it?

>My 1969 (ish) vinyl copy's got the obvious edit, 90's CD copy doesn't. (May be 1994, sleevenotes by Rob Tyner, big foldout poster inside.)
>The "Brother's & sister's" is the 1st line of Brother JC Crawford's opening speech, hacked in to cover up motherfuckers. At the time of release, Hudsons & other US record chains refused to stock Jams (without the edit), so it may have been cut at the insistance of Elektra for later pressings.

It wasn't cut from the master as such, but the master went missing at one point and they had to use a second gen master (recovered from the UK, I believe) for early reissues. I guess that either the master had turned up or the existing recording had been cleaned up digitally by the time of the reissue you refer to.

almost amazing how they stoop to the 'Manics last ever gig?!' and 'White Stripes Split?' non-stories. The Manics have got a whole tour lined up and have given no indication that they are any more likely to split than at any other time. If this is their last gig I'll dedicate my whole life to pleasuring Fred Durst. What makes them think this sort of nonsense will do anything except deter people from buying the thing?

I note sales are down by another 8% from last year.

>I note sales are down by another 8% from last year.

On the same six-month period last year, yes. They are, however, up a very small amount (0.2%, or 139 copies) on the previous six months.

Jack - there's a lot of speculation going around about the future of the magazine- internet only, monthly, A4 glossy, closing down - from an informed position - what do you reckon'll actually happen?

"They are, however, up a very small amount (0.2%, or 139 copies) on the previous six months."

If 0.2% = 139 copies, then total sale = 500X139 = 69500. But is that for the whole 6 months?

I expect the staff would be the last to know about the future of the paper. Anyway, old MM people tell me that they got rumours of closure regularly for years before the axe finally fell, and MM was far more sickly than NME has yet become.

>If 0.2% = 139 copies, then total sale = 500X139 = 69500. But is that for the whole 6 months?

The ABC circulation figure for the last six months is 70,142, up from 70,003 on the six months before that. (Rounding accounts for the discrepancy, no doubt.)

This figure refers in some way to how many copies each issue sells. I don't know exactly how it corresponds, but I would guess that it's some kind of average of the sales figure for each issue (a top-selling issue will shift around 90,000 copies at the moment, I think).

I would reply to Anonymous now, but I have to get up very early tomorrow morning (I'm working for NME.com at Reading) so I haven't time at the moment.

The latest form the AOL takeover is that IPC is scrapping most of its websites, and concentrating on half a dozen...including NME.com. So fears about the paper magazine just being used to prop up the internet arm could be coming true.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,541756,00.html

I heard NME was dipping below 70,000, whilst Uncut had the biggest increase over the last six months.

Which is a relief, because I thought it was going to do a Neon (whenever I switch allegiance to a new magazine, it usually goes tits up.)

And the NME was certainly a terrible boys' club when my ex was (briefly) working for them. She hated every single living minute of it. I thought she was being overdramatic, but I went out to some gig or other with her and a bunch of the other writers and, from the way they behaved, I thought she had a point.

I used to desperately want to write for the music press. I had mates who were music journos and I looked up to them so much and envied them like fuck. Then I went out to a gig and late drinking with a group of NME, Melody Maker and Loaded writers. Only one of them was female, a close friend of mine at the time. And she just got her tits stared at all night. I was mostly ignored and/or patronised; being young, female and ugly. And decided get me the fuck out of here. Completely put me off. That and the music press getting worse and worse...

I now have no real career plans, other than to be a hugely successful writer blah blah. Thanks NME, for killing the only chance I had of making money out of writing about what I love. My website, my only outlet for my music writing and interviews, COSTS me money.

Golly, I still love you.

>And the NME was certainly a terrible boys' club

REALLY? No! What a coincidence. So, apparently, was the MM. Freaky . . .

I wonder, is there any point cheering the MM or NME's demise on the basis that these boys clubs are finished? Because haven't most of the (now middle aged) 'boys' clubsters simply moved on to other publications?

I love you too.

Hang on, that message was just posted in your attempt to get this thread to 600 posts, wasn't it?

Never mind, I still love you, very much.

>Golly, I still love you.

It was posted to cheer you up. By reaching the target of 600 posts.

Anyway, why don't you ask Simon if he can help you out re: contacts?

So good, I had to say it twice...

>Anyway, why don't you ask Simon if he can help you out re: contacts?

Because it would be very awkward. We fell out and stopped speaking over 18 months ago and he's only just got to the point where he can offer a civil smile should we bump into each other on my rare forays to London.

I also hate asking for help. Silly girl, me.

what's your website?

So..........if you could only buy one album this week from (a) Bjork (b) Slipknot (c) Mercury Rev or (d) The Strokes, which would it be?

(Personally, I'm going to buy all 4, but I just wanted to add the 575th post to this thread :-)

>what's your website?

http://www.studybees.co.uk

>So..........if you could only buy one album this week from (a) Bjork (b) Slipknot (c) Mercury Rev or (d) The Strokes, which would it be?
>
I loved the Bjork album, the Strokes album is apparently going to be with me later this week, I've looked at the Slipknot album but it has nothing going for it bar the artwork. I'm going to buy the Mercury Rev one because I love them (and £9.99 plus 25% staff discount is too good to resist). The New Order album's good too.

First day sales at my branch of WH Smith (yes, I worked the Bank Holiday):

I sold two copies of the Strokes album - one to a 12 year old Japanese girl whose grandma paid for it, one to a 40 something gay man who also bought the Five album.

6 or 7 copies of the New Order album, to different ages and types of people.

2 copies of the Slipknot album (good design, awful lyrics, didn't bother listening to it at work). one to a scary gothman, one to a 14 year old boy who had to bring it back cos his mum wouldn't let him have it. I laughed in his face. A girl came in on sunday when we were pricing them up trying to get us to sell it to her or failing that let her touch it.

3 copies of Bjork to very "cool" looking young blokes - late 20s, designer facial hair. You know the sort. Why they shopped in WH Smith I dunno. I wouldn't normally buy records there.

And none of the other new releases.

>Why they shopped in WH Smith I dunno. I wouldn't normally buy records there.

It's quite cheap, though. Especially compared to the evil 'V-shop'.

I bought Bjork, quite liked it. Hope it'll grow on me and that it's not another Homogenic.

Thought about buying the Strokes, but decided to borrow it from some cooler friends.

Then I went and looked at the Aaliyah section and got depressed.




>And none of the other new releases.
>
>
>
>

"2 copies of the Slipknot album (good design, awful lyrics, didn't bother listening to it at work). one to a scary gothman, one to a 14 year old boy who had to bring it back cos his mum wouldn't let him have it. I laughed in his face."

Golly, now I really do love you...

well done, golly! not only does the young slipknot fan have to suffer the indignity of returning an cd coz his mum said so, but he has to undergo further humiliation from a supercilious shop assistant in an unatractive, ill-fitting uniform looking down on him from behind the safety of her namebadge.
mind you, 14 year old slipknot fans are probably the only thing below WHSmiths shop assistants in the food chain...

once again, well done! that is, if you actually DID laugh in his face, which I doubt.

"well done, golly! not only does the young slipknot fan have to suffer the indignity of returning an cd coz his mum said so, but he has to undergo further humiliation from a supercilious shop assistant in an unatractive, ill-fitting uniform looking down on him from behind the safety of her namebadge."

Yeah, that's why it's so brilliant...

"mind you, 14 year old slipknot fans are probably the only thing below WHSmiths shop assistants in the food chain..."

What about Slipknot themselves?

Clearly you've never met me, as I did indeed laugh in his face (shortly after asking if he'd listened to it and that was why he'd brought it back).

Feeling superior to the people who buy crap is the only good thing about my job, other than getting paid. Certainly selling books of "erotica" to dirty old men doesn't help me get through the day.

And if I was ONLY a shop assistant, you may be right. I work there on weekends and in holidays. The rest of the time I'm a student and writer. Whereas you are barely literate. Go figure.

>well done, golly! not only does the young slipknot fan have to suffer the indignity of returning an cd coz his mum said so, but he has to undergo further humiliation from a supercilious shop assistant in an unatractive, ill-fitting uniform looking down on him from behind the safety of her namebadge.
>mind you, 14 year old slipknot fans are probably the only thing below WHSmiths shop assistants in the food chain...
>
>once again, well done! that is, if you actually DID laugh in his face, which I doubt.

From this week's NME: apparently they were entirely responsible for getting The Strokes bumped up from the Evening Session stage to the main stage at Reading. Hyping the Strokes and hyping themselves in the same article - I don't think things can get any lower.

Oh yes it can. They managed to hype themselves on NME.com when reporting the death of Aaliyah. "AALIYAH has been killed in a plane crash in the BAHAMAS.

The R&B star, who recently appeared on the cover of NME, had been on the island filming a video."


>From this week's NME: apparently they were entirely responsible for getting The Strokes bumped up from the Evening Session stage to the main stage at Reading. Hyping the Strokes and hyping themselves in the same article - I don't think things can get any lower.

Unbelievable...

http://www.nme.com/NME/External/News/News_Story/0,1004,40904,00.html

Fucking hell...

">NME.com will be first with an exclusive Travis announcement.

If they're not going to announce that Travis will be nailed to a raft. set adrift on the Serpentine and then set alight on Nov 5th why should anyone give a fuck?

"Exciting Travis stories".

It's a fucking contradiction in terms.

Good golly miss Golly,

Saw your website. You have worked hard. Just wondered. Any reason for interviewing Andrew Collins? I always think it's a bit uninspired when TV presenters interview other TV presenters on TV, and it's equally naff when interviewers/journos interview other interviewers/journos in print. Are Collins and Sara Manning really such inspirational role models for you? Someone who hacks at J17? (Sorry, I don't remember her rock writing at all. What did she used to write in? Was she great?)

I guess you really do want to be a hack, don't you? Do you want to be a hack because you think it's exciting and glamorous?

A quick 5 minute trip to hte studybees.com site mentioned above proved it to be better written, better designed and better looking thean the increasingly ghastly nme.com - has any one ever tried to leave a message on Agst - apart from the dread feeling that you're only taling to Feeder fans furious than nme covers things like Hip Hop and things that aren't Feeder, it's a logistical nightmare.

And that news story that they've got a forthcoming news story! About Travis! Even Travis openly admit they don't think Travis are important. There was also a recent 'news' story about how the Stereophonics weren't playing Wales on the winter Arena tour - clearly timed to flog tickets to their Millenium Stadium gig...

>Oh yes it can. They managed to hype themselves on NME.com when reporting the death of Aaliyah. "AALIYAH has been killed in a plane crash in the BAHAMAS.
>
>The R&B star, who recently appeared on the cover of NME, had been on the island filming a video."
>
>
>>From this week's NME: apparently they were entirely responsible for getting The Strokes bumped up from the Evening Session stage to the main stage at Reading. Hyping the Strokes and hyping themselves in the same article - I don't think things can get any lower.
>
>

Well, did you expect them to give Trevor Nelson any credit for playing Aaliyah before anyone else, or Peely & Steve Lurpack a mention for playing "The Modern Age" when it was still a demo CD??

NME hacks (post '92): 90% self serving ex-media students who'll take credit for anything new to enhance their own reputations, then bugger off to work for the tabloids (& take all the credit for "Exclusives" on anyone they "discovered" 6 months earlier @ NME).

I've no real desire to be a hack, unless someone chooses to employ me as one freelance so I no longer have to work weekends at WH Smith/get a "proper" job when I finish college next June. I KNOW it's not exciting and glamorous. Never thought it would be. I enjoy writing, love music/film/books/TV/theatre etc and am really into interviewing people. That's why I started the site. Not to get free records (although it helps, because I can't afford them) or to hang out with showbiz types (been there, done that, it's bollocks).

I interviewed Andrew basically because I was curious. I didn't know how you get to write EastEnders etc, what he thought about stuff. I interviewed Sarra because I genuinely love Diary of a Crush and also she's the only writer for teen magazines that doesn't patronise the fuck out of people and I always appreciated that. And yes, she has influenced my writing to a certain extent. I used to work for Talkcast.com as an editorial assistant and had to work on Popboys.com (about boybands) which WAS condescending and overenthusiastic and all the other things I hated as a teenager (well, I was still 19 when I worked there)

I don't want to interview people because they're famous or because they've got something to plug (although I end up doing both anyway). I want to interview people because they intrigue me. I'm interested in characters. I'll find out in a week or so whether or not I'm going to be interviewing Timmy Mallett. Not because it's ironic or because he's a hasbeen. I fucking hate that ironic nostalgia. Because I'm genuinely interested and nobody asks him decent questions. And I want to. Nobody else has done a piece like mine on Paul Daniels, Louis Theroux much as I admired him didn't get that much out of him. People interest me.

I'd like to interview Lee and Herring and Eddie Izzard too. And Chris Morris. Nowt to do with them being famous, cool, or even funny. I just want to ask questions and get answers. Is that so bad?

NME don't ask questions that even THEY want answers to let alone the readers. Or so it comes across. So why bother? Fucking useless cunts. They're dropping everything bar the news and reviews on NME.com and dropping most of the reviewers.

Studybees.com isn't about making money, it's hopefully about good writing. Write something for it if you want. If it's crap, I'll bin it. :)

Write something for it if you want. If it's crap, I'll bin it. :)

Ooh, thanks. Unfortunately I'm busy earning money from my writing at the mo.

Oh, *you* have a glamorous media career, do you?

Stop sneering, you pathetic sub-hack. Golly will achieve more than you dream of.

I love her.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Poops, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Don't be so fucking smug.

(PS Jon, love you too)

>There are more things in heaven and earth, Poops, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Don't be so fucking smug.
>
>(PS Jon, love you too)

Oh dear, touchy little thing, aren't you? Thick people always are. Who said anything about being a hack anyway? There are other forms of writing besides hackery. You've really got to stop fixating on journalism as a career. It sucks. So moronic. So soul destroying. So full of no-talents. But then again . . .

I'm sorry. I'm playing with you. I will stop. Bye. (But God that 'more dreams in heaven and earth' bit did make me laugh and I plan to relish it for quite a while. Was it from 'Titanic' or is it some ludicrous 'Cher' lyric? Oh, dear. Bet you're incensed now. Chill, and good luck with your haven for 'good writing'

This thread's getting so bitter, and we're almost at 600! Shouldn't you be having a big party rather than sniping at each other?

Just so this post isn't worthless, here's a list of words/terms NME should stop using imo:

vital
life-affirming
astonishing
grindingly dull
really, (as a prefix to a sentence: eg 'really, that's all you need.' etc)
extraordinary
excellent
fuck
the
and

etc.

>And we're almost at 600!

.

We are now.

Oh, stop stealing the show. Why is you 00's are revered so? Is there no credence in being odd?

Of course there isn't. You're insignificant in the overall scheme of things. I mean, it's far more likely I'll come up in conversation, in a ledger, or on a calculator than it is you or any of your grizzly little cohorts will!

You're a fucking fascist! Denouncing my ilk simply because we happen to be odd. We are unique! Yes, unique! Just like you, I hasten to add. Does that frighten you. That I and my 599 strong horde are equal to you?

Shut the fuck up, the pair of you.

Are you a tobacconist?

>(But God that 'more dreams in heaven and earth' bit did make me laugh and I plan to relish it for quite a while. Was it from 'Titanic' or is it some ludicrous 'Cher' lyric?

Someone probably ought to point out (for anyone who doesn't know) that it's from Hamlet. The "Alas, Poor Yorick" speech, isn't it?

I like the GB site, too, by the way. Found it after reading this thread.

Words NME should stop using:

"By Steven Wells".

>Words NME should stop using:
>
>"By Steven Wells".

What! and lose the sweariest singles reviewer NME's ever had?

Swells is one of the few hacks left on NME who doesn't blindly quote press releases or gush about something just because every other fucker is.

He may talk bollox sometimes, but at least he's prepared to form his own opinion.

His deconstruction job on Sonic Youth a couple of years back was ace (crux of argument "Yr last few LP's sound like yr either on autopilot or disappearing up yr own arses, you used to be essential, defend yrselves".)

Most of the current NME crop would have fawned over them ("Legendary" status etc), ignoring the fact they ain't made a wholly decent LP since "Dirty".

>
>Most of the current NME crop would have fawned over them ("Legendary" status etc), ignoring the fact they ain't made a wholly decent LP since "Dirty".
>
Um except 1000 Leaves, and washing machine wasn't too bad.

>>
>Um except 1000 Leaves, and washing machine wasn't too bad.
>
>

HMMM, I'll give u that,(1000 leaves *was* recorded just after all their gear got nicked, fairly catastrophic if yr SY) but there's nothing on 'em thats as memorable as Expressway to yr Skull or Death Valley '69.

yeah, they haven't been 100% shit since dirty but the point is that swells had the guts to take them on because they failed to match it. Surely that's the crux of decent journalism.
SY are my favourite band, alongside cat power ( anyone see her at reading? quite depressing) but that doesn't mean they deserve a bubble. Writing wish fulfillment is not an excuse to give up and be lame for 10 years.

>yeah, they haven't been 100% shit since dirty but the point is that swells had the guts to take them on because they failed to match it. Surely that's the crux of decent journalism.
>SY are my favourite band, alongside cat power ( anyone see her at reading? quite depressing) but that doesn't mean they deserve a bubble. Writing wish fulfillment is not an excuse to give up and be lame for 10 years.

Couldn't have put it better myself (SY are pretty much untouchable from DV '69 to 100%, patchy from there on in. Swells did what he does best, exploding someones bubble & making u smile at the same time.

I fear we'll lose him when the full force of the AOL takeover kicks in.

Why, are AOL executives big fans of the last few SY albums?

>Why, are AOL executives big fans of the last few SY albums?

Probably not, don't think they'd be too keen on gobby bald Yorkshiremen though.

>yeah, they haven't been 100% shit since dirty but the point is that swells had the guts to take them on because they failed to match it. Surely that's the crux of decent journalism.
>SY are my favourite band, alongside cat power ( anyone see her at reading? quite depressing) but that doesn't mean they deserve a bubble. Writing wish fulfillment is not an excuse to give up and be lame for 10 years.

You could look at it this way, SY are so beyond our pop driven ears (Dirty is the self confessed pop album) that we don't get it.

My mate bought one of those Goodbye 20th C albums and he only recognised a couple of names like S Reich.

Then again I saw one of those many many many records they do (ep type jobbie) and one of the artists they worked with was Coco Gordon Moore their daughter (Kim and Thurstons that is), I mean how old is she?

I remember reading somewhere that she was 5 when they did that song. It' s got her voice, it's not like she played the lee ranaldo parts.
Yeah, if you look at the title of this topic, that is exactly why swells may no be around for long. They're trying to flex their tastemaker muscles with all this strokes wank ( more people watched frank black at reading, and fucking right too) but basically they have no competition now, which means that market share wise they actually have to convert nonindie teens, which means sucking corporate cock and rewriting press releases as interviews.
Shame. Basically they won't have to keep old sacred cows any more, it'll be coldplay, travis and the 'phonics who are untouchable. It's evil. At least SY and other perenials earned their respect by being fucking wicked for a decade.

>Someone probably ought to point out (for anyone who doesn't know) that it's from Hamlet. The "Alas, Poor Yorick" speech, isn't it?

Who gives a toss? It's not something to wave around like you think it's great. Unless you're a stude or a member of the Kenneth Branagh fan club, I guess.

On the subject of The Strokes....is it just me, or does "someday" (I think thats wot its called ) sound like something from the c86 era? It sounds like something that Edwyn Collins would have done about 15 years ago, for hevvings sake.
(The White Stripes are pretty good, mind you. Sounds like how Royal"Drugs Are Ace" Trux should have sounded.)

>On the subject of The Strokes....is it just me, or does "someday" (I think thats wot its called ) sound like something from the c86 era? It sounds like something that Edwyn Collins would have done about 15 years ago, for hevvings sake.
>(The White Stripes are pretty good, mind you. Sounds like how Royal"Drugs Are Ace" Trux should have sounded.)
>

I think NME is a pile of toss. Everything is a pile of toss. There is no publication in the world that doesn't take advertising from the very companies who are selling them the toss in the first place. Any one that has worked in publishing will tell you.. I am sure this is not relevant too whether the stripes are good or not, what i want to see is, is more Porno for Pyros... Although there is a band called audioporn that is being touted about a bit at the minute who are really quite good (www.audioporn.com)... The NME, i once did an interview with the band Tiger... That was hilarious, I was far to drunk to be of any use as an interviewer... Does anyone remember the magazine Raise? this i would like to find out more about. Who did it and all of those things,

peace to you freaky brothers...

one final thought...

Did anyone see the cleaverest Ape - or the ultimate guide to elephants..?

WE ARE NOT ALONE>>>

>>The NME, i once did an interview with the band Tiger... That was hilarious, I was far to drunk to be of any use as an interviewer...

Are you The Legend / ET / J. Thackeray?

'Is This It' by The Strokes is an anagram of 'It is shit'. And it IS shit.

I'm warming to the Strokes album. It's definitely the hype that killed it. I think if there had been no hype at all I would have liked it sooner.

>...more things in heaven and earth (etc)

>> Chip on the shoulder wittering from Poopa

Mmmm. So knowing one of the most famous lines ever written in English is sad and useless...

Funny. I'd imagine being aware of great pieces of writing from the past might be an advantage, if, like GB, you want to be a writer.

Oh, I forgot. You already are. And that gives you the right to be chippy and aggressive to anyone who might want to do the same.

Sometimes this forum attracts wankers like flies round shit.

>I'm warming to the Strokes album. It's definitely the hype that killed it. I think if there had been no hype at all I would have liked it sooner.

Try and ignore the hype and make your own minds up. That sort of hype *can* be offputting, admittedly, but at the same time if you allow yourself to be prejudiced against something because of hype, then your reaction isn't too dissimilar to people who like something just because of the hype.

>'Is This It' by The Strokes is an anagram of 'It is shit'. And it IS shit.

Care to elaborate with reasons?

Seriously, I'm not being sarcastic. I'm genuinely interested.

In this week's issue: "Courtney Love speaks exclusively to NME.....the full interview will be included in our next issue."

Also, some guy called Stephen XZ or something "has been tipped by the NME as the hottest big thing in 2002." As the KLF might have said: 2002? What the fuck is going on?

>In this week's issue: "Courtney Love speaks exclusively to NME.....the full interview will be included in our next issue."

The interview fell through in the first instance. Evidently it's now taken place but not in time for this issue, where it was originally planned to appear.

>Also, some guy called Stephen XZ or something "has been tipped by the NME as the hottest big thing in 2002." As the KLF might have said: 2002? What the fuck is going on?

Andrew WK is apparently set to tour the UK in late 2001/early 2002, when he will "blow us all away". You know, like The Strokes do now.

>Also, some guy called Stephen XZ or something "has been tipped by the NME as the hottest big thing in 2002." As the KLF might have said: 2002? What the fuck is going on?

One of my friends is in a band that was tipped to be big in either 1999 or 2000, I can't rememeber which by the NME. They weren't.

Central problem with the NME's commitment to "new bands".

After years of tipping unsung, unknown, tiny, cult bands, and that being a mark of their cool tatste, they suddenly stumble upon Blur, Pulp, Suede, Oasis, Radiohead et al and find they're making taste for the nation. Whatever they like in 1992, turns out to be the biggest thing in Britain by mid 1993. Cool! That beats trying to sell Wedding Present albums to students!

Then, post Oasis, the bubble bursts, but a precedent's been set. Anything they tip from now on simply has to go ballistic and sell millions, or:

a) they look foolish "You tipped Terris! It didn't happen! Losers!"

b) bands they've built up a relationship with turn out to be useless. There's no point championing Arse Magnet, if Arse Magnet are only going to sell 20,000 copies of their debut album, and therefore only 1000 extra copies of your magazine.

So, NME (and the others) get in with the big boys and promote them, while fighting shy of actually getting behind smaller acts in case they "fail" (for which read "sell a perfectly adequate number of records by the standards of any previous musical era") and make the NME look like obscure tossers who always make friends with the unpopular kids in the class.

The public are at fault too. Every year, the press choose their tips for the top in 200x. Then, when they don't make it big, the public hoot derisively at the journos who got it wrong. We expect miracles, but all we're reading is hype and prediction. Expect no more.

But the least they could do is stay faithful to their chosen favourites for a bit longer than five minutes...

>>'Is This It' by The Strokes is an anagram of 'It is shit'. And it IS shit.
>
>Care to elaborate with reasons?
>
>Seriously, I'm not being sarcastic. I'm genuinely interested.
>

I don't actually think it's shit, Mr Worthington. It's excellent, in fact, but no-way near as good as you might expect from all that hype. THe only album of modern times that deserves that much hype is probably OK COmputer, or maybe Xtrmntr. The Strokes aren't bringing anything new to music, the journalists are saying they mix their influences to make something new but that's like saying if someone selotapes a sausage to a fridge he's suddenly the amazing inventor of the Sausage-o-Fridge�. The album is decent but not a classic.

I'd say the Strokes' album is worthy of an 8 or 9 out of 10. The reason NME loves them is that they offer the full package -'style', 'attitude', and uncomplicated, catchy tunes.

I was a bit worried that the NME's hype would kill them off due to the inevitable automatic backlash against them, but I think they're going to come through that - I doubt they'd have got to number 2 (insert joke here) in the album chart without people genuinely liking them.

>I'd say the Strokes' album is worthy of an 8 or 9 out of 10.

John Robinson originally gave them a 9.

There's a letter this week saying that the author was glad that the NME had the balls to give 'is this it' 10, as opposed to chickening out and giving it 8 or 9. Hmmm.

I bought the Strokes album expecting it to be a bit rubbish after all the NME hype, and so was pleasently surprised to find it was a good, if not very original, album. But 'the best album from a guitar band in the last 20 years?' I don't think so NME.

Actually, i thought the NME review was some elaborate joke. A review of an album that doesn't mention any of the songs? And the part where it says something similar to 'so half the songs have already been on singles'? I bet any other band doing that would've been crucified.

Except, possibly, The White Stripes. But that's another story...

>Mmmm. So knowing one of the most famous lines ever written in English is sad and useless...

No. But quoting it like it's relevant, interesting, amusing or even appropriate when it isn't - is. Why so hung up on old Branagh-spear anyway? Are you a stude? If so, give up. Nobody wants you. There are no jobs left. All the grown ups have got them . . . (Is that 'chip on shoulder' - ish enough for you?) And why are you going, 'Mmmm' like that. Playing with yourself again, are you?

>Funny. I'd imagine being aware of great pieces of writing from the past might be an advantage, if, like GB, you want to be a writer.

Yeah, it might. But so might becoming a paraplegic or a leper. In fact, GB ought to consider it. 'Writers from the past', ooh, that's best said in a plummy Ponsonby voice, isn't it? Maybe with a lisp on the 'pafffftht'. How sanctimonious and prescriptive of you, really. An original voice is an original voice and doesn't need any Shaekespear to help it. Knowing almost no Shaekspeare, or indeed how to spell it, despite being dragged out to see loads of the buggeringly dull shite through most of my teenage years hasn't hindered me in becoming a writer at all.

>Oh, I forgot. You already are.

God! You are SO jealous it's funny! If YOU want to write, then do it. Or did I annoy you by saying I get paid for writing AND, even better, it isn't journalism? I could be writing fucking takeaway curry menus and window cleaning leaflets, for all you know, so lighten up. You so want to be a (paid) writer, don't you? Why else would you be implying that me saying I'm a writer is in some way showing off? Baffling. Writing is no more a show-offy profession than cleaning or bank managing. In fact, the latter might be more impressive to a lot of people.

>And that gives you the right to be chippy and aggressive to anyone who might want to do the same.

HELLO? I think you'll find someone else cooked up the full trad GB chips and aggro. But now YOU'RE chipping in with your opinions, too. Well ta very much. Are you pissed or something? Cos you've missed an important moment back there where GB got a little ahead of herself (and her abilities).

>Sometimes this forum attracts wankers like flies round shit.

Ooh! I can just see you throwing yourself down on your rat-nibbled garret bed, fully clothed, clutching a Special Brew and railing at me, wishing I'd die. And then getting up a bit later and treating yourself to a tin of tomato-y pilchards. Mmmm, as you might say, mmmmmmm . . .

Oh, well. Love you, too.

This thread is, rather appropriately, turning into "Angst".

I still don't understand why you want to attack me, Poopa.

You've never read any of my "creative" writing, in fact you don't know me from Adam (and other cliches). When I quoted Shakespeare, I was being flippant. I wasn't trying to be clever. Maybe you should take your cynicism somewhere else. I'm not naive, but telling me I should give up now just makes you sound arrogant and bitter. And people like that are what the world's full of, not people like me. Why do you think I stopped wanting to be a hack? Because they're all such bastard cynics (or most of them). I'm a writer, I just haven't been published yet. So what.

I'm listening to the Ben&Jason album. It's truly lovely. Now go away and make a voodoo doll of me or something. Just don't waste this forum with pointless flames. If you're a writer, you must have writer's block a lot to be so bored as to bother insulting me. Surely I'm below your contempt?

>
>I bought the Strokes album expecting it to be a bit rubbish after all the NME hype>

Why buy something expecting it to be "a bit rubbishy", I mean it's £15 of you're money

>Except, possibly, The White Stripes. But that's another story...

The story being that they are a cool little garage band, and if they become big they will die. Part of the appeal is the lo-fi-ness, something a Geffen style budget can't give you.

Anyway just go out and buy Lou Reed stuff, or hunt down VU bootleg stuff, or J Richman, or any of the other bands who are just as good, but don't cost £15 to buy. Why don't R1 play a few of the album track so people can decide, then again when was the last time I listened to Lurpack (Peel hasn't played them as far as I know)

I thought it was sweet they seemed apologetic at Reading, like they are aware of the hype.

I'm indifferent to The Strokes, power to them if they can make a living. It seems a bit of a shame that people seem to blame the band for not living up to the hype.

£15? that's nothing when the government gives me money for being a student. Even if i do have to pay it all back in the end.

Actually the main reason i bought it was bacause i heard a song on Mark and Lard that i thought was really good. And then when i heard that it was by The Strokes after the song had been played, it made me interested enough to buy the album.

Anyway it wasn't fifteen pounds. it was 12.

Re:Courtney Love this week.

I understand the circumstances in this instance, Jack, but the paper relies heavily on the �read more in our interview next week� news features. Nothing unusual about that in newspapers but in the sole surviving music weekly it betrays a worrying lack of content. I think that was more the point of its original mention on this thread.

Mail me, Jack. I'd love to hear from you. [email protected]

Poopa, I am a writer. I do get paid for it.

Claiming that people are "jealous" or "bitter" to try and negate what they're saying is about as cheap as calling people "middle class" as an excuse for not listening to them.

GB's defending herself perfectly well, so I don't know why I've bothered popping my head up. It's just that watching you attempt to sully someone's dreams and insult the hard work they've done by shouting louder and louder made me want to kill you.

When I thought you had some point to make, it seemed worth making a fuss about. But I'm over it now. You're clearly just another internet wanker, made bold by the distance between you and your prey.

Quite. What initially started out as a reasonable if slightly antagonistic argument about journalism has turned into pure vitriol which should be given its own thread and left there to die.

Does anyone else find the monthly 'Uncut' magazine even more depressing though, with the absurd deification of any 80's or early 90's artists, their past or present acts, and the complete dismissal of any current acts apart from Radiohead.

A perfect example being David Stubbs miserable review of the Strokes LP which he says is as good as the current scene gets and then awards 2.5 'stars' out of 5.

Golly is a wonderful woman who I love. I will not argue with this chap, who is plainly irrelevant.

Anyway,

I quite like some Strokes tracks, I just don't think they deserve the level of acclaim they are getting.

I completely agree with the posting a while back that pointed out that the Oasis boom ruined NME. The trouble is, it created a whole new market for mags like Uncut that cover the area of "alternative music" as well as films, etc. so that when the bubble burst, readers stayed with them rather than the (indie-fixated) Select or NME. So NME was left high and dry, wondering what to evolve into.

Slightly off topic, but can someone remind me who the new editor of Q is. (sorry for ending the sentence with a proposition, grammar fans).

And, seeing as how we're lambasting the NME, can anyone think of a modern day equivalent to Lester Bangs? I don't see much useful rock journalism out there at the minute. Sylvia Patterson has done a few good articles for the Face (Eminem and Madonna, in particular) and I usually find David Quantick's album reviews the highlight of Q magazine.

Part of the problem seems to be that nobody in the music industry has anything to say any more. No wonder the press falls over itself to speak to Bono, Michael Stipe and Damon Allbran.

the new editor of Q is the very lovely Danny Ecclestone, ex-manager of good-rockin' funtime boys Poundcake and champion disco dancer

>And, seeing as how we're lambasting the NME, can anyone think of a modern day equivalent to Lester Bangs? I don't see much useful rock journalism out there at the minute. Sylvia Patterson has done a few good articles for the Face (Eminem and Madonna, in particular) and I usually find David Quantick's album reviews the highlight of Q magazine.

Thought it was Miranda "extremely short but very fashionable fringe" Sawyer who wrote the Madonna thing for the Face. It was the only thing by her I've ever liked. She generally annoys me; my irritation peaking when she appeared on that Music of the Millennium programme and talked bollocks. There are few enough women in music journalism as it is, without them flicking their hair and talking rubbish. And they all have to be good-looking to get anywhere, which sucks frankly.

i don't get the strokes - i like that skanky sound though. The crazy NME articles I've read and the stupider stuff inthe tabloids is just laughable. The tabloids pick it up because some fucking models were at the show, and then NME having already done the same run with the idea that 'everyone's talking about them'. No one is fucking talking about them, except perhaps to say that everyone is talking about them.
Try and find something from the US music press about the strokes - go on. Rolling Stone has about 1 derogatory comment i think - something like "don't start a band if you've been a model previously" etc etc
Ditto for the White Stripes.
As for MM and NME, they were shit in the 80's too. I don't think I ever found out anything about a single band, or was exposed to a new band by any piece of music journalism ever.
actually, I take that back, there was a healthy fanzine culture in the 80's/early 90's - Smashed Hits, SM5D, Go Die - which probably turned me onto some good bands.

who could possibly care what Rolling Stone think though? Or even how much attention a band gets in the U.S. This is not generally a mark of quality.

yeah, fuck rolling stone to hell, and NME too. It's not supposed to illustrate that the strokes are rubbish, (i like 'em pretty good) but it shows how not everyone is talking about them, and that it's just an invention of the cool as shit muso journalists and that chump from the sun. Plus their whole image, and the fact that some PR schmuck made it so that kate moss et al would be at their sold out show reeks of contrivance. never mind about the elite connection.
It's just extremely shit to read an article in the NME which is already discussing the band in an after the fact type way, acting as though the strokes could have been the best thing since (fuck knows) if they hadn't blown up in their own faces : always ending reviews with idiotic phrases like that. Catch them while you can before they get blown away on their own fairy rock whirlwind of hype etc etc.
It just pisses me off is all, how can you possibly catch some support band by accident who blow you away, without knowing the ins and outs of their cats arse. poot!

, SM5D,

Grrr! It's Those Bloody Kids!

ropb seg in gay wank horror...

Quieter now... you never know...

>Thought it was Miranda "extremely short but very fashionable fringe" Sawyer who wrote the Madonna thing for the Face. It was the only thing by her I've ever liked. She generally annoys me; my irritation peaking when she appeared on that Music of the Millennium programme and talked bollocks. There are few enough women in music journalism as it is, without them flicking their hair and talking rubbish. And they all have to be good-looking to get anywhere, which sucks frankly.

It's an odd thing to defend someone by insulting them, but is Miranda Sawyer good-looking? I can see why you might use that (shabby) argument with Barbara Ellen, but Sawyer looks neither better or worse than most of my female friends, i.e. she is average looking. I'm sure she would argue that she has made it *despite* looking like she does. Just because she's blonde doesn't make her a supermodel.

Miranda Sawyer has succeeded in her career in journalism, because she's a blummin' good journalist (she wrote some excellent stuff for "Select" magazine), and she does well in her critical work on television because she comes across as perceptive and intelligent without resorting to sneering a la Tony Parsons, or condecension and elitism a la Tom Paulin. Having said that, I'd still give her one.
Oh, yeah, and she pulls these really cute "Oooh, he's off again" faces, whenever Tom Paulin gets agitated on Newsnight Review.

She pulled those faces with Tom Baker on 'The Oldie'.

'Park and Ride' was rotten though.

The last good Smash Hits writer?

I don't fancy the NME today. Courtney Love droning about herself is tedious enough at the best of times, right now I have no need for her whatsoever.

NME's rubbish - literally nothing of interest this week. Courtney Love spouts the usual boring nonsense about Kurt Cobain etc and I don't even remember the rest of it.

Apart from the Spiritualized album review, which was sycophantic nonsense. Full marks for the much more honest one in Uncut.

today's NME is asking us (US!) for help. And I quote:
"Feel like you know what the future direction of the NME should be? We want to hear your views and opinions. If you're up for taking part in some research, then send us your name and daytime telephone number and we'll call you back."

e-mail: [email protected]

I was in the office when they played the new Spiritualized album, which I think I mentioned ages ago. Utter disinterest from the staff as far as I could tell, singing bored "I'm on drugs" over the top of it. Positive review because of the interview? Hmmm.

Is it me or do they seem more keen to give the once-rare 9/10 and once-nonexistent 10/10 marks to albums? There's practically one '9' per week these days, whereas it was once reserved for the really great stuff, and the 10s signified nothing less than a modern masterpiece. Which the Strokes album, for all its attributes, isn't.

I read NME from about 95-98, and I only remember OK Computer getting 10/10, apart from some reissues. Possibly Maxinquaye did - if it did, that would have been deserved - but I don't remember any others. I would guess that they averaged a 9/10 every other week or so over that period.

>Is it me or do they seem more keen to give the once-rare 9/10 and once-nonexistent 10/10 marks to albums? There's practically one '9' per week these days, whereas it was once reserved for the really great stuff, and the 10s signified nothing less than a modern masterpiece. Which the Strokes album, for all its attributes, isn't.

>Is it me or do they seem more keen to give the once-rare 9/10 and once-nonexistent 10/10 marks to albums? There's practically one '9' per week these days, whereas it was once reserved for the really great stuff, and the 10s signified nothing less than a modern masterpiece. Which the Strokes album, for all its attributes, isn't.

They gave The Hybirds 10/10 about three years ago. Anyone care to explain THAT one?

the stone roses - the stone roses didn't get a 10, if i remember correctly. go figure.

>Does anyone else find the monthly 'Uncut' magazine even more depressing though, with the absurd deification of any 80's or early 90's artists, their past or present acts, and the complete dismissal of any current acts apart from Radiohead.
>
>A perfect example being David Stubbs miserable review of the Strokes LP which he says is as good as the current scene gets and then awards 2.5 'stars' out of 5.

this is true tho'. there hasn't been much good music around for the past 2 years and the strokes album is dull as shit. travis=shit coldplay=shit starsailor=total shit. almost all the good music of recent times is dance orientated, apart from the new ben folds album which is magnificent.

I too nominate the new Ben Folds (and the new Tori Amos) as actually quite good, and not at all hyped.

Thank God for the talented pianists with artistic vision of this planet. (Even though Amos's album is cover versions it's startlingly personal - her version of Eminem's 97 Bonnie and Clyde is, if anything, more chilling than the original).

Just read about the new Russian edition of NME. I wish I could come up with an amusing response to this but my brain's gone blank. What's Russian for "The NME can reveal..."?

I wonder if we can pin-point the exact date when NME became shit...no it escapes me.

I think with the decreasing popularity of the magazine, they have been forced to almost create their own Hear'say for success. Giving anal birth to bands noone has ever heard of before, and endlessly building them up before that inevitable 10/10 debut album. This is not to say that The Strokes, for example, are a bad band, they are quite good and their album is average (if not a bit samey), but to bum them up this much? A 10/10 album?

From what I can remember, after OK Computer, only a few have had that 10/10 status, the second Asian Dub Foundation album, the fucking Eve album, The Strokes, and almost inevitably in the coming months, the Starsailor album and The White Stripes (their other bouncing baby...home grown ofcause).
It seems the 'we got in on the ground floor', this is NEW MUSIC for you - see aren't we cool? - ideal has, I feel, overrun their thinking...well ofcause it's bloody new music on the edge of fame, because you've bloody brought them in from the cold and given them their own step ladder to fame.

It just gets me so mad.

The White Stripes album came out just before the hype and scored an 8 in the NME. They seemed slightly taken aback by the reaction of the national newspapers - all of whom did an article on them BEFORE the NME cover - and then gloated the following week, claiming that their coverage had kickstarted everything else. It hadn't: John Peel was playing them well before, and it was largely word-of-mouth inspired.

Wrong...as charged.

>They gave The Hybirds 10/10 about three years ago. Anyone care to explain THAT one?

I'm certain it was 9.

Sorry this just a test post.

>The White Stripes album came out just before the hype and scored an 8 in the NME.

They're also already on their third album.

Ok, so maybe I was wrong about them, but you have to admit, NME does bum them up a bit too much.

So what White Stripes songs should I download to knock my sock off then? Trusting they're so wonderful I've given up impuse/NME-endoresed purchases of bands I've never heard.

>So what White Stripes songs should I download to knock my sock off then? Trusting they're so wonderful I've given up impuse/NME-endoresed purchases of bands I've never heard.

"Fell in Love With a Girl", "I Can't Wait" and "Barely Legal" aren't bad starting points, although they all have that definite "haven't I heard this before somewhere" quality to them.

Off-topic Paul, did you do my Hegley / various CD yet?

>They gave The Hybirds 10/10 about three years ago. Anyone care to explain THAT one?

Would this be the same Hybirds that I once deluged with shouts of "you're not interesting" from the side of the stage?

>>They gave The Hybirds 10/10 about three years ago. Anyone care to explain THAT one?
>
>Would this be the same Hybirds that I once deluged with shouts of "you're not interesting" from the side of the stage?
>
And who's main bloke is now in some very hip, 'On Band'- esque solo project with a name like Piano Magic or The Wisdom of Harry, but neither of those.

It's Echoboy - not very wacky at all really. And they're very good too - Kit and Holly single was excellent.

I agree.

>>So what White Stripes songs should I download to knock my sock off then? Trusting they're so wonderful I've given up impuse/NME-endoresed purchases of bands I've never heard.
>
>"Fell in Love With a Girl", "I Can't Wait" and "Barely Legal" aren't bad starting points, although they all have that definite "haven't I heard this before somewhere" quality to them.
>
>Off-topic Paul, did you do my Hegley / various CD yet?
>
Aren't u confusing Stripes with Strokes there Barney?

Paul, get yrself "Sympathetic sounds of Detroit". Couple of tracks each from Soledad Brothers, Bantam Rooster etc, plus White Stripes "Red death at 6:14" (sounds like early JSBX with a tune).

BTW, anyone got the Stripes live Peel session in MP3? (not up on the R1 Peel site, shame on them....)

>Aren't u confusing Stripes with Strokes there Barney?
>
Er, no! Fell in Love ... and I Can't Wait are off "White Blood Cells" and "Barely Legal" is off an earlier EP, I think. Ashamed as I am to admit it, I've never heard owt by the Strokes.

And NME is going up to £1.50 as of next week. They're beginning to take the piss.

I once booked the Hybirds for a gig in Darlington, circa 1997. Terribly dull people.

well i know we could do this every week but... this weeks nme is just a vacum. The terrorism coverage is offensively banal - even the people in new york - april long says talking about music at a time like this is irelevant and then does so for 4 paragraphs. I love oasis but the liam quote has the emotional range of a selfish 13 year old - i ain't never going on a plane again - but that's not even his fault it's theirs for thinking this is 'vow' he's made and of any relevance.

The singles reviews are awful- whoever paul mcnamee is, he thinks the P Diddy single is the best this week... and the Starsailor interview is almost incomprehensibly boring.

And 5 out of 10 for Hefner. Typical cunts.

What is it with the NME having a teenage crush on bands with black leather jackets & afros? Think about it, the NME have been falling over themselves to pee their little pants over the Strokes, At The Drive-In, ...Trail Of Dead and now those new tossers in this week's 'On' section, or whatever it's called these days. Even articles on Gorillaz, for fucks sake, give extra attenion to the 'cool' member Murdoc, who must delight his fictional little self in looking like a member of any of these bands. Nice one NME, you tossers.

Perhaps it's a bit of an improvement on the NME reflecting the UK's obsession with nothing with any substance or personality - i.e. Flat Eric (a puppet that does fuck all), cunts who say 'Wasssup!' of 'Booyakahsha!' etc (cunts) or indeed mobile phone 'dialect', which barely exists (still, it's united the working class, (c) Steve 'Kneel On My Groin And Scream Up My Arse' Sutherland, cuntland). Oh shit, they still love the mobile phone stuff. Bugger.

I think it's also great that the NME usually dedicates it's cover stories to giant photospreads with a few sentances chucked at the bottom. I'd hate to think of them going to any more effort for people's money.

Remember the 'Great Music Journalists' issue, and how every letter sent in to subsequent issues praised it? Well they were really written by lying cunts from the NME. I'm sure this is news to very few.

Which poses a new question: is this any better or worse that chief Melody Maker shithead Daniel Booth, who regularly recieved letters from his 14 year-old admirers, considering the lying paedo wrote all the lettters himself, for his own jizz-stained ends? The answer is: STARSAILOR ARE THE BEST NEW BAND IN BRITAIN. Yeah, and David Gray's the new pope.

Also, Elbow are shit, as are any crap windy-voiced semi-acoustic nonsense new band - see Doves for an even blander example of this new breed of highly praised greyness.

Furthermore, back to my orginal point, whatever that was (oh yeah, the 'Strokes gang' idiot worship). It was only a matter of time, so I predicted, before the NME cooed over The Hives. The Hives, for anyone who wished I wasn't about to tell them, are an unspeakably poor piss-take of JSBX with added Zane Lowe (revered MTV UK cunt) respect. They are noticeable by their shit, trend-dependant music, and an image the NME would marry if it was allowed. Particularly their haircuts, mind, the NME LOOOVE those Strokes-y hair cuts.

NME singles this week - The Hives: Great Haircuts!

CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNTS!

I don't get the obsession with Murdoc.

Surely Noodle, 2d and even Russel are cooler? I especially thought Noodle would be popular amonst media Nathan Barley-types, being a 10-year-old Japanese girl who wears funky clothes. I saw Damon Albarn on MTV2 talking about Gorillaz, and he was wearing a custom black leather jacket and had his head shaved like some character from a Guy Ritchie film.

CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNT

Don't get me wrong, I like his music and he seems ok in interviews.

But another thing, in the photo on the inside of Blur's 'Blur' album, Damon is wearing his sunglasses indoors, in the studio.











CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNT!

I've said this before and i shall say it again: tiresome though the whole Gorillaz project is, by far the most offensive aspect is That Noodles One. I'm drawing particularly from an 'interview' in Making music magazine of a few months ago in which we learn that Gorillaz guitarist, as a Japanese person is: very small ('She mailed herself to England cos she's, like...so small!), obsessed with Tamagotchi and all technology and of course, almost silent (all she says is 'Noodles'. Why didn't they make it 'Ha So' and have done with it?).

Apparently the artists are re - doing all the videos so they can but a comedy bone through the black drummer's nose as well.

personally i think haircuts are a perfect way to judge a band.

>personally i think haircuts are a perfect way to judge a band.

Well, then Bobby, The Hives: good or shit on a stick?

Glancing through this week's NME (well, what is one supposed to do-spend time reading it properly?), I notice that Primal Scream did intend to release a single called "Bomb The Pentagon".
It'll be a while before they release that one, I reckon. During the meanwhilst, how about a specially re-recorded version of "Tears In Our Swastika Eyes"?


The Hives are quite good. The video for "Die Alright"is an absolute hoot.

fuck the gorillaz. fuck 'em. go get deltron 3030, go get the last del album, go get some automator. just don't feed that mockney gobshite's ego any more. please.

Well I haven't heard the Hives, but from the haircuts i'd say they were certainly 'heading' in the right direction.

Damon certainly has become fairly odious with the Gorrilaz success hasn't he. I heard them do a 'session' on Jo Whiley on radio1 daytime, and it was horrific. Not just musically but the cartoons being interviewed. Jamie Hewlett is fairly evidently an utter git, of keith allen proportions.

In the latest Face, Alex James is quoted as saying, "When Damon's finished with the Banana Splits, we'll do another Blur record".

yeah it's old quote.

they obviously only still do blur for the money.

as my last post shows, i get really upset about the gorillaz. dan the automator and del the funky homosapien are two of my favourite musicy people on this earth, and the fact that the public won't buy their records unless that twunt's mumbling over the top fills me with rage. what's worse, albarn and hewlett's "concept" means the talent don't get any credit, and that makes me want to invade A+H's nostrils with knitting needles.

grrrrr, etc. please, please, PLEASE go and buy the deltron 3030 album - it's so superior to the gorillaz it hurts. sorry, hurtz.

If there's any justice in this world, The Hives will go in the same direction as The Driven, Puressence, Terris, Tik & Tok, Pusherman, Northern Uproar, Emporer Julian, Powder and The Cunts.

And hopefully someone will kick of Zane Lowe's jaw on live TV. My money's Mark Gardener or Oor Wullie.

did you see the Brand New/Zane Lowe piss take on the last series of Adam and Joe - very good too.

i've bought the deltron 3030 thing too and very good it is... even the damon track, although the intro by damon is gash.. 'in the YEEEER 3030'

and northern uproar were ace.

"and northern uproar were ace."

Are you James Dean Bradfield?

>Jamie Hewlett is fairly evidently an utter git, of keith allen proportions.

Maybe that's what sharing a flat with Damon does to you. He's an incredible cartoonist though.

Deltron 3030- is that the rapper from the Gorillaz? If not, who is it?

>Deltron 3030- is that the rapper from the Gorillaz? If not, who is it?

Deltron 3030 is Dan 'Automator' Nakamura (superb hiphop producer), Kid Koala (exceptional hiphop dj) and Del Tha Funky Homosapien (Gorillaz rapper, I believe).

As pointed out below, Deltron 3030 are far superior to Gorillaz.

Another to add to my Albums to Buy Checklist...

>Another to add to my Albums to Buy Checklist...
>
You see, we could easily take the place of the NME review section in this megathread. Hefner's Dead Media out on monday (8).

if we're reccomending things can i put a word in for the Ladytron lp. i know it had good reviews but i don't think they've been mentioned since, the nme having fallen in to the mtv trap of only acknowledging 4 artists in the same year. Top haircuts too of course...

Also a couple of years ago when the beta band were the new best ever thing they said to the nme, ' oh a year from now you'll be onto someone else and won't give a stuff about' - to which the nme - sylvia patterson i think it was (who i quite like actually, i think she realises how shit it is now) said 'no of course not, we're not that fickle! so what happens - well a couple of years later beta boys finally release lp realising early promise and what do they get - one interview and an o.k lp review.

twats.

>if we're reccomending things can i put a word in for the Ladytron lp. i know it had good reviews but i don't think they've been mentioned since, the nme having fallen in to the mtv trap of only acknowledging 4 artists in the same year

To be fair to the NME, there's not been very much Ladytron action since the LP came out to write about, only a Reading/Leeds appearance. I'm sure Stephen Dalton (does he still write for the NME?) will pen something breathless and slightly overdone about them just as soon as the Playgirl remixes get released.

if this is the 'recommend an overlooked band' part of the thread i'll go for Barcelona.

http://www.barcelonadc.com/

the new album is fly, phat, and in all likelyhood, dope.

*likelihood* i mean.

spelin sux.

if we are bigging up deltron 3030 and its many members may i recommend the following:

handsome boy modelling school - so, hows your girl?
kool keith - black elvis/lost in space
dr octagon - ecologist
kid koala - carpel tunnel syndrome
dan the automator - an even better tomorrow
mixmaster mike - anti-theft device
q-bert - wave twisters (dvd out soon)
cut chemist meets shortcut live at future primitive
dj shadow - brainfreeze

Fosca are really good.

Anyone know if Wise Buddha (Radio 1 indie production company) have a website. I can't seem to find the sod.

>Anyone know if Wise Buddha (Radio 1 indie production company) have a website. I can't seem to find the sod.
>
Here it is: www.wisebuddah.com

Grr! Spelling.

Also get 4 Horsemen by Ultramagnetic MC's, if we're talking Kool Keith. His rhymes on that are definitely as good as his Dr Octagon stuff. The Dr Dooom LP is patchy, though.

>kool keith - black elvis/lost in space
>dr octagon - ecologist

this has got to be my wallet's least favourite thread.

>Also get 4 Horsemen by Ultramagnetic MC's, if we're talking Kool Keith. His rhymes on that are definitely as good as his Dr Octagon stuff. The Dr Dooom LP is patchy, though.

cant beat the classic critical beatdown for ultramagnetic mc-ing though

Jerry Thackeray (sp?), known better to some as Everett True, is apparently planning to launch a new music weekly in the UK to replace what's left of the weekly music press. Here's an extract from his journal, dated September 10, which he posted up on the I Love Music message board (which itself can be reached via http://www.freakytrigger.co.uk ) -

"We hold the first editorial meeting of Careless Talk Costs Lives in a plastic caf� at London Bridge station. No one sips strawberry tea. No one looks round and sees a portrait of Mavis Staples. Steve Gullick buys me too many containers of imitation coffee: by the time I reach my meeting with Carlton Books later to discuss my journal/deconstruction of celebrity/anti-fame ego booster I'm jabbering 10 to the second. I notice I have no sense of purpose right now. I mean, of course, structure. Appropriately enough, there's little to discuss. We're agreed that we want to create a magazine that will replace the decaying UK music press, through the use of one simple idea � to cover the music we love in an intelligent, soulful and stylish manner. For months now, I've been disturbed at the volume of free CDs that nestle on my Billy bookcase shelf � just over there to the left, just below the Smithsonian Collection Of Newspaper Comics and the Yoko Ono and Billie Holiday box sets � some of which are very fine indeed, and none of which British music 'journalists' (or perhaps that should read their 'editors') consider important or interesting enough for exposure. Also, I have no great urge to know what ring tones teenagers in Milton Keynes may or may not be using on their mobile phones. Also, I despise bad photography and the cult of irony more than I despise the Cosmic Rough Riders. Also, most music critics shouldn't even be allowed out of bed in the morning, particularly those who appear on TV to reinforce the consensus. (This, they all do.) Steve Gullick would like to be able to print his photographs in a manner that befits them, and support great music. Stevie Chick, too � only substitute the word 'words' for 'photographs'. Steve says that Mogwai will speak to us in Glasgow next week: this is a wonderful thing I am led to realise because they are a great band and have attitude. I like 'attitude', that most ambivalent of words."

Hallelujah. I wish them luck (especially the bit about mobile phone ring tones in Milton Bloody Keynes).

Everett True was responsible for the atrocity that was "73 in 83" (as The Legend), and consequently his opinions on music are of no value.

Everett True is of no value in general. Stevie Chick? Jesus Christ. These people are part of the problem, not the solution, but they're too blinkered to realise it. A Mogwai interview? Wow. There's something that's been a rarity in the music press. I'm absolutely desperate for one of those.

Fucking idiots.

True's comments are same as, same as. Nothing new and if he's pinning his hopes on a Mogwai feature full of "attitude" (so, like any NME article on them, then) he is sadly mistaken. They've just been dropped by their record label and are frankly on the skids.

Does this mean Stevie Chick has moved on? Hurrah.

It'll last as long as that Sun Zoom Spark spin-off weekly in 1995. Six issues at best.

Who was behind RAW (not the rock mag, the britpop one that explained everything for you as if you a half-wit)? And why?

And where's Andrew Collins gone?

>Who was behind RAW (not the rock mag, the britpop one that explained everything for you as if you a half-wit)? And why?

it was a sort of bi-weekly Select wasn't it? The first issue was given away free in one of those 'Cereal box full of free stuff' Select did once or twice. I think the second such arrangement was used to launch Neon magazine.

Mogwai? Dropped? Really?

They were only on Chemikal Underground... surely they sell enough for *them*?

For the last album they signed to a new record company. Although i thought they kind of released the album themselves, and had their own label? Guess not, then

They are/were on Southpaw, also home to Pernice Brothers and the Zephyrs. I'm sure CU would re-sign them.

No, the label was backed by Southern, I think. Can't remember off hand, but yes, Rock Action was a subsidiary revival of their old pre-Chemikal independent.

Mogwai royally pissed off Chemikal Underground when they decided to leave, following in the wake of Arab Strap to Go!Discs, also dropped after one album.

I was speaking to an old college friend last week, who is in Magoo (Chemikal act), and he reported that the drop had happened and there is no room at the inn.

No longer care, strangely. I adored Mogwai until it became readily apparent that they were never going to deliver the monumental album I always expected from them.

Southpaw. That was it.

>And where's Andrew Collins gone?

He's alive, but busy. An Eastenders episode tonight to prove it...

Interesting Chemikal Underground fact: Did you know that when you phone them up, Alun Woodward out of the Delgados answers the phone? (Yes, I know they run the label, but I thought they might employ a minion to do such a tedious task)

"Hello, Chemikal Underground?"

"Hi, I was just wondering if the Delgados were doing any press for the Only Connect thing in London."

"Er...no."

"OK, thanks, bye"

Is their version of Avinu Mulkaynu getting released in this country?

I think most of Mogwai's finest moments are all neatly wrapped up in the "Ten Rapid" compilation. It was downhill all the way after that, more or less.

Any chance of The Delgados themselves getting signed up by a big company?

Delgados on a major? Why would they want to?

This is a row I have all the time with people. Post Britpop, there seems to be an assumption that any half decent band will naturally get snapped up by a big label and everyone in the world will hear them and there'll be stand up cutouts in Woolworths of the bass player.

This is no longer the case. We're back at the mid 80s stage of the big labels being utterly unable to deal with or spot left field talent, even if they wanted to. Which they don't. Because there's no money in selling 50,000 copies of an independently minded LP (50,000 is a previously respectable figure which is currently seen as a failure by even forward looking labels like Go! Beat). The money and the focus is in manufacturing bands to do global pop deals, or stripping solo artists / songwriters out of bands to do hackwork for your latest teen prodigy.

True. And it's based on simple economics. Rough Trade, for instance, in the old days might have been chuffed to be doing 50-100,000 of a record, because they ran their own operation. But when you're answerable to Sony or whoever, that figure is laughable, and will get serious questions asked. Some bands - by definition the more interesting ones - will only ever have a fanatical cult following and just can't sell more than that, and so are of no interest to major labels. I'd include The Delgados. Remember, The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin was a huge disappointment to their label in sales terms, and The Delgados last album was basically a pale imitation of that. (Peloton rocks, though).

It's all a question of looking at it from the accountant's point of view, not the fan's.



BTW, Bent, I know some ex members of Magoo too. Isn't the world a tiny place?

> I'd include The Delgados

Sorry. Fast typing.

That should have read "I'd include The Delgados in that category..."

after reading mark beaumont's would-be apocalyptic attempt to examine where music will go after the w.t.c. disaster, I am never going to buy the nme again. that talentless fucker is symptomatic of what currently passes for a writing 'style' in the nme nowadays (lots of CAPITALISED SENTENCES FOR EXTRA EMPHASIS, lots of 'this makes (insert band name) sound like (insert other band name, preferably diametrically opposed to the first)' and 'this is the most bland / uninspiring / derivative / record since...' - well, I'm sure you can fill in the rest. unfortunately, i think my boycott will be pretty short-lived, as i honestly can't see the nme lasting much longer.

Strewth.

Does he do ".... on acid" too?

There should be a list of journalistic offences for which you can be hung.

>Is their version of Avinu Mulkaynu getting released in this country?
>
>I think most of Mogwai's finest moments are all neatly wrapped up in the "Ten Rapid" compilation. It was downhill all the way after that, more or less.


From http:\\mogwai.co.uk

Mogwai To Release 'My Father My King' One Track EP

Prior to the Reading Festival weekend at the end of August, Mogwai went into the studio with Steve Albini to record a version of 'My Father My King' - a song first brought to the attention of the band by Arthur Baker and what has now become a staple of the live set.

The results of this endeavour will be released on 22nd October 2001 on CD single and one-sided 12 inch vinyl through Rock Action Records with releases around the world to follow.

HMMMM.... Steve Albini

The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin was a huge disappointment to their label in sales terms.

yeah, but Warners have been incredibly loyal to the Flaming Lips in the last 9 years - think of Zaireeka! and The Soft Bulletin must have been their biggest seller to date.

But there was talk of dropping them after Soft Bulletin.

To fans, it seems that SB was a huge success. To Warners, it's a big investment for very little return. It's a question of which side of the corporate music divide you're standing.

BTW, Jon, you asked why The Delgados haven't been snapped up by a major. I asked a music biz bod last night, who told me that they were. Two of their early singles were put out by Warners, who then dropped them and treated them so badly that the wee Scots went back to the indie sector gladly. They've been burned once...

>But there was talk of dropping them after Soft Bulletin.
>
>To fans, it seems that SB was a huge success. To Warners, it's a big investment for very little return. It's a question of which side of the corporate music divide you're standing.

It just seems odd that they would be dropped now considering that their other warners albums (3 proper ones) must've sold only a fraction of The Soft Bulletin - but that's the way majors are, I guess. They obviously just haven't looked into the reaction they've been getting more recently. The tossers.

not sure of the chronology, (or, for that matter, what i'm talking about), but i suspect warners expected the "deserter's songs" style kerfuffle over sb to translate into similar sales figures. shame they forgot to market the fucker.

amazon claims that something called "box set" is out in the states on oct 6th, byt i can't find any mention of it elsewhere. anyone know what it is? (it's only 14 quid, which is pretty cheap for a box set)

(it's a flaming lips record, btw)

>not sure of the chronology, (or, for that matter, what i'm talking about), but i suspect warners expected the "deserter's songs" style kerfuffle over sb to translate into similar sales figures. shame they forgot to market the fucker.
"Clouds Taste Metallic" is the best album anyway. and "Talking About The Smilin' Deathporn Blues (Everyone Wants To Live Forever)" could be the best song title this side of the Frogs or Half Man Half Biscuit.

Sticking with the Delgados for a moment, I have to say I thought "Peloton" was poorly produced when I first heard it, and haven't changed my mind much. There are 5 excellent songs on it and it just doesn't do them full justice. "Great Eastern" overcomes that, though the songs aren't as good. I haven't heard the 1st one.

Don't worry, Unruly - as soon as Dave Lee Travis plays "Hawaiian Police", you can start rehearsing for that SMTV interview wherein the kids ask "What does the title mean? What's it like to be at #1 for 8 weeks? How easy is it to learn all your dance routines?" and so on.

Indie bands that should be signed by majors:

Baxendale
Belle & Sebastian
Half Man Half Biscuit
Candidate

>>
>Indie bands that should be signed by majors:
>
>Baxendale
>Belle & Sebastian
>Half Man Half Biscuit
>Candidate


My band supported Baxendale just after 'Music For Girls' came out. The girl keyboard player was very snotty.

Biscuits were to sign to V2 in 1996, but it fell through, thus 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Road' turned up on Probe Plus anyway.

Would there really be that much profit differnece between running a large roster of medium-selling bands, and putting everything into a few big-selling pop acts? Most indie-type bands have a reliable fanbase, reasonable lifespan, and get plenty of publicity through NME etc.

Another thing: I got the "What's Up Matador" compilation a while back. In the booklet it says that they received 2 major-company cash injections. What was all that about? Did they sell off some bands?

It usual for indie labels to get percentages when a major buys out a band's contract - Sub Pop got a royalty for finding Nirvana for Geffen.

>Biscuits were to sign to V2 in 1996, but it fell through, thus 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Road' turned up on Probe Plus anyway.

Much as I love HMHB, there is no way on Earth that 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road' could come out on ANY major label - however, "McIntyre, Treadmore & Davitt"-era HMHB would actually have a small chance of convincing some major label comapanies. Even by HMHB standards, "Voyage", though great, does sound bloody awful production-wise, and not it in a good 'home-recording' sound either. The engineer should be castrated (good songs though). However, it warms my heart that as recently as 1996, a major would be interested in the biscuits, especially considering the music they were making at the time. 'Deep House Victims' Minibus Appeal' on Letterman, anyone?

The V2 negotiations happened before recording took place. All the Voyage songs had only appeared live or on Peel/Radcliffe sessions up until that point.

>Another thing: I got the "What's Up Matador" compilation a while back. In the booklet it says that they received 2 major-company cash injections. What was all that about? Did they sell off some bands?
>
>It usual for indie labels to get percentages when a major buys out a band's contract - Sub Pop got a royalty for finding Nirvana for Geffen.


The sources of funding can be arcane and bizarre, not necessarily just "selling" bands to majors. Investment deals, stakes in the company, closed distribution deals... lots of stuff that music biz lawyers understand.

But rest assured that, with about a dozen tiny, unheard of exceptions, there is not a single independent record label in the country which isn't in hock to its eyeballs to a major.

Apart from Rocket Girl, Snowstorm, Fierce Panda (?) er... there aren't any others left.

The last two true, big-hitter indies were Mute and 4AD, and they went down years ago. Both are now major label subsidiaries. 4AD went bust, sacked everyone, and reappeared about 2 days later as part of Beggar's (Warner Bros).

The fans don't notice... They carry on buying their "indie" records and wonder why their favourite bands suddenly have expensive videos... It's like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.


Ooh, look! The Matador question answered at:
http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/whatsamatador.html

A (slightly out of date) map:
http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/whoownswho.html

Cool.

How did 4AD manage to go bust, given that they had The Pixies?

That "Greg Lane" article sounded very Albini-ish... Albini used to be mates with Gerard Cosloy (GC gets thanks on one of the Big Black albums). But then again Albini did albums for Bush and Page&Plant - where's the difference?

The legendary Steve Albini article which may have reminded you of that Greg Lane piece is here

http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic.html

It's from the same issue of Maximum Rock and Roll, dating from the post grunge boom, and should be compulsory reading for anyone in a band and their mums ("Why aren't you on Top of The Pops, darling...?" "Because that would involve having my entrails dragged out and sold to the highest bidder, mum...")

4AD could go under quite easily, even with that back catalogue. The Pixies sold dick anywhere in the world except the UK and France. That's one of the reasons Kurt Cobain was tortured. He felt he'd ripped them off and got the acclaim and sales that Black Francis' mob had deserved, and Husker Du before them.

Anyway, great back catalogue can't help you if you're pouring major-label-competitive levels of money into your current roster and getting tiny returns. I think Sigur Ros were the only band brining in any kind of cachet and cash. 4AD were seen by many in the business as a label with a time limit - they'd represented mid 80s - early 90s indie so brilliantly, that they were seen as has beens by the late 90s, so associated with a certain genre of dated music, that they had ossified.

Back to The Pixies. Never mistake a band being an influential force in fan circles with major labels giving a shit about them. I think 4AD was pretty in hock to Beggar's before they went bust, then Warners moved in as they finally collapsed and picked up the pieces (cf Sony and the fallout from Creation).

I checked the figures and The Smiths used to do around 100,000 copies of their albums, even when no UK fan would ever believe they weren't the biggest band on earth. Talk to Hazeley about what Go! Beat are expecting of his new record, and see how the stakes have changed. It's not healthy.

The Smiths established the trend for indie bands to get high chart placings in the 1st week of release (because all the fans bought it immediately) followed by a rapid descent. "Meat Is Murder" went straight to #1 in the album charts, but wasn't in the top 100 after about 3 months.

Then again, those albums are still selling reliably today, like the old REM ones.

And if they don't sell for a bit, in the case of the smiths, we'll just shove another best of album out, eh? And let's not bother telling the band, it'll just distract them from whatever they're doing.

>But rest assured that, with about a dozen tiny, unheard of exceptions, there is not a single independent record label in the country which isn't in hock to its eyeballs to a major.

Two words: dance music.

XL and Warp are still independent, aren't they? What about Jive and Rephlex? These are labels that sell albums as well as 12", and I'm sure they are still truly independent. They're also pretty big (with the possible exception of Rephlex).

Yeah. Dance music still manages to do it (though I think XL is major backed, isn't it?)

Funnily enough, this goes back to the original argument about the function of the NME.

I admit, saying there are no indie labels left at all was a bit sweeping. I mean, within genres, there are still healthy labels covering their costs and doing well targeting niches. (Topic Records, for instance, in the folk field, is still going strong, and currently holds the record as the world's oldest surviving indie label) But dance music disseminates information to its fans differently than old school "indie labels".

Dance music can (and often prefers to) exist autonymously - records selling on the back of popularity within the club scene, specialist radio play, or white label culture, without the need for brandable, identifiable bands and faces. Other specialist genres also have their way of disseminating information about releases, and thus helping independent record labels to reach their audience (Club scenes, specialist magazines, a sense of defiant undergroundness).

What's weird is that the NME used to provide this service for the alternative guitar music scene - disseminating information that enabled small labels to survive. Post major label buyout and Britpop/Grunge, there is no-one doing this job. Independently minded songwriters in the velvets/stooges/beatle/roxy/bowie/television/smiths/joydivision/nirvana-influenced genre are expected to exist on majors these days or nothing else. The vast number of potential fans of independently produced "alternative" music aren't necessarily used to chasing it up for themselves. Ironically, the success of alternative music of this sort in the 90s has made it one of the least independently minded musical forms around.

Outside the Rough Trade Shop clientele, the NME used to be one of the only ways to publicise this sector of the record market. It doesn't do it any more.

>Yeah. Dance music still manages to do it (though I think XL is major backed, isn't it?)

You may well be right. There's an interesting history to the label though - if you look at the roster now you can see the hardcore heritage filtered through the 90s, but still discernable. Or something.

>I admit, saying there are no indie labels left at all was a bit sweeping. I mean, within genres, there are still healthy labels covering their costs and doing well targeting niches.

And across genres, as Warp (for example) are no longer purely electronica (and the worse for it). Whereas in the 80s and early 90s you had guitar labels such as Creation and 4AD dabbling with dance, you now have a reversal, with labels that gained success through dance dabbling with guitar music.

>Dance music can (and often prefers to) exist autonymously - records selling on the back of popularity within the club scene, specialist radio play, or white label culture, without the need for brandable, identifiable bands and faces.

This, for me, is a strength that has been duly rewarded. Dance music shies away from egos and the old "rock and roll" myths that teenage boys and overgrown teenage boys like Alan McGee aspire to.

And some of the artists have become huge despite ignoring this - how many people who bought the massive selling first Leftfield album have any idea what they look like?

Dance artists largely live and die on the strength of the music - if you release a dud track that no-one can dance to, then it flops. 'Bands' can release terrible music that sells on the basis of misguided loyalty, collector-fervour or image. There are dance artists with the same problem, but there are considerably rarer.

>What's weird is that the NME used to provide this service for the alternative guitar music scene - disseminating information that enabled small labels to survive. Post major label buyout and Britpop/Grunge, there is no-one doing this job.

Do you think that lots of people starting guitar bands these days have their eyes on the prize though? Sounding 'indie' is no longer an indicator of credible goals, artistic leanings or even left-wing politics in the way it was in the 80s. It can be as sure a sign of desperate angling for commercial success as auditioning for a band like Steps. It just tends to have more self-delusion about 'art'.

>Ironically, the success of alternative music of this sort in the 90s has made it one of the least independently minded musical forms around.

Exactly. I don't shed any tears for a musical genre (nebulous as it is) that I have never cared for, but I do have some affection for the little labels that are out there doing what they do for the 'right' reasons (by my reckoning).

I'm just biased. I'm up to my neck in this starving genre, keeping a band together, helping run an independent label, and the way it's treated in the UK sometimes makes me sick.

John Peel aside, there's this bizarre delusion that independent velvets-heritage music ("guitar" is probably a misnomer, but I might start using it) (how about "old NME style music"?) has a viable future, but how can it, when all its outlets have been co-opted by massive corporations who end up looking disappointed when Gay Dad, say, hit their target market head on, sell 100,000 copies and get dropped because they're not doing as well as Pulp at their peak?

The UK indie guitar music scene needs to recalibrate itself along the lines of its American cousin, using underground networks, maybe developing some kind of equivalent to US college radio, and realise it exists parallel to the majors, not as part of them.

NME would - had it stuck to its guns - been a major factor in this recalibration. As it is, we can wave it bye bye pretty fast, since it's not serving the audience it wishes it had (major-label buying post-Smash-Hits kids) or the one it ought to encourage (a truly independent music culture).

To beat the labels, genres need to strengthen themselves, like dance music did, not dilute their principles. Cheers, NME.

I'd like to apologise for sounding like the 18-year-old version of myself in that last posting.

I wondered where he'd gone. He was just hiding behind my cynical, weary facade. Ho hum. Doesn't matter. It's only music. Of course all my favourite teenage bands would be signed these days. Of course it's no worse than it ever was...

>I'm just biased. I'm up to my neck in this starving genre, keeping a band together, helping run an independent label, and the way it's treated in the UK sometimes makes me sick.

You're a reasonable man. But no genre (or band) should need to rely on a paper as dreadful as the NME, even back when it was only mildly dreadful.

That said, what right does 'indie' have to be treated well in the UK? Or any genre of music for that matter.

>John Peel aside, there's this bizarre delusion that independent velvets-heritage music ("guitar" is probably a misnomer, but I might start using it)

I'd like to start calling dance music 'Popcorn-heritage' but it's too wrong.

>(how about "old NME style music"?) has a viable future, but how can it, when all its outlets have been co-opted by massive corporations

Maybe this happened because the successful 'alternative' music has all been pop music in its most recognisable form - i.e. some blokes playing guitars and singing. Dance music has been partially co-opted, but will cause middle-aged businessmen problems for a while because it doesn't look like the music they used to listen to.

>who end up looking disappointed when Gay Dad, say, hit their target market head on, sell 100,000 copies and get dropped because they're not doing as well as Pulp at their peak?

These bands invite it on themselves though. They aim to be successful and 'be bigger than Oasis'. The arrogant posturing that serves as an alternative to decent music has been a problem for indie ever since the Stone Roses made it big. And probably before that for all I know.

I liked it when Gay Dad were labelled failures, in the same way I liked it when Fabulous and Kula Shaker disappeared. I like it when Victoria Beckham falls flat on her face. Naked ambition should be slapped down wherever possible. Eh, Charlie Brooker?

>since it's not serving the audience it wishes it had major-label buying post-Smash-Hits kids)

Because they never were that audience themselves. The appalling journalism and idiocy of most music journalism does not tend to stem from a wide-eyed love of pop, like what Neil Tennant has.

Also - remember that Smash Hits did much to populise 'indie' bands in the 80s.

>To beat the labels, genres need to strengthen themselves, like dance music did, not dilute their principles. Cheers, NME.

It's always difficult to claim that dance music did anything - it's a vast church with thousands of people involved all pulling in different directions. It would never had depended on one magazine to give it direction or help it stick to any principles. It grew as it had to, as a consequence of its nature as a genre, largely arising from its original function - making people dance.

www.popjustice.com used to say this far better than I ever could, but he never seems to get round to relaunching.