The Fat Lady is Singing
Once a vital lifeline to pop-picking teenagers when the pirates had yet to set sail and the BBC Light Programme swung to terminally upbeat orchestral mood music, Radio Luxembourg finally gave up the ghost of the 208 wavelength in 1991. It continued to broadcast on the Astra satellite system for a while, but to all extents and purposes its era was over. Sometimes it’s best to admit the end of the road has arrived. This week, it was announced the NME – or for older readers, the New Musical Express – would be reduced to a virtual ‘indie’ version of the free newspaper, ‘Metro’, to be given away for nothing, just like the music its dwindling readership listen to. What’s the point?
Although I was too young for the Golden Age of the British music press in the 1970s (‘Shiver and Shake’ meant more to me than Melody Maker in 1973), it was still relatively healthy when I would purchase the weeklies from the mid-80s onwards. The first signs that something was changing came one week in 1991 when Sounds and Record Mirror (the latter no longer an inky monochrome product) folded simultaneously. The rest of the decade was left to the two old-timers, the NME and Melody Maker, to battle it out like a pair of once-great heavyweights reduced to the ignominy of fairground pugilism as their respective circulations continued to plummet. MM was re-launched as a glossy at the end of the 1990s, resembling a student ‘Smash Hits’; and this last-ditch attempt at staving off the inevitable bombed. Within a year, the 75-year-old newsstand institution vanished for good.
Pre-rock ‘n’ roll, the music papers in this country were akin to trade magazines, aimed at jazz musicians in their thirties or forties and not selling many copies to those outside of the music industry. The 1952 entry of the NME into the market may have suggested more-of-the-same, especially with its rather quaint original title of ‘Accordion Times and Musical Express’; but the great innovation of the newcomer was the introduction of the UK’s first-ever chart listing the best-selling records of the week, something that reflected the increasing ascendancy of the vinyl record over sheet music. The first No.1? ‘Here in My Heart’ by Al Martino.
The advent of rock ‘n’ roll may have been initially greeted with a rather condescending sniffiness by the British music press, but when the publishers realised giving extensive coverage to Elvis would boost circulation and bring in a vast, untapped young readership, they gradually embraced it. With the astronomical rise of The Beatles and the Stones in 1963/64, the NME and Melody Maker were firmly enshrined as adolescent bibles, a pivotal middle-man between the bands and the fans. The NME reached a sales peak of 306,881 a week during this period and sales remained healthy throughout the decade. The NME Poll Winner’s Concerts were televised annually in the mid-60s, the era’s equivalent of the Brit Awards; and the dream line-ups at some of these events read like a who’s who of Swinging London’s musical movers and shakers.
Despite their immense success in the Beat Boom years, the level of journalism in both the NME and Melody Maker was of a kind that one would today associate with boy-band fan mags. It was with the arrival of America’s Rolling Stone in 1967 that ‘pop’ journalism progressed to ‘rock’ writing. Writers that in a previous age would have penned articles in broadsheet newspapers were now reporting on popular music with a lyrical gravitas that had once been the preserve of Classical. Melody Maker was the first British weekly to reflect this maturity, recruiting highbrow writers such as Richard Williams, Michael Watts and Chris Welch. The NME was slow to keep up with the changing climate and the debut of Sounds in 1970, a music paper very much in synch with the move from frivolous singles to serious albums, threatened the continuing existence of a music weekly that appeared rooted in the more lightweight showbizzy pop scene of the pre-psychedelic 60s.
Salvation came in 1972 with the gate-crashing of several journalists from the thriving underground press such as Charles Shaar Murray, Mick Farren and Nick Kent, bringing with them an irreverent wit and perceptive prose that set the style of the NME for the rest of the 70s. Along with the iconic photography of Pennie Smith, the influx of fresh blood revitalised a fading brand and by the mid-70s, the NME was outstripping its rivals. There was a mischievous aspect to the tone of the paper by this stage; Bryan Ferry took umbrage with an apparent lack of respect he received from the writers and the paper responded by refusing to name him properly, referring to him as ‘Byron Ferrari’ and various other plays upon his actual name because the writers knew it annoyed him. In a pre-internet and widespread Virgin/HMV age, the NME was the dedicated music fan’s Koran; even clothes were purchased via mail-order in its small-ads. For those not fortunate enough to live within a stone’s throw of the King’s Road, the best way to purchase loon-pants was via the NME. It really was a lifestyle magazine as much as Cosmopolitan.
Although initially slow to pick up on punk, the NME’s recruitment of Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill and Paul Morley gave another kiss of life to the paper that carried it into the 80s. The political elements of punk and post-punk, especially in the lyrics of The Clash, The Jam and The Specials, was reflected in the NME, which often focused on issues beyond music such as the controversial Youth Opportunities Schemes of the early Thatcher Government, even stretching to making Labour leader Neil Kinnock a cover star. The Leftish leanings of the paper reached a PC peak in the middle of the 80s, with writers such as Stephen Wells hectoring the readership in a manner that often made the magazine akin to a humourless musical equivalent of Socialist Worker.
The 1990s was hard going. The consciously anti-personality rhetoric of the dance scene was something all the traditional music papers struggled to deal with; the introduction of glossy music monthlies such as Vox, Select, Muzik, Uncut and Mojo was a severe challenge to the old weeklies; and though Britpop gave both the NME and Melody Maker a brief shot in the arm, sales seemed fixed in an irreversible decline. The rise of the internet at the turn of the twenty-first century dealt a killer blow to many of the monthly magazines that had challenged the old music weeklies in the 90s, but also claimed the scalp of the NME’s long-term rival, Melody Maker. The disappearance of the latter was like the disappearance of the Daily Mirror would be to the Sun.
The last survivor of an age in which music news was weekly rather than daily (or monthly), the NME staggered on alone in the 2000s and 2010s, faced with the instant newsflashes of the internet (ironically capitalised on by the NME’s highly successful online edition) on one hand and the often-excellent in-depth writing on rock’s golden years in Uncut and Mojo on the other. The NME seemed uncertain as to what its role was anymore, as likely to put The Beatles on its front cover as The Libertines.
The announcement this week that the final remaining music weekly is to become a freebie is sad, but symptomatic of the dismantling of the intertwined network that for decades defined the British music scene – John Peel, the music press, the charts, Top of the Pops. Like Radio Luxembourg relegated to the Astra satellite in 1992, the NME becoming something to be given away is testament to the increasing irrelevance of what was once a cultural touchstone for an age that is now in its death throes. There is no alternative anymore; we are all products of the leisure industry now.
Petunia Winegum
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July 11, 2015 at 9:29 am -
I wrote about this recently: http://www.thelatestnews.com/the-decline-of-the-uk-music-press/
And gave the solution. More to the point, isn’t anyone going to sign my petition at Change Dot Org against the new child abuse witch-hunt?
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July 11, 2015 at 11:45 am -
Could you give a link to the petition please? I went to the site, but being dim, I couldn’t find your petition using their search facility.
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July 11, 2015 at 12:39 pm -
I cant find the link to this petition either. Was never an avid reader of the above mentioned music papers, but did read them occasionally, sad they are gone, but hard to see how they would survive in the current climate.
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July 11, 2015 at 9:35 am -
Nice summary, Petunia. The NME was a bible to me from the early 70s ((I graduated from the Record Mirror, the BBC charts no longer relevant to me) to mid 80s . A large part of my music collection is formed from the bands their writers alerted me to, underground stuff most people would regard as artsy fartsy or just plain crap – but brilliant to me for their energy and confrontational, belligerent and askance view on life, which I shared. If it dies forever, I will mourn another passing element of my youth.
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July 11, 2015 at 11:45 am -
I remember how a rave review could persuade you to track down an obscure release and open a door to somewhere you’d otherwise never have been aware of. Buying ‘Birthday’ by The Sugarcubes on the strength of Melody Maker coverage in 1987 was one such occasion. Even as late as the end of the 80s, the music press really was the sole lifeline for those of us who could never fathom the appeal of the local rugby club.
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July 11, 2015 at 11:59 am -
The first time I heard “Birthday” was in San Francisco, living next to a crack house in the Western Addition, an area known for its, ahem, “grittiness”. I had tracked down a cassette tape after a friend sent me the NME review. Bjork was a revelation on that album.
The other band from that era I wot into via the NME was Pop Will Eat Itself (yeah, I know, not everybody’s cuppa), but I had their ” This Is The Day… This Is The Hour…This Is This!” album on my Walkman constantly. I saw them at the I-Beam on Haight Street in 1988/89? – the night I broke both my arms after the gig (don’t ask). Oh, Happy Day!
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July 11, 2015 at 12:02 pm -
The old rule book says when you discover and fall in love with an unknown act and then they eventually make it big, you’re supposed to accuse them of selling out. But I was dead chuffed when Bjork became a household name because I think she managed it without ever selling out at all.
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July 11, 2015 at 12:05 pm -
Agreed. The Icelandic Kate Bush, in many ways.
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July 12, 2015 at 1:02 am -
My only recollection of her is that famous incident where she tore into a Japanese reporter at an airport. It was hugely entertaining. Haven’t followed her career.
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July 11, 2015 at 12:07 pm -
That’s true. I wasn’t born with awareness of the Velvet Underground even after I started walking on the wild side. That took Education but not of third kind.
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July 11, 2015 at 12:45 pm -
I remember how a rave review could persuade you to track down an obscure release
Which was how Brae Dwarf got into “Infected”-The The and also managed to infect me . To this day several songs from that album are on my playlist. Recently, strangely, I have started to appreciate a couple of other geordie groups NME/MM got him into but not me- The Smiths and Joy Division.
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July 11, 2015 at 12:47 pm -
Have you tried “Soul Mining”? Another classic album.
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July 11, 2015 at 9:35 am -
I regularly bought the NME – and Melody Maker too – from about 1987-on, and more weeks than not in the 90s. After about 1999 not so much, and I remember being horrified at how poor it was in the mid-00’s – championing and promoting mediocrity whilst on a one-way journey to corporatisation, the writers in the main seemingly as confused as I was. The truth was decent “new music” was thinning out and heading back underground, something that was at odds with what was now a “brand”. The answer, they thought, was to morph into “Mojo Weekly”, and trumpet the old as new. Whilst I agree their core audience are in desperate need of musicial eduation, it was ironic that “New Musical Express” was now holding on for dear life whilst making cover features of albums that were 20/30/40/50 years old and bands with members now in their 40s & 50s. In market where we have Mojo, Classic Rock & Uncut reappraising the past (all monthlies, retailing at around a fiver each) did we really a slim weekly version that cost about £3.50?
For years I lived with every copy of the monthly Q, Vox and Select at my fingertips and thought nothing of it. I stashed them away for years, and realised last year I was in fact sitting on what was fast becoming history, an archive of a lost world where the old and the new were of equal stature and a recent past that is already being rewritten. I still keep an ear out for new music and support live music, but as far as the wave of the mainstream goes, the well of inspiration has run dry… no point in pretending it hasn’t, just as there is nothing more tragic than the middle-aged pretending the “yout” have it in them to influence or inspire (other than influencing and inspiring slavish mediocrity).
Keep it real.-
July 11, 2015 at 9:57 am -
I check out Noisey, Pitchfork and Stereogum on a regular basis (and others as I come across them) and wander through YouTube to find new stuff. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised – there are young people out there using the past to make some quite stunning music.
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July 11, 2015 at 11:41 am
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July 11, 2015 at 9:44 am -
I think I’m a tad embarrassed to admit that I actually bought a pair of loons via the ads in either the NME or MM. It was during my “hippy” stage, which nicely coincided with the “golden years” of those papers. I well remember eagerly awaiting each new edition, but can’t recall which of the two I preferred, I think possibly MM. It was 1973, I’d just left school and started my apprenticeship, so at last had some disposable income with which to buy records, almost exclusively LP’s. I spent many happy hours reading reviews, getting information about tour dates and news of new releases.
I guess it’s not just music periodicals that are under threat nowadays. I would imagine many magazines are finding it hard to survive in the online age.
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July 11, 2015 at 9:56 am -
From 1988, I bought every issue of Q religiously. From 1990, I also bought Vox and Select every month – and the latter two spluttered to an ignominous sudden death at the turn of the millennia, something that in hindsight ‘says it all’ (Coldplay were the final cover stars of Select, say no more). At some point around 2004 it dawned on me that Q had become a shadow of it’s former self – I would buy it, read it in about half an hour and never need to refer to it again… in the 90s it would take days to read everything, and a lot of it merited re-reading too – intelligence, humour, good writing, interesting content and subject matter. Back then I’d have never have imagined the time would come when it was no longer worth buying Q, but it that time had come all of a sudden. I had to face facts, and the facts were it was all gloss and no content.
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July 11, 2015 at 9:53 am -
Since I never followed rock or punk journalists, this article is only the second time I ever heard of Mick Farren (d. 2013 I see from Wikipedia). The first time was in a Private Eye article that made me chuckle. Apparently, he had described in his ‘journalism’ Ozzy Osborne as the man for whom the word Pratt was invented. Private Eye had done some digging, and discovered that Farren had been born with the surname Pratt, and therefore hoped that he felt a complete Farren!
I have to admit that I’d never heard of Ozzy before, either, but then my mind was on other things. Does anyone else remember the Private Eye article? Unfortunately I am cursed with an ability to remember oddments like this. I half remember it being in Pseuds Corner.
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July 11, 2015 at 4:46 pm -
I don’t remember the article, but I really want this to be true – what a great little story!
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July 11, 2015 at 9:58 am -
NME… inky fingers and stimulated mind. What a wonderful time. One of my favourite memories is their spoof lyrics page and the one I remember best was the Status Quo one, which went something like,
DOWN
Down, down
Down
Down, down downDown down down down down
Down down
Down down down down down downDown down
DownI moved over to Private Eye for my inky fingers fix in the 1980’s, partly because I was working in London and reading the NME on a train was virtually impossible. I guess the printed media was doomed from the day that Eddie Shah invented the non-inky newspaper quite frankly, and colour photographs was the final stake through the heart of the daily beast.
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July 11, 2015 at 10:08 am -
Back in the sixties and early seventies – the pre digital age – the NME and Melody Maker were our lifeblood. If you were a guitarist looking for a band or vice versa this was where you used to look. The back pages were also great places for buying and selling instruments pre eBay and the like.
I suppose it was inevitable that NME and MM would go under as everything is now done on line, but I shall mourn their passing and remember them for the essential services they provided way back when.
As for Blus vs Oasis, IMHO neither of them were particularly good!
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July 11, 2015 at 10:12 am -
And that’s why we’re singing the blur…
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July 11, 2015 at 11:51 am -
July 12, 2015 at 6:47 pm -
Yes it’s very sad to see an old warrior go down. But truth to tell it had lost its way by the time the New Romantics turned up and Morley started writing wibble about Perfect Pop. It was also trying to be a British Rolling Stone, full of lifestyle and leftie causes alongside the music
I wrote for them in the early 80’s, having started at Sounds in 1977. It is amazing to remember that the big four… NME, Sounds, Melody Maker and Record Mirror, used to sell around 250,000 copies EACH in the late 70’s. Then Music was essential to an adolescent’s life, now it is ancillary. Had a great time mind. Seen practically any band or artist you can name and met a lot of them, and all for free! Plus the cheque for the article of course.
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July 11, 2015 at 10:21 am -
Each to their own: I never took to Melody Maker, and graduated from NME to Record Mirror before I lost interest in popular music sometime during the era of The Pirates. That Paul Gadd and Shane Fenton: they were rather good, I wonder what happened to them.
What amazes me, however is that although almost on a daily basis I receive unrequested (and unrequited) glossy-coloured magazines through my letter box which I then have to dispose of without alerting the scrutiny of The Rubbish Police, FTSE 100 hundred companies (the richest in the land) plead poverty and attempt to morally brow-beat me by suggesting I forgo the paper version of their annual report.
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July 11, 2015 at 10:34 am -
Shane died; Paul’s inside…
… but I still enjoy his Greatest Hits album from time to time (does that make me a bad person?)
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July 11, 2015 at 11:53 am -
If it does, join the club!
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July 11, 2015 at 12:05 pm -
Gang surely
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July 11, 2015 at 12:10 pm -
Bang on.
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July 11, 2015 at 12:11 pm -
Indeed!
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July 11, 2015 at 11:18 pm -
Quite – it makes me a bad person too!
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July 11, 2015 at 12:40 pm -
And a rather large gang at that…how else does one explain The Darkness getting to Number One (yeah, I admit to quite liking it as well)?
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July 11, 2015 at 8:15 pm -
Do any of you perchance listen to Gesualdo? He at least did commit real crimes (double murder).
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July 11, 2015 at 10:23 am -
That’s an odd coincidence. This blog has just jogged my memory. It was only last Sunday that my brother and I were talking about the kid’s comics we used to enjoy, and were pondering whether they still exist in this age of the world wide web, and if so, how different they would be to those of our childhood – ours very un-P, theirs highly sanitised i.e. no violent war stories, no racial stereotypes and every conceivable type of gender equality no doubt.
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July 11, 2015 at 11:53 am -
I think The Beano still exists as a physical artefact (probably about a fiver now), but I know The Dandy was relegated to an online comic a few years back. Sad. I bet ‘The Jocks and The Geordies’ aren’t part of the current line-up!
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July 11, 2015 at 7:43 pm -
2000AD is still flourishing, perhaps because it doesn’t rely on adverts.
But perhaps that is too recent for you ?
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July 11, 2015 at 11:23 pm -
Kids comics – they were more my thing back in the day, most available on Ebay – a lot of them at overinflated prices too.
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July 11, 2015 at 10:54 am -
I never read a word in any of the publications mentioned as this old fellow loved his classical music but Tony Tyler (my driver in the 1st Royal Tank Regiment) was one of the journalists on the NME. It wasn’t until I saw him being interviewed on TV decades later that I learned of his post military career. I got in touch via MacUser and he visited me the day after. After that we had a weekly phone chat until his trip to France.
He possessed a fine brain and a sharp wit and I miss him.-
July 11, 2015 at 10:58 am -
He possessed a fine brain and a sharp wit
My comment crossed with yours but I’m betting it was your friend’s articles that so impressed me.
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July 11, 2015 at 10:56 am -
As a teen, Younger Brae-Dwarf bought MM/NME religiously and quickly acquired an almost encyclopedic knowledge of what he called ‘Indy’ music. Me myself, 2000AD was my paper of choice. Music was all well and good as tool to get knickers off and I’m told the sight of me ‘cosmic treeing’ half naked soaked a thousand slips (yes Son, in the 80s sex symbols could have man boobs, bad teeth and terminal liver damage) but beyond background noise for Savate training I wasn’t overly bothered knowing anything more than what the lyrics told me…or didn’t. (It comes to something when Lemmy’s cover of “God Save The Queen” is easier to understand than the original!).
But once or twice, having an afternoon to kill, I would dip into Brae-Dwarf’s pile of magazines with pictures of that twat with the leak in his back pocket and a granddad hearing aid and read some of the articles and commentaries. Have to say, despite having no real interest in musical theory , the articles were amazingly well written and witty. Nothing ‘fanzine’ about them.
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July 11, 2015 at 11:21 am -
Days that changed the world by Tom Robinson..
“It started out by word of mouth
That great unholy din
From auntie’s midnight rambler
And the NME within ..”I believe the song refers to Band Aid.
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July 12, 2015 at 1:53 am -
The song is a potted resume of Tom Robinsons career events and life up to that date. The album it appears on (Love Over Rage) was released in 1994. The quoted verse is of course about the rise of punk and John Peel.
It does have a verse about Live Aid.But later on the telethon
The stars came out to play
The global conscience came alive
To feed the world that day
And after famous, rich and laid
The saint became a sir
He earned his reputation in
A day that changed the worldI really do think it is one of the finest lyrics he has ever written.
https://tomrobinson.bandcamp.com/track/days-that-changed-the-world
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July 11, 2015 at 11:28 am -
We’re all doomed Captain Mannerin’
http://bcva.dnfa.com/pages/search/image.asp?imgurl=445466-367 -
July 11, 2015 at 11:41 am -
July 11, 2015 at 3:16 pm -
Never read them myself but I remember a childhood friend saying that he often opened the NME and MM during the Saturday afternoon Chris Denning (currently detained at Her Majetsy’s Pleasure for child molestation, I believe) show on BBC Radio 1 in the late 60s.
Apparently, all the breathtaking “news”on Denning’s show was lifted straight from those publications.
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July 11, 2015 at 4:26 pm -
I used to listen to Chris Denning on “Mid day spin” in the late 60s on wonderful Radio 1.
My school friend’s sister was an journo on “The Record Mirror” and because of that we visited their offices in London in either 1973 or 4 – a really exiting experience for a hick from the provinces. I used to regularly buy Sounds and NME in the 70s, especially during the punk explosion which appealed to me more than the prog rock kind of thing those papers had been largely given over to before that.
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July 11, 2015 at 4:43 pm -
I suspect that the music press (and the press in general for that matter) are having the same problem as programmes like Top of the Pops. Once upon a time you would sit through 2, 3, or 4 songs you disliked in the hope of hearing an unknown one you did – because you had no alternative. Now you can easily search online for music in the genre of your choice – you don’t have to sit through the rest.
Similarly with the music press – you aren’t going to fork out good money to buy a paper mostly full of articles on music you don’t like. Online there will be multiple websites full of far more detailed information about the genres of your choice.
While that’s good in many ways, it leaves you more generally ignorant and also means you are less likely to be exposed to material you hadn’t expected to like but end up loving. -
July 11, 2015 at 4:44 pm -
Sounds, NME & Melody Maker – I read all three, week in week out.
Unless my memory is playing tricks I think that MM was absorbed within the pages of NME when it disappeared from the shelves, for a while at least – MM being more for the aspiring musician than the simple fan who would read NME, it was the place to recruit a band-member or buy a second-hand guitar.
Whenever I came across a copy in later years the journalism seemed pitiable, compared to what I’d remembered reading in my youth; perhaps just a rose-tinted view of the past.
P.S. ‘Birthday’ by The Sugarcubes? Me too!
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July 11, 2015 at 4:49 pm -
Yes, I think the classfieds section of the Melody Maker which, as you say, brought more than one aspiring band together, was incorporated into the NME when MM folded. And the standard of writing definitely deteriorated as the readership diminished. Articles by the likes of some of the names mentioned in the post are still readable today; even the 90s scribes like Everett True at Melody Maker wrote about popular music with an articulate and erudite approach that has no place in the online equivalents today.
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July 11, 2015 at 5:26 pm -
I’d forgotten about Everett True! Certainly I remember honing-in on a few favourite writers first, before reading the rest of the articles. I’d be a bit scared to go back & read their output now, to be honest – scared to discover that it wasn’t as good as I thought it had been. I like to leave my memories intact.
A friend recently upped-sticks to go & live in Brighton (mid-life crisis, he’s had a tattoo & an ‘intimate’ piercing, he insisted on telling me). Seems as though a load of ex-scribes/stubborn musicians have moved there too, and a ‘Land That Time Forgot’ spell has fallen over the town… Riot-Grrrrllll is all the rage or summat! Like I said, I’ll leave my memories where they belong & won’t be rushing to join him there!
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July 11, 2015 at 6:05 pm -
I know Annie Nightingale lives in Brighton, but I didn’t realise it was a rest home for old music press scribes. I suppose they must have somewhere to go. I know Everett True’s long-lasting claim to fame was pushing Kurt Cobain onstage at the 1992 Reading Festival in a wheelchair, amidst potent rumours of his (Cobain’s) health worries, ones that turned out to be relevant a couple of years later.
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July 11, 2015 at 6:29 pm -
I’ve only got his word for it, Pet – the word of a man who has willingly converted himself into some sort of urinary collander!
(I only went to Brighton once, a train-journey from London on my birthday with a couple of friends, including the one mentioned above. Being a bit drunk we decided to sleep on the beach in a couple of boats, and when that beachfront nightclub-whose-name-I-can’t-remember turfed everyone out some nutters decided to start throwing ‘Brighton pebbles’ at us… more like bloody rocks. Enough to put me off returning, riot-grrrrls or no riot-grrrrls!)
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July 11, 2015 at 4:51 pm -
I preferred George Formby.
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July 11, 2015 at 5:42 pm -
Demetrius- I bid you Arthur Askey.
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July 11, 2015 at 6:55 pm -
Must have been early ’60’s but I still recall an early gloomy & atmospheric pic of the Rolling Stones- local interest because I then lived in Woodley as I think did Brian Jones. In one of the inky rags. The pic that is.
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July 11, 2015 at 9:02 pm -
I have fond memories of the NME; it was essential reading when I was younger. Indeed, at school, I even won a prize in a competition, the only thing I have ever won. It was a simple question: “Which is the most underrated band?”
Naturally (1968?) I responded with Jethro Tull. The prize was a session album called ‘Jamming with Edward’ by the Stones, Ry Cooder, et al.
I still have it.
The trouble is, the Decca went years ago…
RIP, I suppose…
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July 11, 2015 at 10:24 pm -
Petunia, in fitting with the title of today’s article, but with reference to what I imagine must be tomorrow’s:
Leeds?
Pop music?Soft Cell!
Grab your eraser while the portly lass does her warming-up exercises!
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July 12, 2015 at 4:39 am -
My favorite was MM. When Sounds came out, I preferred that. My mate would buy MM and I would buy Sounds and we would swap. Being a fledgling guitarist (later to bass) there was one glossy in those days called ‘Beat Instrumental’ not a big magazine, but catered for us wanting reviews into gear at that time and, I think, articles about the gear used by the current bands. Just remembered, the Bells Music catalog, crammed with tasty gear (at that time) Hofner, Selmer amps. Not a Fender or Gibson in sight lol. 63 now and still playing my bass although, day after a gig, I overdose on anti-inflammatories.
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July 13, 2015 at 1:26 am -
“…though Britpop gave both the NME and Melody Maker a brief shot in the arm”
Britpop/dadrock was terrible for the weeklies. It were pushed to the hilt to the detriment of a more eclectic coverage and criticism. Melody Maker chose to push this tripe and many music critics left because they weren’t allowed to engage in criticism. Even more stopped buying it
With the NME left on it’s own (winning?) it just pushed the same styles of music without the criticism.
Both titles were also hit by the internet because concert-goers could look up artist/gig guide websites instead of buying either weekly.
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