How Would You Make NME a Better Magazine?

allan- its a serious q but ppl here have read it and prob don't need it anymore.

Could we answer a question like "How would you make NME betetr at what it does?" or "How would you make NME a better music teething magazine?" or "How would you make NME a better populist mag?"

Perhaps they're best sticking to their perceived audience though, they seem to be failing even them at the moment.

Close it already. Or at least keep it in the UK.

'Longer pieces and a wider scope' is of course a good idea - especially a wider scope, which lord knows it needs - but is that actually possible given constraints of space? It's all very well to say, but I'd have to see it in practice before I put any faith in it.

I can't just say 'kill it' - what purpose is that supposed to serve? There's got to be a place for it: it has a function, I can remember being twelve and not having a fucking clue about anything to do with music, just knowing that there were bands I liked and, oh yeah, there was this paper that could tell me stuff about records I might want to buy and records I wouldn't and I could find critics whose opinions I could trust and critics I knew to ignore and some fantastic writing, too. But, for crying out loud, I virtually am the NME's target market and I've started giving up on it - and there's still stuff I want to know, there are still bands I want to hear about even within its current limited remit, but the NME's not helping anymore.

But I don't know how to make it 'better', and I only wish I did, and even if I had some clue there's no way I could do anything about it (I'm still pretty useless at writing about music, for one): so all I cn do is lose my subscription, and wait for the new version, and hope.

-- Dom Passantino

Really, I'm going to start keeping a prepared speech on my desk top for this sort of shit. But this evening I am tired and hungry and I feel like I've done the same rant too many times and I really cannot be bothered and want to go and make some food instead.

NME needs to increase word rates so writers have a chance to bat ideas around, develop their own stylistic ideas, to learn how to talk outside of soundbites. By the looks of it, NME currently takes on a mix of school-leavers and ex-students. This is the way it should be... but within its own slim boundaries, it doesn't currently allow new writers a lot of chance to further refine their writing. Instead, it sends them on press trips with The Thrills. No-one ever learnt anything from a press trip with The Thrills.

NME need to expand the list of genres covered, even if it seems to make no real commercial sense. In the last six months, the dance singles appear to have been excised entirely from the paper, chiefly because the singles editor is an unreconstructed indie-rocker. In fact, now NME is all rock'n'roll. This, I reckon, just makes the paper feel flat, and it pretty much guarantees that it'll totally miss the next wave of anything that's just around the corner. Unless, of course, it's a genre NME has invented itself.

Just address Marcello's repsonse, though: with all due respect, Marcello, you don't need NME anymore. If the modern NME contained the sort of writing that challenged you, it would probably be near-enough incomprehensible to a sixteen-year old picking it up for the first time because Avril's n the cover. It's crucial that NME is accessible. It needs to be able to act (in the least didactic way) as an teacher, as a kind of stepping stone - whether it be to Careless Talk Costs Lives, The Wire, ILM, or The Church Of Me. Because otherwise it's a dead end. And no-one ever sold any papers by offering a dead end.

Like, wtf? Do they have no idea of their target audience, or anything? Or is this the token effort to get old people to read it?

Or is it because the classified ads make all the money and by getting more people to pay more attention to them, more adverts get placed and Marc Beaumont gets more $$$ to pile up in the corner?

NME is suffering because the middle ground it used to occupy isn't really required any more. You want a glossy rock mag with pix and laffs - you have Kerrang! You want a bigger rock mag with more "in depth" writing (even if the "depth" is entirely superficial) - you have Uncut and Mojo. You want profundamenta philosophia (even if it's as "profound" as the categorising system in Smallfish) - there's the Wire. You want good ole lengthy think pieces Like There Used To Be In NME/MM - there are blogs aplenty (though CoM is only a "stepping stone" for me to get from an old life to a new one, and hopefully immortalising/recording the life of someone who never got the chance to do it herself. I think CoM would have happened anyway, but if Laura were still here it would have been a joint blog, and obv the polar opposite of what it actually is now). So the NME doesn't really have any options open except to try to redefine that "middle ground" which is going to mean the ditching of an awful lot of assumptions and the nerve to go out and find a new audience rather than forlornly trying to hang on to a dwindling old one.

Question answered, I think.

Aaargh, this wasn't what I meant AT ALL, although I was afraid it could be read that way. On the contrary, I think NME had traditionally been picked up by pretty bright kids, and I don't think this has changed. *This* is precisely why the paper is failing them: because it doesn't treat them with the respect they deserve. When I first picked up NME or Melody Maker in '93 because Nirvana (or whatever) were on the cover, I'd barely listened to any music before, and I found the paper a largely strange and confusing thing - because of the breadth of music that it covered, and the style of writing that it contained. But it's just a learning curve. Ask a random 16 year old to pick up a copy of The Wire today and they'll probably get nothing from it. NOT because they're stupid. Because they have no frame of reference to the music it contains. It all comes back to the whole question of entry points, and this is all old and familiar ground.

"So the NME doesn't really have any options open except to try to redefine that "middle ground" which is going to mean the ditching of an awful lot of assumptions and the nerve to go out and find a new audience rather than forlornly trying to hang on to a dwindling old one."

Marcello, here I totally, wholeheartedly agree. That's why I believe the paper should employ young journalists rather than old hacks. However, it should also give them the free reign to exist outside NME's rather didactic on-message style. Time for a new Burchill/Parsons, perhaps? (Although I shiver at the thought)

Incidentally, Ben Dot, you've pretty much just described Careless Talk Costs Lives (apart from the bit about Mark Beaumont on a bonfire). They even had Mr Agreeable on board for a bit. Why not go buy that?

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."

Mind you, a Spizzazz mass takeover of NME (like Monitor took over MM in the mid-'80s) would be an awesome thing indeed.

I think it has definitely changed (though to be honest I don't think it was ever the case anyway, but let's run with this). NME is now picked up by student clichés and wannabe student clichés, i.e. a spectacularly sheeplike demographic. They have to be - most people with a lick of sense can see through the NME's weekly BEST BAND EVAH orgasms over, er, Kings Of sodding Leon and their ilk.

I think a new Julie Burchill is exactly what it needs. The old Julie B is still a better music writer than the entire staff of the NME put together, and with better taste to boot.

So today the market dictates that the NME has to stand for 'something' that's clearly defined and distinct from the rest. Large areas of territory are already claimed in demographically and musically. Other areas are probably deemed not commercially viable -I mean I would love thinkpieces that opened up new ways of listening to and thinking about music. It's about time the tired old canon/received history of popular music was ripped asunder. Sadly it would sell bugger all copies. So the 'entry-point' for 16-18 yr olds is probably a good target to shoot for. I think the new editor might have a chance to pull it off, but they need to rethink all assumptions about the title. First does 'The NME' mean anything to its target audience? Do they really want to have yet more bands foisted on them as 'the next big thing descended from the VU/Television' (yawn). And so on. I'll stop now.

They probably could, except with Jet in place of Girls Aloud.

As for ripping up the canon - well, as Dr C well knows, the "blogosphere" is where all that is happening now, though sadly most of it's being written by old geezers like ourselves.

I gather that the Morley book hasn't exactly been breaking sales figures - and I don't expect the CoM book to do much better - so we're talking about possibly the minutest of demographics, unless your writing can be refocused out into the world, or tell a story via which the reader can enter into your world.

The Lex, I desperately dislike this kind of thinking, simply because it seems only a whisker away from how Conor McNicholas himself thinks. ie, 'we think you're sheep, so we'll treat you like sheep'. The only difference being that you're an idealist that doesn't run a magazine (as far as I know), and he's a pragmatist that does.

Surely the 'blogosphere' is in its essence more reflective of underground fanzine culture? In that there are great, intelligent people writing great intelligent things but you do run the risk of ploughing through complete amateurish drivel while immersed in the culture. Which is of course all part and parcel of the whole, um, experience... but it's the polar opposite to a *product* which makes comparisons to NME a little redundant I think.

Syeven Wells is right as usual ;)

x-post.

i want a music magazine that reads like an evil version of the celebrity 'heat'! as richard ford put it in independance day 'something for people to burn a few brain cells before going off to work...'

What the mags are doing though is catering for an obsessive fan while being open and inviting to the newcomer - I don't know if there's a music equivalent (esp. as music mags tend to get compared only to other music mags)

Writing online is so much easier really, you publish your own articles, you assign work to yourself, you link to your friends sites, end of story. Writing for magazines is anything but. In some ways I accept the calls that NME needs a Burchill or something, mainly cos everyone gets shoe-horned into magazines and only someone with a giant reputation can break through that.

It's sad though that there is no room for a mix of that angry style and decent writing.

In some sense you can blame McNicholas or whoever for being a part of the homogenous music press, for it being his job essentially. But it's not really fair.

People here hate magazines, as Julio pointed out rightly, but love music. And people who edit magazines have to learn not to have strong opinions about things. It's a sad reality.

The worst part of it all and certainly the source of my (possibly our) crankiness on the subject is that I think if you want to be a success in print media it's ten times more important to be a good organiser than a good writer. What I'm saying is any sub-editors I've dealt with might as well be filling in colouring books, they're so keen to fill the mag that it doesn't matter to them what they use alot of the time. And that's the system pretty much.

Basically it's annoying because if you feel you can write and know you are a good writer, you are held back by your own laziness but also by that of the mags you want to write for.

Change comes very slowly when people working to fill magazines only want to deal with their existing writers.

So overall I think people here hate the system a bit more than mcnicholas or whoever.

And of COURSE you all hate the system more than Conor. The fella's a graduate of the dance press... *his* favourite bands are not Television and the VU. But there he is at the helm anyhoo...

Why do you say that? I am not saying it isn't true, I just wonder why you think it?

I'm surprised that you say that Lex.

If my 15 year old, metal-loving, trendy-hating self had said it I could have understood.

Exactly, people new to music and magazines need a thread they can pick up on. Being weekly and widely available the NME has been that thread for many, many people.

I expect that whatever happens NME will remain centered on teen-twentysomething music, but I'd like to see ocasional articles, features and even covers based on 'younger' and 'older' music.

Even if NME genuinely think that Gareth Gates, say, is rubbish they shouldn't just slag him off. They should have
him on the cover and inside have an article explaining why he's not so ggod andf who is like him but better, have a cover CD of people better than him too.

Similarly they should have occasional pieces on less immediate music, like the romantic movement in classical music which those people into GodpeedYBE, Mercury Rev or some of the progressive instrumental IDM acts might like.

"So the NME doesn't really have any options open except to try to redefine that "middle ground" which is going to mean the ditching of an awful lot of assumptions and the nerve to go out and find a new audience rather than forlornly trying to hang on to a dwindling old one."

Marcello, here I totally, wholeheartedly agree. That's why I believe the paper should employ young journalists rather than old hacks. However, it should also give them the free reign to exist outside NME's rather didactic on-message style. Time for a new Burchill/Parsons, perhaps? (Although I shiver at the thought)

I think us on here, music journalists, people who write in to the letters pages and even musicians overestimate the appeal of great writing to the music and mag buying publice at large. Of course WE are interested, we're self selected by being here. But it's my honest opinion that most people whose interest goes as far as buying NME and not much farther, aren't that bothered.

Giving creative people free(ish) reign is a good idea though, as they'll some up with the most interesting stories, pics, ideas, directions etc.

But magazines like that are in thrall to the advertisers right? Yes, but NME needn't be.
NME is (still) a very strong brand with some excellent back up and unmatched contacts in British music.

They should concentrate (at first at least) on NON-Musical advertisers.
Go for the sports shoe giants, burger chains, sunglass types, mountain bike stuff, skate board stuff, mobile phones, chocolate bars, youth travel etc etc etc.^*
All the stuff that their readers are interested in but NOT music. That way there will be no conflict of interest.
If they want to say "Coldplay sucks the big one" while munching on their free creme filled mars bar then fine.

With more journalistic integrity and freedom people wil come to trust the mag more and what's more it will be a better magazine.

The management can do this gradually to reduce their reliance on ppl they might want to slag off. Then at some point go free.

When they have a good looking, well written magazine that they can afford to give away for free - even if half of it is adverts - the circulation will soar and it will get even more cultural prominence. Half the young population of the UK might read it one way or another.
NME will then OWN the advertisers.

(* for any NME journalist who might be reading I just want to point out that this means that instead of getting sent yet more annoying free CDs you'll get 'bribed' with exotic foreign holidays, trendy daps and HUGE boxes of chocolate. You know it makes sense.)

(PPS I picked up a free mag when I was in Berlin that has some elements of what I'm suggesting, it might be the best general music mag in the world, but it's in German, ACH!)

(PPS - Mencap: 'glissando'? At least one person is paying attention)

i wouldnt make nme a better magazine, i'd leave it as it is, it does what it says on the tin. if i was going to do anything i would make its focus narrower not wider, magazines are about identity not content.

my dream magazine would have a thirty-second time out memory; whereas if it happened already than it does not exsist! no references and no comparisons and no old bands..

i did an alfie review last night! that's indie! a prog-indie revolution!

and how are the bands in the nme not indie? whether you like the bands or not is surely irrelevant to the point of whether they are indie or not? i mean, unless you want to like/dislike all of indie? if nme is not an indie magazine, well, what is it then?

*childish speech impediment-based ggiggle*

nah. i suppose true indie is like dunno - unpopular guitar combos.

(I think this is what Gareth is getting at and it will sidestep the general semantic bullshit)

the hives are garage-pop! stereolab are electro-pop! radiohead are prog-pop! the lucksmiths are just indie rubbish!

if i buy a golf magazine i want golf
if i buy an jungle magazine i want jungle
if i buy an indie magazine i want indie

i would be annoyed if i bought a magazine on country to find out more about country and it was full of montgolfier brothers, jeff mills and 50cent. i want a country mag to cover country.

NME is a corporate magazine, with content skewed toward what many people would call 'indie' music.

Now CAN WE GET BACK ON TOP ALREADY?!?!?!?

(x-post with Matt DC. Most people probably read NME for a few years tops, I think NME could _make_ itself non-partisan enough so that Hip-Hop, Pop etc. fans would buy it, though it surely isn't like that now.
For all the things said against it, Q does have a wide variety of covers so it can be done)

THANKS FOR THAT. I like Racebannon, can you crowbar them into your cosy genre hypenation?

I don't understand gareth's position on this sort of thing though, people care because lots of people here are writers, and NME is not a cut and dried indie mag, nothing is that cut and dried. It's fair enough if you don't care about the ideas that go in print in various places, but it's no mystery why other people do.

Also calling things "just an indie mag" is silly because no magazine is that unpretentious with its remit, ever, for as long as I can remember, and I never expect one to be either. All magazines attempt to convince the reader that they are at the cutting edge, of everything.

...well fair enough, but surely the point all (OK most) of us are inching towards is that this needn't be so?

ehehehehehehe...

(x-post)

In fact you yourself regularly would say, for example, "I don't consider the chemical brothers dance music".

The only difference with this is that because you yourself think they arent dance music it excludes you from being a country fan saying lefty frizzell is not country. But really it's the same thing!

In fact the more I think about it the more it seems that fights over what deserves to be called pop/dance/hiphop/country/metal are surely one of the most recurring themes around, and also a good thing. Genres are important.

Racebannon are scream-core pop!

(PS. I love Racebannon have you seen them live? Phroawr. Cool guys as well.)

Or maybe the NME should just do what it has been doing for the past ten years but, like, y'know... BETTER?

(x-post [I'm off for 20-minutes now, I phear this thread's behemothness on my return.])

"(PS. I love Racebannon have you seen them live? Phroawr. Cool guys as well.)"

No but if they make it over here I might have to buy a show promoter's hat...

"Or maybe the NME should just do what it has been doing for the past ten years but, like, y'know... BETTER?"

It's not now doing what it was doing ten years ago though. Not as I see it anyway.

the nme is perfect, there is nothing wrong with it. it is as it should be (mainly indie, with occasional disparaging or fetishizing forays out of its area).

What's that?

agreed bob james i feel the love coming off of this thread!

What's that? Setting the agenda?

(If you'd just said txt speak I'd have been okay)

Indie fans don't go on about making the Source better because the Source is not one of the biggest selling music mag around, furthermore that's irrelevent because most people here aren't "fans" of a particular genre, and noone here would have any hesitancy in criticising the Source or any other magazine.

That's what I'm trying to get across, people get annoyed because in general people here care as much about music writing and music media as they do about music. I don't know if you fit that bracket but surely you must have noticed that this isn't solely a musical thing.

I'm not sure where Racebannon come into this.

i dont read magazines ronan

but i like it when you can say a vast array of specialist magazines at a newstand. eclectism would kill this, because then they would all be the same magazine. whether the magazines are good doesnt matter, because all together, they will cover what is required

they probably are just going to yell at you all until your brain hurts...

(their cover of 'Electricity' is fantastic)

Eminem/Dre/50 Cent
Destiny's Child
Jay-Z
OutKast
Missy Elliott
Aaliyah
Avril Lavigne
The Streets

...on the cover. They've also done not a bad job of turning The White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Polyphonic Spree and Interpol (not your typical corporate indie bands) into a mainstream proposition. This week's issue has interviews with Bruce Dickinson and Peaches.

Have any of you, you know, actually read the magazine?

No, what's it to ya?

Martin, that is the key and urgent error that ilx often makes - criticising without hearing the music and reading the words!

ilx doesnt make errors doomie. there is no such thing as an error. only opinion.

I don't hate magazines, Mei, in fact I've rooted on these boards for Vice, which you commendably commend, in the face of huge opposition. Now I write for 'em. (In fact, I submitted a photo for their photo issue which the editor rejected because 'the advertisers might not like it', so you're right when you say 'magazines like that are in thrall to the advertisers right?')

I think magazines both create and reflect a mindset in their readers, and it's the 'create' part of that equation which interests me. But I think magazines only become 'opinion forming' rather than 'opinion-led' when they're doing well. And that happens when the economy is doing well, which in turn happens for wider economic and demographic reasons. Like 'the baby boom', which is over.

Vice is an American magazine with a British edition. Actually, it was born in Montreal, in the dot com boom, and moved to decadent ole Brooklyn, and reflects to some degree the adventurousness and experimentalism of both of those environments. I see no equivalent sensibility in the UK at the moment, alas.

(PPS I picked up a free mag when I was in Berlin that has some elements of what I'm suggesting, it might be the best general music mag in the world, but it's in German, ACH!)

What was it called?

So the answer to the question 'How would you make the NME a better magazine?' is 'Make babies, a lot of babies, and in 20 years the NME will be back on form'.

"What was it called?"

I can't remember the name off the top of my head (I was in Berlin with Mei) but IIRC, a pretty hefty portion of it was given over to promoting this free rock festival that was going on in Berlin about the same time. (It looked great actually... it had Mogwai and Bright Eyes and some good Kitty-Yo bands, but it was the week after we were there, bugger...) I strongly suspect that mag was very heavily reliant on advertisers, but was lucky enough to work with companies that were vaguely sympathetic to the editorial desires of the people who put the mag together. Like, for the most part, Vice...

Tell us about the pic Vice rejected, Nick... I'm intrigued for some reason...

Whats The Worst Music Magazine In The World? (129 new answers)

I'm happy to work for them. But I'm even more happy that Kid'sWear magazine approached me the other day to do a piece for them. Writing for both these playful magazines (about clothes, the homeless, and 'being wrong') is a delight. Writing for the NME about music... I really can't think of anything I'd rather less do.

Tell us about the pic Vice rejected, Nick... I'm intrigued for some reason...

It involved nudity. I think they rejected it because Terry Richardson has that particular area nailed down. (Ouch!)

Best reaction to Vice: when you find a copy, practice detournement.

x-post.

Haha you should see the new photo issue then...

"i just can't see how vice is even vaguely defensible, i'm sorry"

Good photography, as we've been saying. And Eugene from Oxbow writes for it sometimes. I have a fair amount of time for it despite everything - it's like your tryhard friend who poses for pics, possibly in Berlin, doing Nazi salutes, and starts arguments with random people he's in no way equipped to win, but somehow he manages to redeem himself, partly through his own unfettered ridiculousness.

However if *another* mag came along and tried to rip off Vice it would make me want to chew my own skull off.

Are you talking about me, Harmony Korine, or Keith Moon?

I don't hate magazines, Mei,

Just to be clear, I didn't say that first paragraph, it's obvious to me that people here don't hate magazines. I know many of them write for them! (Yes, I know those two things aren't mutually exclusive).

The music mag I picked up in Berlin is called "Intro". Website www.intro.de which I've just noticed, I might babelfish some of that...

There's a lot of text which I assume means it's interesting text and not noticeably more/worse adverts than in most pay for mags.
Do you know it Momus? What's the writing like?
(And who is Sophie Rimheden? She's way cute)

I did think the picture in Vice of the guy running down the beach with a hard-on and a topless woman was you Momus, but it isn't is it?

Vice is great, some of the best album reviews anywhere and I might even pat say, a quid for it, if I had to. I know a few people who've been collecting them since they came out.

What? Did someone get photos?

Anyway, he explained that he was only demonstrating a 'Hitler wank'.

Possibly. They would have to get Swells back in though*

*NB I think this would be a good thing which almost certainly puts me in a minority of one...

...plädiert für einen rigorosen Antikonformismus

'...argued for a rigorous anti-conformity'

One sentence, or even just a whiff of that sentiment. Instead of its opposite.

It's not as if 19 year olds wouldn't like Adorno, given a little tip in his direction. 19 was when I was most avidly reading Adorno, and you could ocassionally read his name in the 1980 NME, which was friendly to the idea of 'rigorous anti-conformity'.

Other countries are still able to talk intelligently to their teens. Why can't Britain? Why must we fling this filth at our pop kids?

...plädiert für einen rigorosen Antikonformismus, you cocksucking faggot assholes

This is the only thing on the thread that has provoked any sort of reaction in me.

'The information contained in this message has been checked for rigourous conformity. All definitions of 'indie' are final and binding. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the message and deleting it from your computer. Thank you. IPC Ignite Media.'

kings of leon = kyddy skynyrd?

I was going to buy the newest nme coz it had muse on thee cover, but i spent my meagre remaining pennies on julian cope's double-backer autobiography, which was being chopped out remainder-style at two quid. sorry, ipc person.

If my 15 year old, metal-loving, trendy-hating self had said it I could have understood.

But I hate metal and love trendies Mei! Most students are spectacularly thick, especially the ones who self-define as indie kids - DIE DIE DIE. They are why The Coral are popular.

Really, when I was about 15 I would have said something like that, except I'd have said 'trendies' instead of 'students'. I think 'townies' is the modern equivalent of 'trendies' BTW.

I reckon a lot of the people who buy it may well be 'student cliches' but really all they want is a big brother/sister to tell them how to be cool and fit in. It's what most people want at that age.

Surely there's no such thing as a wannabie student cliche? No one _wants_ to be a cliche and no one needs to only _want_ to be a student. Anyone can go to university now - that's what Nursery Caring, English Literature and suchlike degrees are for.

(Apologies to any Nursery Caring graduates!!!;-)

at our age? Students? Most people I know grew out of that about ten minutes after they left school. If this is true I hate them even more.

I think we both hate The Coral more than I hate metal.

I have no idea what i meant by 'wannabe student clichés' other than maybe Coral fans who aren't students. Any negative epithets used by me in this thread replace with 'Coral fans' or 'Athlete fans'.

Employ everyone involved with Muzik.

You'd pay thousands for this sort of MBA quality analysis in real life, you know. Consider it a gift.

That is the key and urgent error that ilx often makes - criticising without hearing the music and reading the words!

Yes, I have bought the NME every week for over ten years. I've always found it infuriating, but looking through a box of old copies at my friend's house, I grew all misty-eyed for the day when it's production values exceeded those of the back of a cereal packet.

"The classified ads have been given a new lease of life as a semi-editorial section, telling the stories behind interesting adverts such as the £2,000 Gibson guitar that has only ever been played in wedding bands and so is in mint condition."

This could possibly be good. I enjoy the way the Observer magazine does this.

Incidentally, Ben Dot, you've pretty much just described Careless Talk Costs Lives (apart from the bit about Mark Beaumont on a bonfire). They even had Mr Agreeable on board for a bit. Why not go buy that?

I have bought and enjoyed every issue of CTCL, but bi-monthly is too long a wait. It would be nice to read something with those production values, but more populist and weekly. Is that too much to ask?

ts:
"lumidee takes us shopping" vs
"she cant sing how transgressive!/ oh yes can everyone note i agree with my esteemed crit colleague that she brings to mind the young marble giants, didnt see that one did you"

I think you meant 'whereupon', young Sonny.

*hat slips down over eyes*

Anyway, stop beating on Momus, snot fair cause he can't resort to playground taunting like the rest of us.

Vice - being free - can virtually print anything it likes. NME - having to break even - has to be mainstream enough to sustain 70,000 buyers a week (though that's up to 500,000 readers a week, they reckon).

When you're dealing predominantly with new music, that's no easy task. People generally prefer to read about artists they're familiar with than ones who've had just one single out. NME does a very careful job of building stories around bands, helping them to get to the the level where they're big enough to figure in its version of the star system.

You may not lke this, but compare the attitutde with practically all other music magazines, who don't bother with artists when they're on their first singles, only featuring them if they become big.

Vice too has to break even, it just does it a different way.

The other stuff you said is pretty reasonable.

MOMUS IN 'JUST SAY NO' TERROR TO YOUNG HORNSEY TEENS!!!

nah, i'm content with the nme. ctcl preaches to the converted too much and it feels really cool, like a victory, if i'm able to get a band i'm really into - ink.

Is this supposed to say 'Hornby'?

I used to live in Hornsey - what's wrong with the young people there i'd like to know (bangs table with fist).

Do me a favour, go to the top of the page and read the fourth message posted - that's all you need to know.

Is this supposed to say 'Hornby'?

bhaahahaha...!!!

MOMUS AND DAVID BLAINE TOWERING TERROR!

IS MOMUS A MADMAN? DEATH DEFYING PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE AS YOUNNG SCOTTISH POP SINGER PERFORMS NEW ALBUM ON TOP OF DAVID BLAINE!!!
Details only in the NME...

rubbish. absolute BULLSHIT. The White Stripes, who NME are so proud of trumpeting as their great discovery, were actually written about, in depth, by Mojo first.

The NME only ran their first live review of White Stripes, from SXSW2001, because Steve Gullick (the photographer) and myself (the writer) argued hard enough to get a skeptical live reviews editor to approve it. No-one else in the editorial section of the office had the slightest clue who they were. The White Stripes were at this point on their second album, a review of which had sat on the spike at NME for two months by this point, because it was too 'obscure'.

So don't tell me how great NME are at supporting new talent, especially at a point where the 'On' section, or whatever its called right now, will refuse to comission or print features on new bands if any of the competition - XRay, Bang, The Fly, even CTCL - has had even the first sniff at them. Those sorts of bully-boy tactics are exactly why the magazine is so execrable - if you want to be first, how about taking your snouts out of the PR trough and getting writers hungry and skilled enough to seek new artists, or letting the fine writers you already have (Tim Jonze et al) actually fucking write for a change, as opposed to just composing captions.

I have stayed out of this argument till this point, and shall not rejoin it. But the stench of this bullshit is just unfuckingbearable. Kill all hypocrites.

details inside the new nme...

Young? Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, are you sure about that?

Am I missing something here?

Compare and contrast with, say, Kerrang! I read your fine piece on The Strokes in that magazine but couldn't help noticing that it came 12 whole months after NME had first championed them.

perhaps it is simple bitterness... certainly, very few of the people at the helm of the magazine then are still there. its just a fucking joke, though, to hear about how NME champions all these great new bands, but wouldn't print reviews about them just before they broke because they were too 'obscure'.

Compare and contrast with, say, Kerrang! I read your fine piece on The Strokes in that magazine but couldn't help noticing that it came 12 whole months after NME had first championed them.

well, i can't comment there, because the Strokes feature was one of the first pieces i did at Kerrang! after quitting NME. From what i could figure out, this was the first opportunity Kerrang! had had to interview the band, since everything exploded. Certainly, when the first single surfaced (around the period steve slocombe and i commissioned the first large feature on the strokes, in sleazenation), The Strokes would've been very marginal to kerrang!'s then more specifically-Metal world.

Are you asserting that NME is the only magazine to cover new bands at an early stage? maybe you could explain why AFI had pretty much no coverage in NME until their cover feature? Or why NME dragged its heels so long giving a feature to Hundred Reasons after publishing their first, slavering live review? or why so many of the bands at this year's Reading festival seemed more at home in kerrang!'s world than NME's?

For what its worth, i financed 2 of my 3 trips to SXSW myself, the first was financed by Elbow. NME never paid any money towards my going to SXSW. and that the Karrang! strokes cover scored 120,000 sales, better as far as i know than any NME figures of recent history.

What about NME's bully-boy tactics? Could you defend them for me? Or maybe you'll just pretend that they don't happen.. and fancy losing the pseudonym at all and posting under your real name?

If you wanna continue this argument, email me off the board... I'm not interested on retreading this ground for ILX again.

I wrote for Melody Maker for 18 months. NME 'poached' me, and while i'd never been a fan of the paper, they promised that they'd 'make me a better writer' and give me the sort of work i deserved. i was told that they didn't have enough young writers as enthusiastic about music as my melody Maker pieces had suggested. so i jumped, and for a while it was good, if tough. as the 2 and a half years i was there passed, i was getting less and less say in the mag. There was a change in editorial staff, i was told i'd start getting more recognition and more work. This didn't happen. I wrote the first pieces for NME on White Stripes plus early pieces on Strokes et al. Wrote live review of White Stripes that got reprinted in all the broadsheets and read out on radio 4. Still, no one would listen to my fetaure ideas. pieces on bands like System of a down were rejected because the band were 'old hat'. i got threatened with a smack in the mouth after outlining all the reasons why hundred reasons deserved a feature in NME, and went above the features editor's head sending it to editor and deputy editor (who comissioned it despite editor's refusal to engage me in discussion about this). Got very depressed, both at the state of the mag and the way i was being treated. kerrang! offered me work there. i went for it. couple of months later i was writing cover features that would score the best circulations in kerrang's histoory (120,000).

if i seem bitter, then perhaps its because of the way i was treated during that period. perhaps i should stay out of NME discussions, because as you've so rightly ascertained my opinion on the magazine couldn't be worth a shit. and i resisted for so llong with this thread. but i just couldn't stand to read that bullshit about how NME is the only magazine to support new talent at an early stage, when that's patently not the case.

but you being the diva of music journalism, you can't really see that, can you? sorry MR. chick.

As for NME championing new bands - who are you seriously suggesting does any more to this end? I can't see anybody else jumping up and down to feature - say - Hope Of The States (though I'm sure Johnny from Teletext will say he was first with them!), The point is not about doing anything first, but doing it well (ie, featuring the bands at the optimum time, when they're ready to capitolise on the press they get). Going back to your much-spiked review of 'De Stijl' - I guess the albums editor's point was that it was an import album which had already been out for some time. This did indeed make it 'obscure'. Obviously, when the Stripes subsequently signed to XL, it was a better time to feature them. People could, y'know, actually buy their records. As for your point about AFI, again they started to gain more press when they moved to a bigger label. It happens: renewed impetus/bigger budget = more press. Plus NME does like to back winners (obviously this doesn't include Andrew WK, but - hey - again, who else featured him?).

Now then, the 'bully boy' tactics. I think we both know who was behind them. On the one hand, it makes sound commercial sense. On the other, I'm more of the opinion that more music magazines is a good thing.

Lastly, though the bands at Reading did indeed seem more like Kerrang's constiutency than NME's, compare the coverage offered by the two mags. Kerrang looked like they couldn't be bothered (perhaps Three Colours Red were in town). In contrast NME managed about 16 pages of Reading coverage just a couple of days after the festival had finished.

I think any music writer would like to work in an environment where their work looks sexiest. So frankly, there's currently no competition between Kerrang and the new-format NME. You should return to the fold, Stevie.

I am going to buy the new-look NME after work, just out of curiosity. (x-post)

Lastly, though the bands at Reading did indeed seem more like Kerrang's constiutency than NME's, compare the coverage offered by the two mags. Kerrang looked like they couldn't be bothered

Horse, we got fuck all tickets. Truth. 14 for the entire weekend, for the entire production crew. I still think what we did was pretty ace, but we were scuppered by the bully boy tactics again. And we had our awards that week, which were a pretty big deal.

As ever, my criticisms of NME would never extend to the subbing department, you guys always fucking kicked ass, and i miss you all. But there's no way I'd ever go back to NME, I'm having too much fun writing uncensored at Kerrang!... I know most of the features I've done of late for K! would never run in NME without major cutting. Fuck sexy, I wanna go where the word counts and mindsets are the most open...

NME

Für einen rigorosen Antikonformismus!

over a photo of TWA.

dude, to the artists and writers involve there is nothing 'minor' about reviewing. it starts the ball rolling for alot of these folks.

More Joel Plaskett in the UK music press, I say.

ps. i wish i could take the journalism beyond reviewing but between doing three jobs at the moment and pumping out fiction - i'm working on four hours sleep as is!!

as in joel plaskett emergency? is he still recording?

I would certainly agree with that, sir... Kerrang! lets me rave for 2000 words about Mars Volta and free-jazz and crazy theorems about how we're all fucked ect ect ect... and still finds room for Maiden and Vixen et al... its like the best of both worlds!

Perhaps they give the new bands to you to write about because they don’t care about them very much?

Yay!

(Yes, I know you were being sarcastic)

HA FUCKING HA.

Sorry, I can't believe you actually said that. But I AM amused.

Hurt itself briefly.
Feel eternal.
Telephone at random.
Rediscover its room after a journey.
Drink while urinating.
Walk in the dark.
Dream of all the places in the world.
Peel an apple in its head.
Visualise a pile of human organs.
Imagine itself high up.
Imagine its imminent death.
Count to a thousand.
Dread the arrival of the bus.
Play the fool.
Watch a woman at her window.
Invent lives for itself.
Look at people from a moving car.
Eat a nameless substance.
Watch dust in the sun.
Resist tiredness.
Overeat.
Play the animal.
Contemplate a dead bird.
Come across a childhood toy.
Wait while doing nothing.
Go to the hairdresser.
Shower with its eyes closed.
Sleep on its front in the sun.
Go to the circus.
Try on clothes.
Calligraphize.
Be aware of itself speaking.
Weep at the cinema.
Meet up with friends after several years.
Browse at the booksellers.
Discover music.
Walk in an imaginary forest.
Row on a lake in its office.
Prowl at night.
Become attached to an object.
Sing the praises of Father Christmas.
Play with a child.
Encounter pure chance.
Recite the telephone directory on its knees.
Think about what other people are doing.
Practice make-believe everywhere.
Kill people in its head.
Take the tube without going anywhere.
Remove its watch.
Put up with a chatterbox.
Clear up after the party.
Find the infinitesimal caress.

The changes sound like good ideas - more feature-length pieces, longer reviews, wider music coverage

Looks hopelessly optimistic in the cold light of day. Reviews have shrunk even further, some of them are just five or six lines long now, hardly any live reviews (whereas the NME of old would cram loads of the things in), any claims at 'diversity' shoehorned into tiny columns for idiots at the side of the page.

Oh, and Martin and anyone else, next time you want to bury your head in the sand and pretend there's nothing wrong with the NME, look at Mark Beaumont's Outkast review again - load of offensive shite if ever I saw it.

Not kidding. Dexy's best of - a nine out of ten and one paragraph.

A few years ago they had a habit of reprinting "Classic Reviews", the likes of Marquee Moon, a whole broadsheet page of dissectitude, a small pic of the LP (so you could recognise it in the shops prob.) and that would be it.

I dont want reprints, just someone that could write that much passion about whatever. Darkness? Strokes? they can't manage it. If the new strokes album is fantastic, say so, say why, and say how. Not just the first bit.

"Writing about music is like Dancing about architecture" (anon)
"i.e. it is quite difficult and most people look silly doing it" (me)

I've not bought it yet but I expect Mark is right.

I will buy it though.

I am talking like a Dalek.

Perhaps they could get the Strokes to do a re-design?

Why do the NME cover the same few bands each week ? !

Ten weeks after Jack's lobotomy, your favourite new format NME speaks to your favourite new format frontman about love, compassion and Nurse Ratchett...

There is more than enough niche for a new mag, primarily aimed at people in their 20s/ 30s that hate the NME teenage oriented lowest common denominator approach but also dislike reading pages and pages of Dylan, Beatles, Stones, Brian Wilson in Mojo/ Uncut.

I have monitored many music boards/ mailing lists and this is the evidence:

* people want a more accessible version of The Wire [i.e less stuffy approach]

* people want a replacement for Muzik and Jockey Slut [i.e focusing on a diverse range of electronic/ dance music] - a British XLR8R

* many people are still fond of the Melody Maker style/ approach [pre Mark Sutherland years]

* many people don't want to wait for a monthly mag, but would be willing to buy an interesting weekly music mag if one existed.

* the sheer volume of new music in the 00s, now demands a weekly mag

* a magazine-within-a magazine approach - by putting writers/ music enthusiasts back in charge of the agenda. creating new agendas, not going along with the agenda set elsewhere.

* diverse music covered but a critical approach to filter out the finest contemporary music [diverse coverage: many different styles of dance, electronic, rock, avant jazz, metal etc see my blog for scope]

* some humour/ ala old Melody Maker mr agreeable type column

* a decent sized readers letters section

* listings of what writers are listening to

* some space set aside for a historical slant on music

* a forthcoming releases section, why magazines don't offer this is strange - people like to look forward to upcoming releases, be informed of what's coming

* take magazine design seriously, the current NME is hideously designed IMHO

My vision is critical coverage of music, NOT capsule reviews and a rubbish established artists of Q

[no there too busy with rubbish stories on Razorlight and The Music, informing us about Bob Dylan's honorary degree and female loos at Glasto.]

NME/ NME.com are both utterly risible.

NME should develop a centrefold/ nude picture section every week where a famous female should stirp naked for the cameras. The circulation would go through the roof if they got Girls Aloud, Britney, Christina et al to drop their drawers. It's an easy solution, would sell lots of copies, and no one would really give a toss about what The Strokes are doing this week because we'd all be too busy having one off over Shakira's exposed rear!

i think everyone here should probably realise that the nme's current readership love the mag (i think) and never want it to die.

as far as the magazine in a magazine structure thing, mags like touch and echoes in the UK already do section by genre (reviews wise anyway). does that count?

Plus there would also be general review section to get different perspectives.

select right specialists for indepth coverage and expertise but also have diverse eclectics/ dilettantes that can offer different opinions.

Remember when Melody Maker had it's own dance section with push/ ben turner, or Metal Hammer has it's extreme metal section now. That is the magazine-with-a magazine concept. You had back responsibility to section editors/ writers, to create informed insights into contemporary music.

Tell me NME, is that so much to ask for?

2004 there is so much going on, check my blog.

The Independent provide an insiders perspective of NME/NME.com

The NME publisher Neil Robinson tells Chris Gray how he transformed the ageing music title into a global brand

In the article both Robinson and McNicholas state the NME is [blatantly] aimed at 19 year old male students.

Robinson .. sees that as the magazine simply being more honest about where it lies in the "supply chain" between record companies, retailers and fans; but former writers like Paul Morley insist such language had no place in the NME world they inhabited.

Paul Morley:
"I would never have considered there was such a thing as a supply chain," says Morley. "NME then was coming out of the Sixties and Seventies and it had a radical spirit. It is now an odd combination of a commercial enterprise with a fanzine level of enthusiasm. It has lost the idea that it was about writing. Now it is more like a weekly guide."

This supply chain questions raises ethical questions: i.e relationships NME has between record companies/ PR companies and also relates to matching the editorial content with advertising sales strategy.

Neil Robinson:

It's not NME's fault that the world has moved on as it has. We can't stand out there and be alternative; commercially that would be suicide now. The irony is we are still more alternative than anything else.

What an admission ! alternative to anything else - what can this mean Q magazine or Virgin Radio?

What can be said about this - NME has become a stagnant fixed lifestage mag: where the contents are always skewed to the lowest common denominator male student - aged 19, who is not particularly alternative.

What a hideous concept for a music magazine - it's no wonder that people in their 20s/ 30s - find the NME such a useless magazine. [cross reference with various music boards: BBC Collective/ Onetouchmusic/ Jockey Slut and ILM etc]

it begs the question - why hasn't a publisher launched a new weekly music magazine - that has higher aspirations for music? There is a massive gap in the market for a diverse, radical, informative weekly music magazine - many music fans don't want to wait for the monthlies - they would like a more regular reading fix.

i mean, minor quibbles aside-- you're talking about the wire.

-- thesplooge (sploogeyo...), July 27th, 2004.

off of NME? i figure since american mags of similar scope (RS, Spin) pay their writers between $1 and $3 per word that NME should at least be somewhere in the neighbo(u)rhood... not even close

My idea of sections: would include coverage of Experimental Electronics, Avant-Prog/ Progressive rock, Ambient/ space music, Avant-Jazz, Industrial/gothic, Dark Metal, Post-Rock, Tech-House/Techno/ Microhouse, Drum N Bass, Synth-Pop etc etc etc - this would encompass news, reviews, interviews, analytical columns, selective listings of events

What kind of circulation do you think a magazine like this would have? I mean seriously?

As mentioned upthread - the NME is not meant for you. (and by the way - the Melody Maker was shit. No amount of rose-tinted nostalgia is going to change the endless pages of Kingmaker interviews...)

At the same time as this they were still pushing, I dunno, The Jesus Lizard and Godflesh and Black Dog and Mercury Rev and such and such in the back door and giving them pretty decent coverage when they had no commercial obligation to do that. Who would you have given front covers to at that time?

No they don't

And OK, this is going to sound like I'm trying to be funny however I write it - but have you ever actually thought about starting up a music magazine, instead of just deciding what ought to be in it?

As you say Jason, it's clear from the piece that the NME is now a carefully positioned intermediary between record companies etc. and punters, part of the whole marketing chain.

BUT not every reader of the NME has read this, so they won't know that the opinions they're trusting are, to some extent at least, paid for.

Was that really always the case?
I don't know much about the history of NME.

It's certainly not true for all mags.

Harking back to those days at MM is NOT rose-tinted nostalgia, cos I knew how good it was even at the time. It was untouchable in its breadth of coverage and quality of writing from around mid-87 until early 97 when Sutherland came in and began systematically destroying the thing.

if the NME are closely working with record labels and retailers:

then established companies artists will be favoured - not what you are - who you know

advertising strategy: if particular artists are not covered editorially - then future likelihood of advertising decisions made by companies re that magazine - could be negative.

If major labels/ and some of the larger independents have a "stake" in influencing the profitability/ sales revenue of an enterprise - [due to the fact they make up a high % of advertising space bought in the magazine]: - then these artists will be favoured editorially - due to the importance of advertising sales revenue.

I am sure that people such as ET of Plan B magazine and Stevie Chick could further expand on these ethical questions.

In the article both Robinson and McNicholas state the NME is [blatantly] aimed at 19 year old male students.
No they don't

-- DJ Mencap

this implies they are BLATANTLY aimed at a target audience of 19 year olds:

the journalist informing what Conor McNicholas has done at the NME:
Under new editor Conor McNicholas, the magazine was redesigned and reoriented to give the 19-year-olds what they wanted

on
Neil Robinson:
His first task was to "drive the conversations" that involved telling NME journalists who successfully rode the Britpop wave that they were too old and no longer in touch with the magazine's core 19-year-old male student reader.

So that's just the opinion of the journalist writing the article, not the NME or anyone associated with it.

(I happen to think he's right too, but that doesn't make what you're claiming true)

They had at least one front cover in 1993.

Elsewhere I have read articles about McNicholas were he has commented on serving a younger rock readership and bringing in new younger writers, and talking about "New Rock Revolution"

(xpost. Answer to Sam: I'm a cunt)

Martian, I think you're looking for conspiracies where they don't really exist.

First up, the idea that NME has to act "ethically" is nonsensical. As someone said above, it's a manstream music magazine run by a major publishing house, and it always has been so. As a magazine, Neil Robinson appears to be saying, the NME primarily has a duty to serve and cater to its readership. I don't necessarily agree with the way they do it, but to imply that this article offers any sort of a surprise "admission" on the part of IPC seems totally baffling to me.

"if the NME are closely working with record labels and retailers: then established companies artists will be favoured - not what you are - who you know"

What do you mean by 'established' here? Do you mean the major labels? Or do you simply mean 'labels that the NME tend to prefer'? Because I'd argue that most of the NME's current 'buzz' bands - The Strokes, The Libertines, White Stripes, to name the big three - still basically hail from the independent sector (Rough Trade, Rough Trade, and XL, respectively). The way I perceive it, nowadays NME break the bands they reckon their readers will be into - hence, no Keane or Hoobastank front-cover (even though presumably it would do well on the news-stand). Obviously, good money buys a good PR company. But I'd say that we're still a long way from labels 'buying' front covers, and that goes for any music magazine in the UK.

"advertising strategy: if particular artists are not covered editorially - then future likelihood of advertising decisions made by companies re that magazine - could be negative."

Really, this is just total common sense, and applies from every magazine from Q and Blender down to the smallest fanzine. If, say, Plan B made an apparently conscious decision to stop reviewing Domino Records releases, or made a habit of slating them, would it be a surprise if Domino pulled their adverts? Are Plan B or Loose Lips Sink Ships really much more impartial magazines than NME? (they certainly dispense more good reviews).

(For the record, Martian, I'd rather read Plan B than NME, and believe your ideas for a new music magazine sound like a wonderful utopia. I just think your judgements are faulty.)

Naturally, within six months he was editing the former.

They (Kingmaker)had at least one front cover in 1993.

"Dictating" is rather a hysterical term, isn't it?

It's fifty years old for Cliff's sake!!!!!!!!

it always seems a chicken/egg situation. how do they know which bands are the most popular thus who they should put on the cover? why is it 'who's on the cover' seemed less of a big deal 10 and 20 years ago? obviously politics has got in the way re The Darkness (were they on it for last year's Glasto review issue?). have Keane not been on the cover either? that's funny - they're no more 'dull' than COldplay or Snow Patrol after all.

side-question: who/which act has been the oddest choice of NME cover star in recent times and why?

The time of odd/incongruous covers seems to have long gone. Under Ian Pye's editorship in the 80s I remember covers about youth suicide, computer hacking, politics (including a themed series on SEX, DRUGS and VIOLENCE) when he seemed to be trying to mould the paper into a lifestyle mag. These days it seems like an endless cycle of White Stripes/Libertines/Hives/Strokes/Streets/Morrissey.

But then I'm far too old to read the bloody thing anyway.

(Sylvia Patterson on Westlife doesn't count. Uh, for some reason or other.)

Stevem - you're not crazy...

-- DJ Mencap (lackofinteres...), July 28th, 2004.

... yeah, that's why i said between $1 and $3 per word. in any event, IPC can afford a bit more than a measly 12p per word. whatever, though. i guess this isn't exactly the topic at hand, though, perhaps the writing would improve if the writers were paid better?

Intelligent people will tend to go elsewhere. Like these boards.

The changes sound like good ideas - more feature-length pieces, longer reviews, wider music coverage - but there's still no room in my life for the NME, and I don't trust Conor McM to produce a good paper given his form on the title so far.

-- Tom (freakytrigge...), September 15th, 2003.

Could they have made the reviews any shorter? And as for wider music coverage....

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/020605/the_moment_you

"One of the guys said: ‘There's certain music that doesn't have a place in the NME, but if Pete Doherty sneezed, I'd buy it.' And that's why it goes in the magazine every time. All the fans just want to hang out with the bands and go to shitloads of gigs, but they don't have the time, the money, the freedom, so we do that for them."

Everything wrong with NME is perhaps in there?

Jesus H Corbett why the fuck would you want to pander to these nitwits? Oh yeah, the money thing.

Why? Is this how IPC do market research?

Did they wear hoodies?

also: anyone notice that since MOJO introduced star ratings it's started going a bit downhill on the credibility front - promoting bands rather than promoting the music.

lego covers

http://www.nme.com/photos/26-album-sleeves-recreated-in-lego/203791/1/1#1

I'd start by handing this frog eyed wunderkind his jotters

http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=146&title=why_i_don_t_care_about_record_store_day&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

- A more generalist approach
- Don't stop supporting an act once that act is established - help establish long term names that last for decades and decades instead.

(Also, become more like Q)

god no, dont become anything like Q

"Just ask Day V Lately".

Cover a lot of R&B and hip-hop and constantly give it really, really bad reviews, stressing that "Yes, we review all kinds of music. Including crap".

in the britpop day nme covered the same shite as Q and thats why nme went downhill. Forget about covering pre fame mainstream bands just so you can say you covered them first ,cover good bands that the likes of Q etc don't cover , bands that need coverage because they're good, not because they might sell a million albums.

The good bands are the ones that Q cover, not the ones who never hit the pages of Q. Q cover the best bands, the ones that have the best and catchiest melodies and the most anthemic singalong choruses. Just like good bands should be.

A song that doesn't work as a football chant is not worthy of coverage.

^ new ilm board deescrip please

NME should be constantly on the lookout for the next Coldplay, and then once they have made them big, continue supporting them and give top reviews to all of their albums to ensure they become legends and completely dominate all music.

even if their albums are shite?

They aren't. :)