IF: you were the editor of NME/Pitchfork...

That is v important!

Also write abt some technical stuff actually as many of course start bands (there was a good thread recently abt how noise is just being recklessly inserted into rock albs for instance that was informative but not too nerdy actually) but again the editor has to make it as if its this sort of thing is a part of what the paper does and not just put it at the back of the paper.

I like things like 10-30 word max reviews of albs (there's so much out there) but you'd have to get writers who are good at this.

Considering that the advertisers/my taste split is pretty even (NME just advertises bands, predominantly) there would be no clash between remit and advertising. Or even if there was that would be pretty interesting. In fact, yeah, I don't want to see a fawning Will Oldham review right next to his ad. So, I'd run the ad and have a piece on situationist-mindfucks.

I'd allow reviews of any albums in the review section. They need not be new. Or maybe have a separate section for reviews of records that people just want to review. Sort of saying, well, we're not secondary to the music: our criticism is equal to the thing we're crit-ting. (Ie, we're not just pushing new 'product' and the only reason we exist is to float/sink new rekkids). (I'm not making this point well.)

I wouldn't necessarily run 'People' on the cover. I'd get mitchlastnamewithheld to do my first cover actually, if he'd do it. I'm not sure what else. Good qn. though.

heh, oh no you don't!

(NME does write about Hip-Hop and pop and dance as well.)

(I'd employ Ronan, s'about time somebody paid him to write his little heart out).

An extension of Julio's technical things: get the writer's to cover real life interaction of real life and music. Er, what does that mean? For example, what mark s was saying about live reviews not chastising bad venues: realise that music does have an effect out in the world and that the world does have an effect within the music and try and manage these contexts.

but does it give it equal importance to indie bands, say.

(Have they ever given a cover to up and coming hip hop acts for instance instead of chasing the next big thing).

I'd like to see coverage of lots of metal (or sludge type stuff).

...suicide comes to mind.

There is a lot of stuff out there. Page after page of long reviews are a stretch for lots of ppl (I don't mind) (I'm not saying the ppl who don't like long reviews are idiots either).

(most ppl can't write long reviews anyway)

I have that issue and was pleasantly surprised when that came out but in retrospect it was a one off.

(Early godspeed was OK but silve mt zion is the better)

but then the reviews become two sentences long with one sentence technical information and the other thrown away on an unfunny joke. Like Robert Christgau!

no!!!! ;-)

I think it should be a mix of 500 word reviews but mostly 10-30 words.

There just aren't enough recs with interesting or original angles that merit 100 words. really.

(i think its a big ask to get ppl to write long-ish reviews for years and years and expect good returns)

also this idea of writing on recs that are old doesn't make sense for a mainstream publication (online could be diff). it makes sense to get the review out the week it come out.

as I said you need the writers to make it work.

it will come down to this a lot of the time.

Let writer's talk about other writer's ideas in print. Let them play fun and dance with, be tender and hard to, grim, soft, cute, cuddly , cold at the ideas.

Ok cozen i see yr point but I'm still saying that most recs do not inspire interesting reviews bcz there aren't enough 'aspects' to them to make it so.

Frank Kogan, 'Get Back, JoJo', The Village Voice)

I think that's a crock of shit, Julio, but I won't say it. A lot of writers don't 'get' music X so that's why you employ write A to write about it. To see those aspects, you need a broad range of intellectual pedants clever writers who can see all the aspects that maybe you don't appreciate. I think every record ever made could have a book written about it.

It would be nice to see it but do most ppl want that (we are talking abt publications here)?

its abt finding the right writer to the right record. that could be diff in practical terms

''I think every record ever made could have a book written about it.''

there's a lot of thrash published already. lets not add to the pile.

sorry if i'm being a dick again.

One of the things I used to like abt my 'golden age' NME was the way that Fela Kuti rubbed up next to Kid Creole next to PIL next to Miles Davis next to... Q and Mojo have, to a (very) limited extent, taken on this polymorphous peversity, but within the EMAP, Hornbyesque discourse of 'let's not take things TOO seriously, eh boys?'. So, if I was appointed Ed of the NME tomorrow, I'd probably try and broaden the focus just a little beyond guitar indie rock/pop - cover every kind of new release and reissue - country, jazz, blues, hiphop, techno, reggae, etc. etc. - and bite on some of that Uncut action, only w/ better gags and a less reverential, if no less 'informed', attitude.

I also wonder if there's any kind of room for a London Review of Music, or whatever - a pro-pop gazette w/ 'think pieces', long reviews, highbrow personal ads, v. few 'interviews' or hype jobs. That cld be yr ILM-in-exile weekly.

Much as I know I would love to read something like this in print rather than just online, I think the potential audience who are both pro-pop and willing to read longer pieces would be so incredibly small that it could never fly. Then again, maybe the people who read things like LRBooks would become more interested in pop if they read something that offered a different and more considered perspective on it.

So, in other words, it wouldn't be Pitchfork anymore.

Oh FUCK YEAH!! I can't STAND that. It's NOT FUNNY!

Pitchfork is daily.

And I don't know what the 'Fork has in common with NME, aside from the fact that we both take ads. The criticisms people make of the 'Fork are very different from the criticisms of NME. And nobody can blame us for the Vines.

With the NME, I'd put album reviews first up. So you open the paper, and every week on page 3 is a FULL PAGE review of a particular album released that week. That's the news.

Smaller text size, fewer pictures. Much more serious writing. Longer features. Better puns. I'd make the subeditors work and work till their puns were astonishing, or they wouldn't go in.

Steven Wells could write the classified ads, but nothing else.

(I think Pitchfork is making a concerted effort to review more hip-hop, but I'm not sure I like the way their reviewers do things)

(the NME is hopeless, especially now that Swells is writing for the Guardian pretty much exclusively)

re: pfork - i think they're already making some small (and not-all-that-small) steps in the right direction: a singles review column, more people writing intelligently abt dance etc (okay, citing nabitsuh's "electro as pop" article here might seem like ilx nepotism but it *was* super and it did run in pfork)(on a related pt, certain movements themselves, electroclash fr'instance, are maybe making it easier to collapse the pop/indie, private/social listening schizm). their hiphop coverage is getting a little more.. present. as jess said elsewhere (tongue-in-cheekly, maybe a little unfairly but oh well i liked it), sam chennault is the schreiber-wipped ethan, but sometimes a little (compromised) padgett still goes a long way. and there was recent hiphop review that said suggested that dancing may actually be a pleasurable activity. i think pfork's failures are a lot more glaring (if not necc more numerous) than their successes, which is why ppl still bring up that misguided "rooty" review 2 years on.

this thing they still do that i don't like: when a pop record ("the blueprint" in this case) gets the pfork star of approval, it tends to become this terribly unique thing, a miracle accident artifact eg. a review of some very typically indie thing where the reviewer says something to the effect of "this is an album best listened to on a track-by-track basis, not as some grand overarching 60 minute masterwork, much like jay-z's "the blueprint", as if "the blueprint" was the only thing you should've been paying attention to in mainstreamworld, and it's alright sometimes if you digress from yr album-as-centre listening mode, but only for exceptional pop records, and, don't worry, pfork'll let you know when those come along.

someone said something about how NME should cover up and coming rap stars, instead of just chasing the Next Big Thing. from my tawdry experience there (1999-2001, the worst years of my professional career), they just don't have the ears or the foresight or the taste for hip-hop to achieve that. when ted kessler (he interviewed Jay-Z dontcha know - a few years after i did for another mag) was features ed, he'd routinely shoot down ideas for hip-hop artists who deserved features, only to have to double back on himself when said artists became big-time.

example #1: (and my favourite) having interviewed Mos Def when he came over with Company Flow in 1998, and having loved his early 12"s and Blackstar album, i suggested we cover him for his debut album. this was being released the same week as Pharoah Monch's solo LP, and i was offered a trip to NYC to cover the release party and get in-depth interviews with Mos and Pharoahe (and to cover the whole Rawkus thang, back then still something approaching vital) as long as i got a commission in a national mag. i was tempted to pitch the idea to the Times, who i was freelancing for and who paid me much more than NME, but feeling some misplaced loyalty and a desire to improve my career prospects at NME, i pitched the idea to Kessler, citing Mos Def's broad appeal and fine debut album. "Rawkuss Records is shit, Stevie, and Mos Def is a mummy's boy rapper," quoth Kessler, one of many monied/oxbridge-educated upper-middle class cunts at IPC, and who like their hip-hop to conform to violent racial stereotypes.
"okay," i retorted, "we should definitely cover Monch, though," citing his history and the fact that 'simon says' was obviously about to blow up into the biggest underground crossover hip-hop hit in years. "its a huge underground hit in New York," i added.
"i think you're lying to me, Stevie, and you don't know what you're talking about," quoth the slug who commissioned and wrote the Campag Velocet cover feature.
three months later, both features had run, only one written by my, and both snatched in the fleeting moments of each artist's UK press trips. that joint NYC feature woulda been awesome, too...

#2: Nelly. having got an early promo of Nelly's 'country grammar' and having followed the whole Hot Boys/Dirty South phenom, figured this was a pretty cool story and worth NME covering. called Kessler (i never learn), he said he'd not heard of Nelly, asked piers martin (dance editor then, sweet guy and clued in onna disco tip, but not much of a rap dude) what he thought; heard piers shout 'its shit', and then kessler said "Piers says its shit, sso lets not bother, eh?".
a week later, steve sutherland's 10/10 review of the Nelly album ran, and the feature was commissioned (again, without me writing it).

now i write for careless talk and kerrang! and mojo and write about what i want for editors who know their shit. NME is dead, just let it rot.

I think that the most honourable thing that an editor of the NME could do right now is shoot it in the head. I mean, come ON - the "No Cock Revolution"? FUCK OFF!!! Especially considering their examples of the best of "Clit-Rock" are Avril, Kelly Osbourne and Pink? Make me retch. If I never have to read another "Ooh, look a special on women in rock" issue again in my life, I'll be happy. WOMEN IN ROCK ARE NOT SPECIAL. WOMEN JUST *ARE* IN ROCK, STOP TREATING US LIKE WE ARE SOME NOVELTY THAT YOU'VE ONLY JUST DISCOVERED!!!

Oh, I just need to calm down and write this review, how can I do this with my brain all squirming around like this?

IF: you were editor of CTCL... heh, now that is a far more interesting question. That is something that I would be interested in. Despite the hatred and the betrayal that people are registering about the magazine, the passion with which they do so shows that there is something worth saving.

Pitchfork: Kill myself.

NME: Get rid of those fucking ring-tone things, fire everybody.

CTCL: Stop reporting shitty new-garage rock, stop dissing Godspeed You! Black Emperor, repent for my love of Nirvana by becoming a monk.

(Oh, that's it, I'm so sacked.)

the wire has a few good writers tho'. and its the only mag that covers some of the music i like and it does have a wider range than most mags currently available. things could be a lot better.

Four things that stand out:

1) The assumption that rap made by black people doesn't exist outside of the album reviews section (hey! why not have another Yeah Yeah Yeahs feature? No? Dirtbombs then. Yes!)
2) Everett True does all of the cover features, and most of the big album reviews - suggesting that if there is some noise that he just doesn't get, it'll be flung to the back pages, spat out in 100 words or totally ignored. (Sidepoint, for all its pro-femme, pro-regional rhetoric, why are AMERICAN MEN almost always on the cover?)
3) The whole outsider music trope. LAME. Poor thinking, poorly expressed. Please try harder, and accept that music is also a communal experience.
4) John Robb. The most inarticulate, palsied, thoughtless voice in living memory.

If I had just taken up the job, I would have try and convince the IPC budget holder that this is a dead end - the internet has unlimited space and a million monkeys typing at a million typewriters, and If what you are after is simply news, release dates, cursory q&as then you are going to find it a much better source of information. If you really wanted to strengthen the NME brand you have to make it stand for something more than this - which means playing to the strengths of a printed magazine: you have a proper budget so you can afford to hire more skilful and imaginative writers, and you have readers who are prepared to read at length, so you can run more interesting types of story. A lot of people think that the problem with the NME is that it frivolously invents scenes - I think this is its strength!, or at least its unique selling point, and it should do more of this - not less So this means hiring the sort of people who are imaginative enough to do this, and giving them the proper space in which to fantasize.

I see these as example of print media reacting to the internet in the same way painting did to photography: using it as a way of finding new problems, more interesting things to do than just portray information. Most people who read the NME also have access to the nme.com anyway, so why repeat the pure information they can find there: why not do something complementary?

I think the first issue was remarkably wide-ranging: from Missy to Laura Cantrell to Eminem. The second issue is a bit more conservative yes. Although the writers are the usual suspects - and what do you expect when it was founded by Hepworth and Ellen - you sense some of them are relishing the opportunity to write at greater length about more idiosyncratic things: Pete Paph on the Folk Awards for example was really good. I also like that they don't seem to be tied to promo schedules: they'll interview Costello - really interestingly, and I don't even care for him that much - even when he's not flogging a new greatest hits cd.

Re: the range of things - as I said above, I think we should forget the print magazine as consumer guide, an invent the print magazine as private enthusiasm - covering less in greater detail.

1) Don't simply cover an artist because they have a new record out. Look for good stories, look for good angles, not for the latest hype down the pipe (I hate using the h**e word cause it's almost meaningless at this point, but still...). Focusing on Tha New over everything else causes too many features about, say, dull modern-rock band, dull rapper, dull country singer, dull pop star who have nothing to say (hence all cliches or pieces that just say nothing) and are generally written by people with little investment or insight into the actual piece. There have to be ways to make features interesting again, but I'm having my doubts. Maybe have one person who likes the artist interview them and have someone who hates them write the piece? Straight Q&As can have their moments, but by and large it's just the writer showing off with wordy questions or by transcribing the thing to make themselves look smarter or make it feel as if there was more of a vibe in the room than there really was (I'm guilty of this). But maybe the biggest fault of features is the nature that they have devolved into: Fluff, promo pieces where the artist gets to say whatever he/she/they want without any critical questioning by the writer in the piece itself. I love to see a writer contradict what the piece's subject has just said; to see the writer's voice come pouring out suddenly and unexpectedly (the ARE Weapons piece in the latest Fader does this -- after an appropriately glowing piece in the last graf the writer states that despite all of this they still suck live, they have many faults and they have bad songs but it doesn't really matter. And the writer is completely right and it immediately gives the piece much more credence).

2) Ira Robbins and I have had many long talks about what a new magazine would need, and the No. 1 thing he would want to do is establish close relationships with his writers and his readers. To do this, he wanted to hire five or six record reviewers and give them each a page or two of the mag each month, allowing them to write about whatever they wanted, but stressing that he would like to see them write about things they like, don't like and should be written about. By having the same people each month, the hope is that readers will have an emotional investment in the writers, and thus care more about their opinions and eventually creating some sort of give and take between the two. I think this is a great idea, provided of course that the writers ARE interesting and do have something to say, which is the hard part. Still, finding five people on ILX alone who could do this would not be hard at all...

Interesting second point because this is exactly what I am attempting to do with my site. Attempting being the most important point in that sentence because, thus far, it seems like the writers that are emerging as the best regular writers for the site simply don't write enough.

Thus with the amount of reviews that we print each week we get what I, and I'm guessing most people think, is a sever watering down of the product. In any case, I'm trying. And I totally agree that it's a key portion of a good magazine.

It's no wonder no-one buys the rag anymore.

I'd still shameless court sales though. At least one lengthy feature (ie at least four of five pages) with someone massive, who should go on the cover.

*lip trembles* Shoegazing bands that are shitty? Do not make me cry. *cries anyway*

Although if you're referring to some sort of post-Coldplay nonsense, yes please, kill them all.

WEEK 1:

Issue proceeds as normal. Cover stars are The Libertines. Main Album Review... The Strokes, or something.

Swygart lets this pass as he spends the first half of the week wanking to orgasm at the joy of having a source of income that isn't his parents, and the second half creating a really big shiny badge that says "I EDIT THE NME. HA! HA! HA!"

WEEK 2:

Swygart recoils in horror at WEEK 1's issue. Wallops Mark Beaumont over the head with a metal 30 cm ruler. As penance for the rubbishness of WEEK 1, Swygart decides to convert entire issue into gigantic fold-out poster of Libertines, Strokes, Vines etc. gazing in wonderment as the sun shines out of The Delgados' arses. The other side consists of classifieds, crossword and a join-the-dots picture of ABC.

WEEK 3:

As WEEK 2, except with The Delgados replaced by ballboy. Join-The-Dots this week is 2Unlimited, as Swygart gets freakishly nostalgic for when he was nine years old.

WEEK 4:

By popular demand, Swygart reverts to the boring old 'magazine' format. He replaces the entire live section with a picture of what Craig Nicholls would look like after getting done by a combine harvester, and the entire news section is filled by him ranting about how he wishes people would FUCKING SHUT UP about how good a drummer Dave Grohl is.

WEEK 5:

Swygart goes on Liquid News and is subtly removed 15 minutes in after cussing Mis-Teeq for having weird noses then repeatedly lobbing aniseed balls at Colin Paterson.

The day after, Swygart is taken out and battered to pieces for saying that the Datsuns have crap hair, and is never let back into IPC towers again.

Instead, he becomes a minor albums reviewer for the Daily Telegraph, i.e. he gets to do 50-word pieces on Cat Power in exchange for handjobbing Neil McCormick on demand. Swygart still believes this is better than getting a real job, because he will never learn...

THE END.

If not, how are we going to know when all these ideas start mysteriously showing up there?

NME desperately needs a designer, too. The layout and overall look is desperately shoddy.

the nipper is otm once again.

I am touched to read that he likes the IoS's new supplement (as I am by their own editorial: 'we hope you like it - please tell us'). LRM is one notion; but the LRB itself could cover pop a deal better than it does.

The one thing people always say re. this sort of question is, roughly: "improve / extend / intensify coverage of genres like hip-hop / rap / dance, beyond their present mediocre treatment by these sad white boys".

I disagree with those people.

NME Cover - Wednesday, June 11th, 2003

Michael Mayer, Luomo, Kompakt: Shufflewha?? Microwhere?¹

Neuromanticism: The Anxiety of Influence²

Dead White Males: Will Oldham, (smog), Malkmus³

Good/Bad/Good/Bad Taste: A Politics of Taste⁴

Alasdair Roberts: A Weekender's Idea of Britain?⁵

The Blogosphere: Discussion's Swarming⁶

The Stro... urgh: The Geneaology of an Embarrassment⁷

¹ A futurespective!

² (Why did New Pop 'fail'?) (How did New Pop 'fail'?) Was New Pop absorbed, a recessive gene?

³ We Have 96 Theses to PIN TO YOUR DOOR! (Sascha Frere-Jones adapting his White Noise Supremacists argument).

⁴ oh, dear, oh dear oh dear.

⁵ "Welcome to the desert of the real": AVANT FOLK vs UK GARAGE; a FULL STOP vs a LINE?

⁶ or Why the NME is all but redundant as a NEWS source (the internet: 100 Monkeys, 100 Typewriters) and has to adapt to TALKING about IDEAS and STUFF, taking the Blogguratt as the exemplar.

⁷ How / why we built an EMPIRE.

Me? I would put the Strokes/Oasis/Radiohead on the cover.

More Big Brother!

: - D

'With PJ Harvey soundtracking ads for T-Mobile and even '60s revolutionary rockers MC5 playing for Levi's, has adland finally seduced your alternative favourites? Check out this week's NME, Issue May 17, for our feature on the artists and the ads behind them. In the meantime let us know what you think about it. Selling out or putting food in the mouths of bairns? C'mon - let it out!'

No, NME, why don't you let it out and tell me what you think of this phenomenon you so amply illustrate in your own pages? I'd really like your feedback on this for my market research. In fact, I'd like you to make some kind of statement like 'Marketing is the last pornographic frontier of the bourgeoisie'. But you won't, because the advertisers might not like it.

How much indie- and post-rock coverage does The Source or Jockey Slut provide? NME pitches itself as a generalist (I'd call it the U.K. Spin/Rolling Stone but I'm not sure who would be more insulted) and therefore should pay a certain amount of attention and respect to all the pop genres out there.

As for Pitchfork, what's the problem with regarding it simply as cocooned indie boys writing for other cocooned indie boys?

As for Pitchfork, what's the problem with regarding it simply as cocooned indie boys writing for other cocooned indie boys?

-- j.lu (j.lu), Tuesday, 3 June 2003 16:32 (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

nothing, IF they'd stick to indie and leave us and the rest of our technicolor world outside alone

-- jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 3 June 2003 16:38 (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

dude got borged

Yeah, I agree - Pitchfork should just stick to the indie ... whenever they do talk about electronic music or hip-hop, they speak about it as if everything's like the lame indie scenester world.

TB-303 retro + skinny cropped jeans and fixed gear cruisers = DESTROY

ASSIMILATE

Sacred cows are getting slaughtered.
We're having beef tonight.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/The_Simpsons_5F10.png

"they drove a dump truck full of money up to my house! i'm not made of stone!"

also dom, it's kind of late in the game to be zinging me about writing for pfork now when it's been 2+ years and 100,000+ words.

I don't want to always be Frozen Caveman Lawyer whenever old threads are revived, but TWO YEARS?

i'm not even sure what the hell i've been doing for those two years

Get in line.

why you frontin harvell

17,531.6255 hours

logged 5,840 hours sleeping
logged 4,380 hours drinking
logged 2,920 hours masturbating
logged 2,391 hours playing cell phone tetris
logged 760 hours waiting for bus
logged 240 hours eating
logged 134 hours fantasizing about murdering my enemies

hours spent on ilx: uncalculatable

logged 2,920 hours masturbating
logged 2,391 hours playing cell phone tetris

PRIORITIZE

he did those simultaneously

How much overlap is there between time on ILX, time spent on murder fantasies and time spent masturbating?

(Not all three at once, I'm not sure anyone's out there wanking while imagining hacking apart Lord Custos with an axe).

don't be too sure.

Not an axe, no.

Now I wish I'd picked a poster who hasn't been AWOL for over two years...

custos lives within us all

He's not in my ass.

I'd commission OP to review MBV's loomer.

is wp all over this because it says pf, or because the thread mentions u2?