NME: the final straw

One of the more mental moments of bong-fuelled madness on their debut album, ‘Butcher Blues’ is the anti-Band Aid, where the cast-off live tracks of four baggy-lovin’ stoners is heaps better (both morally and musically) than Bob Geldof’s latest, shocking music-for-PR exchange program. And it’d be so easy to label the work of these knuckle-dragging Leicester City fans as regressive Ian Brown plagiarism but, man, can’t you hear that lazy Zero 7 bassline?

This shit’s modern, dude – like baggy goes Buck Rogers, skinning up in the 25th century and all that. As live versions go, ‘Butcher Blues’ is basically the same experience as going to a McDonald’s in another country – you know what you’re getting, but it still manages to taste different than it did back home. It may not be an essential, life-changing track but, with the download proceeds going to Warchild, you may very well… sniff… change someone else’s.

Yeah, they don't come more gangsta than Talib Kweli.

Was there a time when the NME was about music?

But at least they generally stick to music and has not mated with US Weekly like Rolling Stone has. At least over there, The Olson twins and Ashton Kutcher is not on the cover of Q or NME for that matter.

But yeah, that guy's opinion is full of shit.

Indeed, I cannot see that Q an Mojo are doing this. Mojo are mainly writing about old stuff for fans that have been into music for a long time, plus (to a larger excent than Uncut) they are also trying to get those same people into other stuff that they think they may like.

Q has a tradition of relatively low-profile writers, and they cover a rather large variety of musical genres rather than just settling for "the next big thing". Even an act that NME would consider extremely unhip will get a fair treatment, and possibly a good review, in Q.

I'm not suggesting the NME is any better, mind.

Uh, I guess I'm too young to remember this? I can't think of any good ever coming out of asking "Mojo" writers to cover new, exciting or unsual stuff, they'll just come out with something really embarassing like that "Up Yours! Punk's Not Dead!" CD they did awhile ago with all those crappy nu-garage bands on it. Leave them to their old record collections, they're pretty good on those!

I guess I shouldn't be so down on their coverage of new stuff, nice that they care about current music at all and everything, but somehow it feels like they bring out the received wisdom/clichés a lot more when they're dealing with new acts, and even when they feature stuff I'm excited about they usually get it horribly wrong (god, that Dizzee review.) I just don't think that covering new stuff should be some sort of music mag obligation anyway, the past is great too, embrace the past! There's lots of it!

(I buy "Uncut" for the movie/DVD stuff. I'm a much more shameless canonist when it comes to cinema than I am with music, even.)

Mojo has always covered retro stuff a lot. And they do so better than Uncut, because they are able to move beyond the obvious Beatles/Stones/Dylan/Bowie/Neil Young thing that Uncut seems to be stuck with, and write about more obscure stuff from the past.

did mick mercer have the best taste of any melody maker critic in 1984?

It's probably a reflection of my personality that I fail to see the insult in this...

What on earth are you doing writing for a music magazine if you hate enthusiasm?

Then again, Mr Sterry was probably told to write it.

Someone said something similar here

NME having "our" bands has been going on for at least as long, almost certainly longer, than I've been a regular reader, about 11 years for the record. Yer Suedes and Blurs would pretty much never get a bad review ten years back BUT some sort of dissent and opposition was permitted in other parts of the paper, this being reflective of writers cultivating personalities through their copy. Maybe it was just because I was a lot more impressionable then, but this seems to have been gradually shuffed off the agenda, which is a great shame

Though it did help that the coverage in the NME 10 years ago was a bit broader, so they wrote about some of the safer interesting music too.

To be honest, we've got no right to act surprised when they get together and produce a school magazine every week.

(This is the first time I've ever written OTM. I'm all excited.)

IPC do let its writers move around freely however - i think theres some sort of agreement that says that if you write for one of their mags, you can write for the others.

It's inevitable that people will get moved from mag to mag, but Phil Alexander was at Kerrang for years, and seems to be a writer many others admire, so it's not like he doesn't understand the mags. He's a good writer and appears to be a good editor. His Grand Funk Railroad article aside, it's not like Mojo has turned into Classic Rock.

i personally have a problem with the fact i dont think even peel liked everything he played (esp ragga and hip hop stuff). then again, maybe i should admire this, as at least he gave it a chance and saw some sort of merit in it.

lowe is a cock mongerer of the highest order, but he plays quite a bit of different stuff from hip hop to grime to dance, as well as indie.

"Towards the end of his career the man was wholly irrelevent to folk like you and me. A bumbling muso, he loved music the same way an obsessive-compulsive tramp that lives on your High street loves to collect rubbish, pin it to his rotting overcoat, and follow you home."

folk like you and me? too informal and assuming. and the description of Peel just seemed needlessly disrespectful, what was the point of it at all? Peel was not an 'establishment' figure to be challenged, he transcended that but i suppose people like Sterry automatically think of him as 'boring old hat' just because of his age and his prior persistence. which is rather petulant and contrived, only not in the way that makes 'punkish' eschewing of traditions and touchstones cool - certainly not when the alternative offered is Zane Lowe, who i've got nothing against really other than an annoying sycophantic stance and seemingly unconditional support for 'sellable' rock, dance and hip-hop regardless of it's true quality.

as for the relevancy thing, i don't know. are the Kaiser Chiefs or Razorlight actually relevant? how so? in what way?

The NME really can't get past punk, can they? The last time they mattered...well, that's that explained, then.

Death From Above 1979 - Pull Out
The Others - Lackey
Hard Fi - Cash Machine
Block Party - So Here We Are
Doves - Black & White Town
Greenday - Holiday
The Futureheads - Hounds of love
The Bravery - Honest Mistake
Fischerspooner - Just let go
British Sea Power - It Ended On An Oily Stage

The amount of reverence he gets, here and everywhere else, makes him a de-facto establishment figure.

They do, don't they? Always have done. It's almost unknown these days for a band/artist whose career isn't on the slide (ie not Fatboy Slim/Chems etc) to get bad reviews

Being unpopular is a revolutionary act?

yes, but as i say i think he managed to transcend that by sticking to the 'new, edgy, different' to the end...which is what makes Sterry's 'relevance' comment interesting. you'd think Peel's mandate would be the epitomy of what was really relevant today - the 'alternative' or underground to what Zane Lowe has become the gatekeeper for at surface level only. So Sterry is effectively trying to apply a punk attitude to punk, rejecting this 'Peelism' in favour of....what? mediocre mainstream bands posing as an edgy alternative to manufactured pop for today's disaffected fops? please

but perhaps i'm wrong and his point, disrespectful sneery tone aside, is right in that Peel was in decline as that gatekeeper to underground or alternative fields (but not through his own fault i think) - but most people accepted that already (much discussion of this on the original Peel RIP thread) and to say 'i'm bored of all this Peel talk, who under 25 actually listened to him anyway?' is a bit of a weak point anyway, esp. with regards to the cultural relevance issue.

'Comes with a Smile' is another great publication - no axe to grind, gets on with talking to the bands and has great compilation CDs - quite a treasure

...where are the bands that sound like Killing Joke, Cabaret Voltaire, PIL?

Why do they ALL sound and look like some dodgy Scottish cabaret piss -take of lumpy indie rock with self-aware vocals?

it was two pages, stew, and i had to fight everyone at the paper to get him in there because (and i quote) "NME isn't interested in 'mummy's boy' rappers"

Yeah, Angus and Dele were great, but they were marginalised voices. I remember being really into hip-hop at the time and resenting the ghetto stereotyping, particularly the way ODB's problems were basically presented as an entertaining freakshow for middle class white people.

Being unpopular is a revolutionary act?

Well going against the majority (hegmonic?) thinking is surely a rebellious act? Perhaps you could say the thinking was quite independent, or even y'know alternative...

i think this was as a percentage of His total listeners rather than either an absolute number or a percentage of radio 1 listeners.

> what were peels listening figures like in the last few years?

speaking personally it was 100% 8) absolute listening figures aren't really important because you're bound to get more people listening during the day than between 10 and midnight. i'm sure, for instance, moyles' listening figures are several times that of peel's.

signed,

a terrified contributor!

alan was horrified when i told him i never listened to john peel. i think it is very much an english rite of passage type thing...

i doubt that they are going to find another john peel. you would have to find a music obsessive in media who gets paid to be obsessed. i think that was the end of that when he died.

It's either me or Frank Skerrett!

I am coming round to the idea that JP should not be replaced but the vacancy need(ed) to be redefined. Or something.

Really, never? (sorry)

i had no idea who he was for ages. i finally asked alan 'who is john peel' ... then the look of horror and the 'you are taking the piss' ... 'well, no. i think he is a dj, isn't he?'

I'll shuttup about it now. Promise.

Me? I found about about "new" music in my youth from my dad and from Peel's programme in roughly equal measures.

Like "Wild Man Fischer" and oh etc....

Current NME yuppies like this Sterry idiot will have moved onto reviewing boys toys for What Hi-Fi in a year. I promise you that I would physically assualt this c-nt if I ever met him.

I don't like music radio.

Surely most ppl would dislike most of the music he played, just cause he played such a range?

(xpost)

stevie, i'm intrigued by this ... see, that makes it sound like there was/is an editorial cabal carving up what's cool and what's not, but as a hack myself i've never come across a single publication that actually has a set-in-stone ideology or plan of action. it's usually made up on the spot by whoever's commissioning your feature. certainly, in my comissioning days that was the approach i took :)

basically, what i'm asking is: is the NME's editorial line shaped from year to year by the personalities of the editor and the senior staff, or is there a more sinister "IPC line" going on; ie the NME is told by the executives what line it has to take in order to appeal to a certain advertising-led demographic?

It seems that this has been the price that the NME has had to pay for continuing survival.

Melody Maker tried to stay alive by featuring the Stereophonics and Catatonia every other week, that didn't work. The last issue of Vox had Sheryl Crow on the front, that didn't work. Bang, et al, tried to be overenthusiastic about bands that no-one cared THAT much for, see what happened.

So, they went where the money seems to be.

It is part of IPC Ignite - which certainly was IPC's 'men's lifestyle' division. Then IPC as a whole and, ultimately, AOL Time Warner.

It sells something like 400,000 copies weekly and the website is seen by more than a million unique users every month.

IPC supports it (or at least did, I have no idea if all of these are still on the go) with NME radio, Net Sounds, NME gigs, NME TV and the NME Awards.

These projects are worth somewhere approaching a third of all NME brand revenues.

It is part of the world's largest media empire. It is a vast brand and its image is used to support everything from hair products to other IPC publications.

Things like that aren't left to chance.

Music
Q – 162,574 – up 0.6%
Uncut – 114,034 – up 2.6%
Mojo – 111,815 – up 7.1%
The Fly – 107,943 – up 1.3%
NME – 70,017 – down 3.5%
Kerrang! – 61,844 – down 10.7%
BBC Music – 56,096 – down 8.1%
Classic FM – 43,077 – up 5.5%
Gramophone – 42,791 – down 4.5%
Classic Rock – 42,030 – up 4.2%

both almost certainly: the editorial guys will think the IPC higher-ups are idiots tastewise, but the pressure to chase demographics creates huge pressure on their jobs long-term — they have to show upswing in circulation (or at least not downswing), or someone younger will get their job

corruption of editorial is usually more about month-on-month adaptation to a set-up you don't really like but are "making the best of" than bold active "selling out"

marcello is correct: nme never really recovered from being Right About Punk — it spent the next 15 years terrified it would be "caught out next time", and the better writers gradually left or were driven away, fed up of always being second-guessed in ref.this fear, or else got caught in a rut, unwilling to leave bcz they didn't think they cd be "themselvs" elsewhere, but w.diminishing returns as "themselves"

i think dr c is over-harsh to make the cut-off 1980: i would say 76-83 (haha = when i started writin for em)

the line it seems trapped takin - as typified by the thinkin BEHIND the anti-peel rant - is strugglin to find the middle road between "real" pop (= music that becomes popular w/o initial print imprimatur) and "real" outsider stuff (= "obscure music for saddoes"): it becomes neurotic about basically staying safely MOR

(i don't mean the music it champions is in itself MOR: i mean the primary neurotic reasons it allows itself to cite when deciding to champion any given music is a reason that massively bigs up its MOR qualities)

nme circ in the late 70s wz c.200,000
mm slightly more
sounds maybe half that
record mirror i totally don't recall

I'd like to know how they prove that.

*cough*
Bollocks.

not sales, sorry. probably wildly ambitious for readership now too ... that's what cutting and pasting figures out of old files gets me.

The NME doesn't even have its own publisher anymore. It has been given to the bloke in charge of Nuts.

I suppose what I'm saying is: at the end of the day, it's all about ringtones and the right trousers - and I really couldn't give a toss anymore.

But of course it's only a corporate cross-promotion platform...

I am feeling v.harsh today but yr probably right.

but that wz a frantic last-minute compromise cover bcz the real actual proper cover had either
i. BEEN LOST!!
or
ii. been suppressed for bein "controversial" by the IPC higher-ups

the biggest sellin issue in the late 80s was the one w.cilla on the cover!!

"Oh yerrr, Derek, I worked with him in panto at Skegness in 1964. Bobby thought he was a bit shifty-eyed."

and the JUNE BRIDES.(1985, I think)

Mind you the Sounds Robery Lloyd cover is the **best ever music mag cover of all time** - a bewildered looking Robert eats breakfast wearing a holey school jumper!

I don't think it was the lowest selling Sounds - surely some of the v.late ones were waay lower?

I think the cover the week before was Pat Benetar and the week after Angry Anderson of Rose Tattoo.

HI MARK S!!

Hey, I'm intrigued! Then again am I young?

the analysis drivin this piece on lads mags — the anxieties that shiver thru em every issue — cd probbly be adapted to the present-day music weeklies and monthlies

hi doomie!!

DO YOU NOT SEE HOW AMAZING THIS IDEA IS?

Yeh I guess but I didn't I guess I still don't really know much else but that was my youthful imersion to the myriad wonders of popular music, I was still defending the NME into 2003 mainly with the arguement that surely its role more than anything is to piss off the older generation by slagging their idols and passionately hyping new ones which are the antithesis of the previous generations. Producing a sense of identity in a supposedly youthful mileu. What I now realize is missing from this arguement is any consideration of the worth of the music itself and / or the standard of writing involved...

You almost defined Sounds c1980-83 there!

see, i moan like buggery about the place where i work but the set-up is pretty simple: editors edit, publishers bollock re: falling sales but never actually come down and say: "don't print that, print this instead". yet because we know they will bust down on our collective plums if we're not seen to be flying off the shelves, we encourage ourselves to think commercially.

the idea of some half-assed IPC prick coming along and telling an editor which "demographic" to "chase" is chilling, yet all too believable.

ok, i'm obviously gonna say this 'cos i'm a hack but ... if you want to sell papers/magazines, fill 'em full of the best writing you can afford - which includes, y'know, breaking stories rather than just wanging on about pete sodding doherty - and hire brilliant designers and subs. the rest comes naturally. FWIW, my publication just won a major award last night, so i reckon we're doing something right with this approach. the NME, with a sale of c70,000, is palpably not.

Hurrah for Razzle! Oh wait...

i think the nme has by now probbly created a dreadful feedback loop* for itself: eg writers who wd actually spark it up if allowed in don't bother even submittin stuff, and the ones who do are just more of what they already have, carefully conforming to the dominant model bcz they think they're meant to

*all long-lived mags can fall into these bad spirals — eg the high-end writer-led new yorker went into one in the mid-80s, when shawn just got too old — and it's sometimes VERY hard to get out of them

true. that said, if you pay half-decent rates (which i understand the NME doesn't), good writers - and i mean writers, not celebby mooks - will be far more interested. but basically you're dead on.

Hey, hands offa my Fly! The Fly, mercifully, has absolutely no influence on what its writers write. It does have dodgy bands on the cover a fair bit, where you can almost smell the payola, but inside we're left to our own devices by and large. Which is lovely.

The world needs them even less than the world needs the bands that sound like The Cure, Joy Division, Wire, Magazine, Gang Of Four.

The world does need, is a whole new generation of bands that sound like 10cc, ELO, Supertramp, Queen, Klaatu and Genesis!

ONE good song, and even that song was done better by the Carpenters!

“Being a weekly, there's no way anyone can move as fast as we do. Often, by the time the smaller, slower monthlies have caught up with something, we've moved on to the next thing, keeping NME readers ahead of the pack. We also have the longevity; kudos and clout to make sure NME readers get the best of everything.”
-Connor McNicholas, NME Editor

frequency……………………………... weekly
launched………………………………….. 1952
circulation…………………………….. .70,0141
readership……………………………. 473,0002
core target………………………. men 18-30
median age……………………. 24 years old2

NME is the most famous weekly music magazine in the world.
NME is a comprehensive, authoritative and definitive guide to all that’s new in great music and more.
NME defines the soundtrack of the 17-25 generation:
- It’s outspoken
- It’s entertaining
- It’s respected
- It sets the musical and lifestyle agenda for Britain’s youth.

NME readers have money (and they know how to spend it!)
• In total, NME Readers spent over £38 million on pre-recorded music in the last 12 months
• NME readers spent £99 on computer/video games
• and £83 on DVDs on average in the last 12 months

Average reader spend on music in the last 12 months – NME £141 – Kerrang £101 – Q £133

NME readers have few responsibilities, they are likely to spend all their money on themselves. They are early adopters and set trends for their peers to follow.
NME readers ………
(Index 100 = GB average)
• Like to listen to new bands (index 296. More than Q and Kerrang)
• Music is an important part of lives (index 164. More than Q and Kerrang)• Like to keep up with the latest fashion (index 174. More than Q and Kerrang)
• Spend a lot of money on clothes (index 182. More than Q)
• Like to stand out in a crowd (index 298. More than Q and Kerrang)• Really enjoy a night out at the pub (index 159)• Like to try new drinks (index 181. More than Q and Kerrang)

With a massive 1.1 million unique users, the award winning NME.com is the “CNN” of the music world. The website is world class, renowned for its accuracy and quality of journalism. The only place to go for the latest music news and reviews.
NME.com retains the core brand values of the New Musical Express:
- It’s highly credible
- It’s always there first
- It’s very well respected
- It also benefits from the immediacy of the internet - reporting music news as it happens.
Featuring exclusive interviews, live concert coverage and footage from the NME awards.

(sorry, missed one more "!" off the end)

http://www.base58.com/images/ultra90a4coverflatsmall.jpg

if i have a moment this lunchtime i will fill in what i can abt the behind-scenes politics of 70s and 80s nme

david merryweather's point is well-taken except thinkin this way too cynically can end up w.you deciding that - if greatness is always in the eye of the teen beholder, then grown out of of - nme is always "much the same", which i think is untrue ----> it really HAS gone through better and worse patches in its 1000-year existence

xpost: nme 95 wasn't *that bad* on electronic stuff and hip hop.

Well are those figures really about Febr. 2005?? i mean, lower down there come these titles--
BBC Music – 56,096 – down 8.1%
Classic FM – 43,077 – up 5.5%
-- now wasn't Classic FM closed like years ago?

...er, carry on :)

(as per bowadays nme, my hometown's library gets it but i v.seldom take a look-in)

http://www.classicfm.com/cmsimages/magazine_april2005.gif

x-p

Mixmag: 46,162
DJ: 12,321A

True, and we're not imagining it, the NME really is in bad form at present. I stopped in the mid '90s cos I thought it was getting a bit Loaded-y but mostly because I wasn't at all keen on their pet bands at the time. But now, on the whole, I actually don't mind the bands they cover, The Bravery, Franz, Libertines etc; but the content is really unsatisfactory and the layout looks like it's been done by the mental.

That 'Ultra' mag - five quid's a bit bleedin' steep for 1990 isn't it?? Heh "You Wouldn't Let it Lie!" - which reminds me, the NME 'broke' Vic Reeve's Big Night Out as they would a new indie band by putting him on the cover before the first episode went out in May '90.

Classic FM's 'Great British Issue' looks like their equivalent of Select's infamous 'Yanks Go Home' Suede cover from '92

erm, have you not noticed that dance's, like dead? or at least ailing. that might have something to do with the 50 percent drop in sales and the fact that Mixmag's two main competitors, Ministry and Muzik have both gone out of business!

at the time, the Ian Pye-NME of mid-80s seemed pretty rudderless and sad c.f. what came before (morley/hoskyns/penman/bohn etc) (although then again it may have just honestly reflected the Bad Music Era of the 83-86) but in retrospect, c.f. what came next, it seems bloody heroic. NME definitely wanted to stop being a rock paper and be like some combination of city Limits, the Face and Collusion. so all that stuff Stuart Cosgrove used to organize as media editor or whatever his job, while it annoyed me as a born again rocker, certainly seems quite a brave attempt to impose some new template on the readership. the sheer Stalinism of it is oddly impressive. you WILL read about things you have no interest.

i think the chocolate article was by Pat Kane actually, and i remember it being pretty interesting, about the insane per capita consumption of chocolate bars in scotland

Well look what we ended up with in their place.

much insider dish 25 years late to follow when my boss goes to lunch!

I still don't see where the complaints are coming from anyway? If you ran NME and put no-name, super obscure bands on the cover then it wouldn't sell. And NME still dedicates space to no-name indie bands anyway. Right now is a really good time for popular guitar music - the charts have embraced Pete Doherty, The Killers, Kasabian, Razorlight, The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Raveonettes, Morrissey, Ian Brown, Muse and Franz Ferdinand. Remember back to just five years ago when all you heard was fucking Coldplay and Travis with the odd boy band or girl band inbetween? Now there is - much like the Britpop explosion of ten years ago - really quality music in the chart again and if NME celebrates that then fucking good on them.

http://idisk.mac.com/stephentrousse/Public/ultra9182.gif

Sure, for obvious political reasons, there has always been a healthy scepticism against all things American here in Europe, Britain included, but I don't see Manics titles such as "Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart" as particularly Brit-Chauvenist anyway.

(er x post)

Ian Brown - well he seems to get bigger with every album doesn't he? Again, I imagine that has something to do with further generations re-discovering The Stone Roses thanks to the number of bands that namecheck them too.

(Note: Doubt this if you want but I got into The Smiths via Suede and The Stone Roses via Oasis)

Look at Q's surveys of All Time 100 Best Albums for instance. During the Britpop boom of the mid 90s, Beatles (who are always very much present in those lists anyway) dominated the list completely, and you would also find The Jam riding high further down the charts.

By the early 00s, the charts had changed a lot. Gone were several of Britpop's sources of inspiration (although Beatles were mainly just sliding down the chart somewhat). Instead, a lot of old Aretha Franklin albums were riding high, obviously cited by fans of contemporary R&B. The same way, fans of Hives etc. made sure that The Stooges, who were nowhere near the 1997 chart, went into the chart with several albums. I expect, if they did a chart like this now, Joy Division, Gang Of Four and The Cure would probably perform unusually well.

i'd love to think it was the ULTRASOUND cover that started the initial decline...

"Remember back to just five years ago when all you heard was fucking Coldplay and Travis with the odd boy band or girl band inbetween?"

No

"Now there is - much like the Britpop explosion of ten years ago - really quality music in the chart again and if NME celebrates that then fucking good on them."

And God help the rest of us

one of the intriguing things abt this reto citation is how LITTLE the bands-citing-bands ever sound like one another: eg played back-to-back the hives and the stooges are from difft planets

Well, at least we had Coldplay and Travis. :-)

xpost

Yeah, and so? Franz and Stripes (and okay Strokes and Ravoenettes) aside, all those acts suck! You Are the Quarry has to be the most overhyped pile of poo of last year. Tuneless, self-parodying cack! If it gets people checking the Smiths then great, but then you might as well say Paul McCartney's Driving Rain is ace cos it might inspire somebody to pick up Revolver.
Ian Brown's solo stuff is apalling pish and the Stone Roses first album isn't *that* good anyway (a good jangly guitar record, but consider what the Mondays and MBVs were doing at the same time and they look positively quaint).
Why is it a good thing to have guitar groups in the charts when their music is as dismal as that of the Killers or Kasabian?
And really, how many "no-mark" indie bands does the NME really cover? Many of the bands covered in Plan B, Pitchfork, Stylus barely get a mention in the NME.

I don't think my music tastes have changed since the Britpop period - I still like indie, trendy, guitar based bands that attract cute indie girls onto the dance floor at indie nights.

Suede/ Sleeper/ Blur/ Pulp/ Saint Etienne/ The Bluetones/ Supergrass etc Have been replaced by The Killers/ Libertines/ White Stripes/ Raveonettes etc etc

Just the way it goes.

But there is no way in hell I'd want to go back to the utterly stagmant period of five years ago (or even three years ago, which is when The Strokes/ White Stripes hype really kicked off... Strokes are kinda 'meh' but they served their purpose) where no lead singer seemed to be capable of having any personality at all and the chart was dreary beyond belief.

A world where Pete Doherty and Brendan Flowers occupy the same chart space as Chris Martin and his pathetic offspring can only be good.

MBV or Mondays could never have written a tune as brilliantly beautiful as "Made Of Stone".

Except Chris Martin has more melody in his little finger than Pete Doherty or Brendan Flowers have in their entire bodies.

I'll take The Killer anyday.

P.S. The Mondays and MBV don't come close to The Roses.

as i argued way above, the prob w.nme has never been WHO it covered, it's the quality of the writing about them

But NME frustrates me as well. When they decided to deride Suede/ Placebo/ Blur etc - the 'old guard' - it was at the same time they had Coldplay, Starsailor and Travis on the front cover and, let's face it (and ignoring Geir) these are horrid bands that made my music collection just kinda sit still for so fucking long and out of a lack of anyone exciting coming along.

P.S. Mark - Kasabian aint as good as the Roses but I like them.

I'd second that.

Dark Star 'Graceadelica'
Super Furry Animals 'Do Or Die'
Andreas Johnson 'Glorious'
David Bowie 'Survive'
Death In Vegas 'Aisha' (awesome)
RHCP 'Otherside'
Ian Brown 'Dolphins Were Monkeys'
Oasis 'Go let It Out'
Fiona Apple 'Fast As You Can'
CRW 'I Feel Love' (not actually indie/rock but included here for my own amusement)
Eels 'Mr E's Beautiful Blues'
Air 'Plyaground Love'
REM 'The Great Beyond'
Toploader 'Dancing In The Moonlight'
Bluetones 'Keep The Home Fires Burning'
Smashing Pumpkins 'Stand Inside Your Love'
Muse 'Sunburn'
Dum Dums 'Everything' (hastily forgotten proto-Busted)
Filter 'Take A Picture'
No Doubt 'Ex Girlfriend'
Babybird 'The F Word' (great!)
Primal Scream 'Kill All Hippies' (from a good album)
Semisonic 'Singing In My Sleep'
Doves 'The Cedar Room' (from a good album)
Idlewild 'Actually It's Darkness'
Beck 'Mixed Bizness' (fab!)
Richard Ashcroft 'Song For The Lovers'
Black Box Recorder 'The Facts Of Life' (quite good)

Can't say I ever cared much for Placebo or Suede, but let it go.

Oh, just noticed you didn't mention Pulp just there. Well, substitute Blur, and caveat that with "Damon has always seemed to be a tawt, but the music is good enough to let it pass"

RHCP 'Road Trippin'
Feeder 'Buck Rogers'
Terrorvision 'Do You Wanna Go Faster'
Linkin Park 'One Step Closer'
Limp Bizkit 'Rollin'
Mansun 'Fool' (guilty pleasure)
Ash 'Shining Light'
JJ72 'Snow'
U2 'Stuck In A Moment...'
Grandaddy 'The Crystal Lake'
Dum Dums 'Army Of Two'
Starsailor 'Fever' (IT BEGINS!)
Papa Roach 'Last Resort'
My Vitriol 'Always Your Way' (anyone remember the review of this in NME?)
Semisonic 'Chemistry'
King Adora 'Suffocate' (guilty almost pleasure)
Marilyn Manson 'The Fight Song'
Manics 'Found That Soul' and 'So Why So Sad' (Avalances mix still ace)
Gorillaz 'Clint Eastwood'
Muse 'Plug In baby'
Alisha's Attic 'Push It All Aside'
Crazy Town 'Butterfly' (pushing it here...)
Ocean Colour Scene 'Up On The Down Side'
Ash 'Burn Baby Burn' (guilty etc.)
Feeder 'Seven Days In The Sun'
Toploader 'Only For A While'

calum otm shockah?

Don't get me wrong, I bought The Super Furry Animals/ Black Box Recorder/ Babybird/ Idlewild too - but in no way did they have the impact that the bands I've mentioned upthread did and - BBR aside - not one of the people listed below was of Pete Doherty like scale or talent. Fucking ANDREAS JOHNSON.

Dark Star 'Graceadelica'
Super Furry Animals 'Do Or Die'
Andreas Johnson 'Glorious'
David Bowie 'Survive'
Death In Vegas 'Aisha' (awesome)
RHCP 'Otherside'
Ian Brown 'Dolphins Were Monkeys'
Oasis 'Go let It Out'
Fiona Apple 'Fast As You Can'
CRW 'I Feel Love' (not actually indie/rock but included here for my own amusement)
Eels 'Mr E's Beautiful Blues'
Air 'Plyaground Love'
REM 'The Great Beyond'
Toploader 'Dancing In The Moonlight'
Bluetones 'Keep The Home Fires Burning'
Smashing Pumpkins 'Stand Inside Your Love'
Muse 'Sunburn'
Dum Dums 'Everything' (hastily forgotten proto-Busted)
Filter 'Take A Picture'
No Doubt 'Ex Girlfriend'
Babybird 'The F Word' (great!)
Primal Scream 'Kill All Hippies' (from a good album)
Semisonic 'Singing In My Sleep'
Doves 'The Cedar Room' (from a good album)
Idlewild 'Actually It's Darkness'
Beck 'Mixed Bizness' (fab!)
Richard Ashcroft 'Song For The Lovers'
Black Box Recorder 'The Facts Of Life' (quite good)

indie culture has been INCREDIBLY slow to recognise the huge opportunity this offers = its lack of wider cultural gumption is one of the main reasons i am down on it

probably true, but that has no more to do with ability and artistic vision than it does to do with NME and co. fulfilling their self-devised mandate by 'SETTING THE CULTURAL AGENDA FOR TODAY'S SEMI-CONSCIOUSLY CONFORMIST YOUTH' based on some very flaky notions about what constitues innovation, relevance, style/substance etc.

"Don't get me wrong, I bought The Super Furry Animals/ Black Box Recorder/ Babybird/ Idlewild too - but in no way did they have the impact that the bands I've mentioned upthread did and - BBR aside - not one of the people listed below was of Pete Doherty like scale or talent."

oh dear

I'll admit most of the stuff on that list = "a vague tinnitus of pig iron guitar drone" but wtf has changed in nme world? (steve m's point, yes, I know)

Why am I even posting on this thread? I don't give a fucking shit about the nme!! shut it down! get the all to do proper jobs! they will look back and thank you in years to come "thank god I'm a plumber/auto mechanic/street sweeper, doing something useful, not hyping fucking Jet!!"

That was quite a terse squirt of bile by Swells right?

In other worse, the charts have never ever been worse. I prefer even boy/girl bands to R&B. At least boy/girl bands had proper songs with proper melodies.

But then maybe I - like those at NME - have the finger on what constitutes the next big thing and you do not?

Look, I'm not being superior, I'm just trying to say that there's some amazing, wonderful music out there that gets completey ignored by the NME these days, whether it's punk, indie, psych, folk, alt country, hip-hop, grime, r 'n b etc etc.
You honestly think that safe, mediocre pap like the Killers is the best the pop world has to offer?
This "sad indie" attitude is really patronising and wrong-headed, and has been prevalent in the NME since Steve and Mark Sutherland took over, despite the best efforts of numerous writers to push smaller acts. They've promoted this idea that all music on small labels is tuneless underachieving nonsense and you needn't bother your heads with it, here's some safe, easily digestible pop-rock.
It's become an extremely conservative magazine, and while I accept they have to put popular acts on the cover, even at the height of Britpop you'd have hip-hop, techno, and underground indie stuff getting a look in on the Vibes and On sections. None of that now.

And Geir, the whole of Loveless is infinitely more beautiful than Ian Brown's tuneless honking. :P

What is this Pete Doherty=genius nonsense. I'm not some kneejerk Doherty hater and think he's done some decent enough tunes (and a fair amount of crap too), but he's hardly some godlike genius. All this claptrap about him being a poet for using words like spleen! C'mon! Don't insult my intelligence. I'm well aware studenty guitar music was shite in 2000-2001 - I was music ed of my student paper at the time and would agree that the coming of the Stripes was a godsend after Travis, Starsailor and Coldplay - but replacing offensively bland balladry with offensively bland rock is hardly a huge step forward.

yr on crack, sir!

of the two lists i posted i think very few tracks are really any good, but i think very few are actually really appallingly atrocious either (certainly no worse than Razorlight etc.)

it's pretty easy to have your finger on what constitutes the next big thing when you're the only people who still give a shit about such concepts AND are typing their names out yourself along with the line 'THE NEXT BIG THING!' on the front cover every week

x-post yeah what steve m said as well.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????

Dance music is dead?????

Well do you care to mention some names? Personally, I have no interest in many of these genres so - you know - could care less, but as far as the indie stuff goes I'm perfectly happy with The Raveonettes/ Killers/ Babyshambles/ Razorlight etc - they all sound top notch to me and - hey get this - NME played no part in me gushing over them. Can you just accept that some indie bands get big simply because a vast number of people really, really like them?

"You honestly think that safe, mediocre pap like the Killers is the best the pop world has to offer?"

I wouldn't say it's safe... and safe as opposed to what? A personable lead singer, kickass rock-pop tunes... well, that sort of stuff wouldn't be in the charts five years ago. At least not the top 10.

"This "sad indie" attitude is really patronising and wrong-headed, and has been prevalent in the NME since Steve and Mark Sutherland took over, despite the best efforts of numerous writers to push smaller acts. They've promoted this idea that all music on small labels is tuneless underachieving nonsense and you needn't bother your heads with it, here's some safe, easily digestible pop-rock."

As someone who thinks The Beta Band, Mogwai, Fugazi etc deserve to sell what they do now - i.e. very little, I could care less. Give me Take Me Out by FF anyday you know?

"It's become an extremely conservative magazine, and while I accept they have to put popular acts on the cover, even at the height of Britpop you'd have hip-hop, techno, and underground indie stuff getting a look in on the Vibes and On sections. None of that now."

I'm sure if NME sold double when it has Puff Daddy or Ja Rule on the cover then it would continue to do so. Fact is, their core readership do not want these acts. I never bought NME to read about folk music or R and B. I fucking hate R and B.

"And Geir, the whole of Loveless is infinitely more beautiful than Ian Brown's tuneless honking"

The word tuneless is surely relevant to MBV and not Ian Brown? Loveless is painful to listen to - an utter bag of shit.

"What is this Pete Doherty=genius nonsense. I'm not some kneejerk Doherty hater and think he's done some decent enough tunes (and a fair amount of crap too), but he's hardly some godlike genius. All this claptrap about him being a poet for using words like spleen! C'mon! Don't insult my intelligence. I'm well aware studenty guitar music was shite in 2000-2001 - I was music ed of my student paper at the time and would agree that the coming of the Stripes was a godsend after Travis, Starsailor and Coldplay - but replacing offensively bland balladry with offensively bland rock is hardly a huge step forward."

Pete Doherty is a genius.

x-post, yeah, xtrmntr fucking sucks, I agree.

the complaint is only that the championing of the mediocre continues and is facilitated by sub-mainstream rock press/tv/radio axis. they're pretty homogenous, unimaginative, conservative and afraid to take real risks. but you could say that about other popular forms too (pop idol pop, rap, lightweight dance/club 'anthems' etc.)

A personable lead singer, kickass rock-pop tunes... well, that sort of stuff wouldn't be in the charts five years ago. At least not the top 10.

i think it's fair to say there was nothing quite like The Killers five years ago, but do factor in low sales nowadays when taking into account their success - and it took a full eighteen months or more for them to really peak. but yes, a packed out New Bands tent with people outside twenty rows deep) at Glastonbury last year seemed quite unprecedented for a band who'd only dented the top 30 at that point tho maybe there are other examples from the past i don't know (if someone says Starsailor had the same i will die!)...not to deny that their success is really ALL down to NME/XFM/MTV2 hype as there was definitely this big pregnant buzz akin to The Strokes before 'Hard To Explain' charted (tho NME's ridiculous obession with them is well documented and they played quite a part in the hype, effectively forcing the band to switch from the Eve Sesh tent at Reading 2001 to the main stage (even tho the band work far better in a smaller environ) because they'd stressed for weeks beforehand how important and amazing it was going to be, convincing a whole bunch of people that it was not to be missed, something the Eve Sesh tent couldn't sustain. as it turned out they were fucking rubbish, surprise surprise.

The word tuneless is surely relevant to MBV and not Ian Brown? Loveless is painful to listen to - an utter bag of shit.

Pete Doherty is a genius."

Oh dearie me. *shakes head*

You want names, ok...

When I'm talking folk I don't mean traditional stuff, I mean indie and psych folk like Devendra Banhart, Six Organs of Admittance, Joanna Newsom, Lucky Luke, Alasdair Roberts, James Yorkston, Fence Collective, hell, even the likes of Smog and Will Oldham, who the NME wrote about plenty in 1998-99. Yes, I'm award NME wrote about Banhart and Newsom, but they lumped them together in one ridiculous piece as the "quirkysomethings" and haven't really got behind them since. Anyway, this is some of the most interesting and beautiful music around, and even if it's not to everyone's taste, is clearly worth some more coverage.

In terms of good noise why not Comets On Fire, Lightning Bolt, the reformed Slint (did NME even review ATP this time?), Wolf Eyes...

Good pop - Annie, Annie Annie!!!

I don't keep up with hip-hop as much as I did but Roots Manuva and Edan are kicking my arse right now.

All this is far more exciting, tuneful, funkier, freakier and more soulful than Kasabian, Killers, Babyshambles etc.

What is there to like about the Killers and their ugly tunes, inane lyrics and bogstandard pop-rock with light electronic frills? They sound like Shed Seven crossed with Duran Duran! Of course they'd get into the charts anytime.

Franz are great fun, but they're only the tip of an incredibly diverse Glasgow music scene. But that's for another post.

late 60s: nme is a trade mag really, mm also covers jazz
early 70s: nme is struggling, editor andy gray brought in to somehow attract "the kids" — he reaches towards the underground mags (=oz, frendz, ink etc) and hires young counterculture writers like c.sh44r murray and nick k3nt; mm is still considered the "serious" rock paper, and covers prog very seriously indeed (also jazz and avant garde jazz)
mid-late 70s: sounds is founded, instantly hoovers up the large but despised metal readership, and is fastest to get the measure of punk (vis j.savage and j.suck and sandy roberston mainly); nme hires "hip young gunslingers" j.burchill and t.parsons to catch up; mm remains somewhat disdainful and beached

[at this stage the four rock inkies are between them pretty much the one-stop shop for ALL NON-MAINSTREAM CULTURE as well as discussion of pop and rock — there are a handful of small select alternatives, like zigzag, rock files, street life] [the fourth inky being RECORD MIRROR, which is printed in colour and aimed more at girls and teen-pop]

end of 70s: nme ed n!ck l0gan has breakdown (poss engendered by pressure from then-owners), and locks self into office in kings reach tower for several weeks!! owners (ipc i think) have groomed a house successor but the DAY he is due to take over he is busted for drugs and successor is dep.ed n3!l sp3nc3r
80s: logan goes on to found THE FACE; also EMAP develop Just 17 and Smash Hits, which cut a swathe through esp. girl readers who might be expected to START readin nme etc; also tabloids begin dippin toes in pop coverage; rock inky readership starts to fall FAST
84: strike at ipc: nme and new scientist v.militant, mm scabs!! some of mm's best writers leave in disgust (bohn, cynthia r0se, james truman): punk has also now really undermined mm's confidence in what it "ought" to cover — nme is also VERY STRICT about its coverage principle, which is simultaneously VERY ECLECTIC and well-informed, and rigorously exclusionary (almost NO metal is covered eg)... but despite this pitiless leninist austerity its circ holds up better than mm's; sounds is also good and eclectic at this stage, though much less up itself intellectually, but takes a bad bath via bush3ll and oi!!
85: sp3nc3r quits, several insiders up for job of editor - dep.ed tony st3wart, later ed of SELECT and film ed 4ndy gill — but it goes to i4n pye, who in cahoots w.designer joe 3wart gives BRILLIANT PRESENTATION VISION of nme as a cool, swift alternative to the face. many of the old guard leave - some in disgust, some sacked (p3nm4n); others to better prospects (eg 4ngus m4ckinnon eventually to granta; r.c00k to wire)
86: py3's basic idea is good, i think, but he is a weak leader and the mag collapses into bitter in-fighting between factions (the so-called HIPHOP WARS), w.media ed stuart c0sgr0ve (now very senior at c4) on one side and easygoing indie champion d4nny k3lly on the other - the bitterness of this derbate is reflected in the writing, which is often unnecessarily insular and defensive; meanwhile the monitor kids have been handed the farm at mm: much mocked at the time (at least by the nme) they doggedly create somethin of their own over the next half decade
87: py3 leaves, exhausted, and 4l4n l3wis is parachuted in by ipc to save the declining circ (and get rid of the nest of bolsheviks ipc is convinced are runnin the paper): c0sgr0ve - who is simultaneously a brilliant provocateur and impossibly divisive as a "team player" - is let go after a censorship issue in which a dead kennedys cover featurin "penis landscape" by h.r.giger is either run or nearly run; designer 3wart is also kicked out
88: l3wis promotes the (very young)(but also smart) j4mes br0wn to asst ed; design values plummet - for a while it looks like a lame fanzine: its proto-britpop "next big thing" is GREBO!! br0wn will eventually birth lad culture w.loaded

[sorry abt all the degoogleable names]

ts: open subcultures (which encourage curiosity and push you OUTWARDS to be interested in the new and the — to you — strange) vs closed subcultures, which merely cyclically affirm the narrow reaches of themselves, trappin their adherents within a stiflin parochialism? (

didn't The Specials appeal as a result of and benefit from the whole 'bridging cultural divides' thing? perhaps not to kids who just liked the jaunty riddim tho.

Kaiser Chiefs need a Rankin' Roger

i really really do totally believe the specials >>>>>>>>> the kcs in 290 million ways obv but somewhat slightly recognise a version of my own belligerent know-nothing youthster fury c.1981 in the defence upthread of such current nme rockgods as....

>there are a handful of small select alternatives, like zigzag, rock >files, street life]

wasn't there also Let It Rock? supposed to be pretty good, had people like Frith and especially Idris Walters (much admired by Penman)writing about northern soul and reggae and tim buckley

-- the thing about MM lagging behind the other two with punk -- slight element of myth here cos they had Caroline Coon, didn't they, who was really on it, really early? true though that MM on the whole opted to back pub rock and Stiff and Costello -- but i think there was a brief moment when NME lagged behind both MM and Sounds in covering punk

>84: strike at ipc: nme and new scientist v.militant, mm scabs!! >some of mm's best writers leave in disgust (bohn, cynthia r0se, >james truman)

i think was an earlier strike, in 1980, when the MM writers left -- cos Bohn was on NME from 1980 onward, and so was vivien goldman and cynthia rose

MM actually had an up period in the late Seventies when Richard Williams was editor -- among the team were Jon Savage, Simon Frith, Vivien Goldman, Mary Harron, James Truman, Chris Bohn. they covered postpunk quite heavily -- Pop Group on the cover -- big pieces by Mary Harron gang of four, mekons etc --some really quality writing int here however it still had the shitty design c.f the NME and the atmosphere generally was a bit dour and non playful cf nme. that phase ended with the strike

Sounds had a couple of good phases in this period -- the New Musick 77-78 phase when Savage, Suck, Sandy Robertson, John Gill, were really intensively covering TG, Devo, weird fring estuff etc etc, and the design was really quite sharp

then there was the David McCullough as rival to Morley phase, with Garry Bushell, give him his due, articulating a totally coherent aesthetic/politics (2tone, oi!, splodgenessabounds, slade, madness) of his own anti the long-mac joy div/magazine fans

-- Ian Pye came from melody maker staff where he was known as the Invisible Man on account of his low profile in the office

>is let go after a censorship issue in which a dead kennedys cover >featurin "penis landscape" by h.r.giger is either run or nearly >run; designer 3wart is also kicked out

i believe this is the reason why Motorcycle Boy got on the cover, the penis landscape had to be pulled at the last minute and so a page 7 half page story became the cover story -- my how we laughed in the MM office on tuesday

only Kate Moss can really say who was bestest.

re motorcycle boy and penis landscape: of course it wz a special multi-feature "censorship issue" which got censored en bloc, hence no decent stories to switch onto the cover!!

you made a point way up also about it being "you WILL read about things you have no interest": the approach taken w.covering eg hiphop and soul wz very eat-yr-greens viz "you should listen to terence trent darby bcz it is SPIRITUALLY GOOD FOR YOU"

strangely enough this did not work!!

such defences as have been given of britpop and the recent nme make you realise quite how deep the c86 rot ran... it seems to be almost the only legacy remainin!

lol

i'm trying to work up some pun involving eat-yr-Green(s) as in gartside but it's not coming (horrific to note though that Wet Wet Wet took their name from a Scritti song, 'gettin' havin' and holdin'')

talking of spiritual nourishment gavin martin once wrote something about how if he was prime minister kids in school would have to listen to James Brown every day to teach their pride and dignity

>how deep the c86 rot ran
i'm surprised no ones done a piece contrasting C81 and C86 (or perhaps they did and i missed it)

thing is, current anglo-indie doesn't even have the few interesting aspects of C86, like the gender politics and cult of innocence and the proto-Riot Grrl element and the swell mapsy-incompetence aspect or the rabid puritanism of that guy who did a fanzine with flexis on it and thought flexis were the only legit format, flexis played on a dansette, cos 7 inches were too high quality sonically!

modern anglo-postbritpop quasi-indie stuff is all drearily competement and boys-y

I am not being old enough to remember 80s NME but I do know Britpop era NME.
What was the C86 influence?

i think - in a more strident and narrow way - britpop played the same trick, and somehow the same cycle seems to roll on, except with every turn shedding the more interesting stuff and knuckling down deeper only into the dullardry

nme's ideal in the mid-80s, of being this shifting city-bazaar place where lots of DIFFERENT kinds of fans and musics met and clashed and flirted - cz it also then covered african and avant jazz and techno and whatever - was right, i think, in terms of saving and enlarging its readership BUT it attempted it SO stodgily and piously!! i wz mainly writin abt african music then and i pretty much ENTIRELY went off it: not the music itself, but the way everyone wz writin about it

andy while there were certainly ultra-indie-ists who wanted not to sell records there were others - viz primal scream - who were quite happy to sell MANY records

but then only 18 months or so later primal scream admirers STone Roses pulled it off - indie-Sixties sounds but in the charts

and then a few years after that Stone Roses admirers Oasis REALLY pulled it off -- phoney Beatlemania

but each turn in the cycle seems to make the tradition narrower and more conservative -- more boys-y and more Anglo and non-black and impervious to anything modern

like the libertines actually have a skiffle element supposedly!

The sleevenotes to "Rough Trade: Indiepop 01" touches on this, with hilarious (read "hideously embittered") results.

good drummer though

i would love to read this if you can find the link. i'm absolutely fascinated by mark and simon's comments above, but i was a mere nipper in the early 80s and what i fondly recall as the c0llins/mac0ni3/mccånñ era was "my" nme, if you like.

x-post: ned so joyously and wonderfully OTM i've choked on my rega ... oh, shit, i don't smoke any more.

Can't really say the C86 crowd did either, tho.

You've dug your own grave there, kiddo.

What a clown...

Comment would be superfluous here also.

http://www.angelfire.com/super/sotcaabits/forums/nme01.html

you have to wade through some horrible sotcaa-brand cockfarmery.

The thing I remember about early-mid 80s MM was the awful jokey blokiness - tales of drunken hacks at parties, Blarney Hotspur, "Exeter sidings" etc. Whereas NME was drinking a capuccino (in a small pyrex cup & saucer, obv), listening to Courtney Pine, Mantronik & the Redskins, watching Peter Greenaway, David Lynch & the miners' strike on the news. Or liked to think it was.

Ever hear of this funny little thing called the Blues?

As is evident from recent issues of Uncut, the Exeter Sidings faction won that particular battle.

the argt already made is that unlike c86 indie, britpop aspired to pop hegemony (not the same as selling scads of records), not indie outsiderness -- you can add caveats, but this still seems important.

with bands like oasis, cast, ocean colour scene the 'white influences only' and 'blokeyness' arguments stand -- but these bands weren't the whole of britpop, and definitely weren't part of the original britpop thing, which was blur, suede, pulp, st et, denim, auteurs -- none of which were blokey. (possible exception blur circa 'country house'.)

it's true that these bands had a v narrow frame of reference for their 'classic english pop' canon, but it was still wider than the c86 canon: sheffield electropop, ska, music hall ffs -- these weren't in the '86 mix were they? other elements may have dropped out, like noize, but this was presumably a reaction against the dying embers of shoegaze.

i don't really know, i was in primary school in 1986.

(sorry, I just like saying that)

i think - in a more strident and narrow way - britpop played the same trick, and somehow the same cycle seems to roll on, except with every turn shedding the more interesting stuff and knuckling down deeper only into the dullardry

this was true of a lot of britpop like ocean colour scene (properly dadrock), but with a lot of them, like blur, i just don't think that was the project: i can't, unfortunately, say what it was, but with blur or pulp it was not about recreating the golden past. the closest thing i can think of is something like 'paul's boutique', which obv wasn't 'recreating' the 70s, but was very detailed (far more so than any britpop record) in its, er, evocation of the 70s.

whereas the more interesting people in c86 lay dormant for the best part of a decade and resurfaced either to propel riot grrl (a talulah gosh descendent, strictly speaking) or to precipitate the cleverer side of britpop, viz. ex-servants lead singer/guitarist luke haines.

c86 was a fairly catholic collection of TYPES of anglo indie, as available in 1986, tho the godawful production kinda collasped them into a sameness that probably wasn't there

if it had been put forward as THIS, the no prob, why not: but calling it c86 was laying down a marker cz of the legendary prescient EXCELLENCE of c81, which had mapped out this huge potential space within um "pop" that wz unfoldin for us as we watched and listened

in other words, callin it c86 stated NOT this is some of what IS (as eg with the country or reggae freebies recently put out by nme) but THIS IS WHAT MUST AND WILL BE!!

there wz an immediate firestorm of protest, not least from WITHIN the paper - cf extreme factionalism noted above - and, having (inadvertently?) MADE this declaration, those who proposed it retreated into mumbled distancing from any of its more radical elements

(to be "fair", i'm not sure they had actually much thought it through: in a sense britpop developed as a counter to certain aspects of c86-ness — as several foax have noted — but there wz a continuity also, which is what i am trying to call this SELF-VALIDATING CIRCULARITY OF APPEAL... with the exception of ver scream, i think most of the c86ers would have been a bit suspicious of this, but THEY weren't allowed near the mike to defend their line: they were "being defended" by robust hearties of a louder bent, and THIS — coupled with the circularity — got into the nme bloodstream as Good Aesthetic Principles)

britpop - like any "MOVEMENT WITH MOMENTUM" — wz also pretty roomy, fulla contradictions and other possibly unexplored avenues

to be fair to them, the current narrow-tied dadrock-for-smug-teens movement has ENERGY, and energy always moves stuff around: the killers kinda remind me of eddie and the hot rods; well, THEY were forgotten (and EMBITTERED) in no time flat, but stuf did come after em

sounds circa feb '86:
elvis costello: name me a current record that's brilliant.
rd cook: "somewhere in china" by the shop assistants.

I never heard them cite "white influences only". Some of them had "English influences only" though, which naturally also implies that the large part of those influences will neccessarily have to be white.

jangliness went out of fashion: the monolithic principle hung around as an EFFECTIVE WAY OF MUSCLING THROUGH 'NEXT BIG THINGS"

"somewhere in china" is a lovely record!!

"I never heard them cite 'white influences only'" — geir DO YOU ACTUALLY EVE LISTEN TO RECORDS YOURSELF!!?? can YOU hear the blues in the libertines? which aspect is it?

ooh, there was a 'c96' tape you know? i think it had bis on it. this was sold to 15-yr-old me as a nod to c86 -- i never heard of c81 at that point AT ALL. and so to 'us' it didn't seem to proclaim much beyond: here is another unfiring free tape with nme, hey who gots tickets for KNEBWORTH?!>!>!

There are lots of us who think that black music did go in the wrong directions sometime during the 70s, and as such, feel no need to take influence from anything black post 1970 anyway.

Actually Hongro I think we're all sick to death of you coming on this board and interrupting perfectly good threads with your pathetic, ignorant, racist claptrap.

I personally am fed up with having to read your wilfully stupid posts on ILM. We don't want you here. Go away.

Fair warning.

This isn't Geir. Even at his most pigheaded he's never said anything this stupid.

marcello i am not sure that tactic is historically very effective!! no one has EVER LEFT ILX ever!!

I mean it, Mark. Do something about this moron or I won't be responsible for my actions.

When some black acts try the same thing, such as Stevie Wonder (on some of his slower 70s albums tracks, usually not the most well-known songs by him), then it works out fine too. But it seems that black acts sadly very rarely do, because it works out great whenever they do and it is so much better than the repetitive and unmelodic stuff people like James Brown or recent rappers are stuck with. Too bad, but at least there is a lot out there. Personally I don't care about skin colour, so if I end up listening to 99 per cent white music, then so be it.

??????????? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i'm a bit worried now.

Looks like a big bowl of rotting Kool Whip for desert.

Now go away to another, less intellectually demanding message board and talk about Jellyfish's nimble bass lines, there's a good chap.

i *like* that there are people who want robustly to discuss melody — it's a mysteriously much-overlooked and under-explored dimension of music, given its omnipresence in all cultures at all times—but FIRST all sorts of daft stuff gets thrown about whenever the issue arises, and geir then gets driven onto the defensive, where he is at his most ludicrous and ignorant, and SECOND, the only time i actually tried to start up the discussion, geir's contrbution was strangely diffident (+he likes the IDEA of melody but actually hasn't thought about it much) plus also stevie t and i had a HUGE FITE!!! :(

However, attacking something just because it is by males only, played using guitars, and based on melody over rhythm, with absolutely hardly any black influenced at all, then that is an attack on absolutely everything I like. If there wasn't song-based melodic music out there, then I would HATE music. Because song-based, melodic music is the only music I can possibly listen to. I dislike everything else.

This is nonsense, for example. You read this somewhere, and find it handy to toss it around as an idea. It's simpy historically false: there are DOZENS of court music traditions in cultures (including notation and "art" connotations dating far back before Europeans ever intruded.

The word "pie" has no historical forebears, hence pies were invented by aliens.

I repeat - fair warning

but loads of english words come from the greek! they're signifiers; they don't automatically tell you anything about the provenance of the signified! good god almighty.

There are two major items of evidence: The oldest song, and ancient pictures of musicians:

I. The Oldest Song in the World

For fifteen years Prof. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer puzzled over clay tablets relating to music including some excavated in Syria by French archaeologists in the early '50s. The tablets from the Syrian city of ancient Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra) were about 3400 years old, had markings called cuneiform signs in the hurrian language (with borrowed akkadian terms) that provided a form of musical notation. One of the texts formed a complete cult hymn and is the oldest preserved song with notation in the world. Finally in 1972, Kilmer, who is professor of Assyriology, University of California, and a curator at the Lowie Museum of Anthropology at Berkeley, developed an interpretation of the song based on her study of the notation (fig. 1).

The top parts were the words and the bottom half instructions for playing the music. Kilmer, working with colleagues Richard L. Crocker and Robert R. Brown produced a record and booklet about the song called Sounds From Silence.

The song, it turns out, is in the equivalent of the diatonic "major" ("do, re, mi") scale. In addition, as Kilmer points out: "We are able to match the number of syllables in the text of the song with the number of notes indicated by the musical notations". This approach produces harmonies rather than a melody of single notes. The chances the number of syllables would match the notation numbers without intention are astronomical.

This evidence both the 7-note diatonic scale as well as harmony existed 3,400 years ago flies in the face of most musicologists' views that ancient harmony was virtually non-existent (or even impossible) and the scale only about as old as the Ancient Greeks, 2000 years ago. Said Crocker: "This has revolutionized the whole concept of the origin of western music."

Find Confirms Theory

My own interest comes from a book I wrote, The Origin of Music. which put forward the view that there is a natural foundation to the diatonic scale, that it has existed likely even from antiquity. In addition, the book espoused evidence showing that harmony, as well, existed in antiquity.

Music of various cultures, taken over a long evolutionary period, show patterns emerge (despite other differences) such as the universal use of octaves, 4th and 5ths, and the similarities underpinning the various musical scales between cultures. These facts led to the theory.

Thus, the oldest song known from a cuneiform document has provided major confirmation to this viewpoint. In turn, the theory may even now help to interpret the findings. Kilmer wrote: "I certainly do like and am profiting from The Origin of Music".

Why Do Scales, Keys and Harmony Exist?

At the earliest times in musical development, a sense for "melody" would not have occurred overnight. Prior to it, music often was the playing of single notes, assigned to various rituals, such as one gong for moon, another for sun, another for death, birth, etc., and played without much or any regard to their succession as musical melody of any sort. Scales might even be virtually non-existent as was harmony.

What is harmony for? After all, a single tone is more "pure" than any combinations of tones or chords, which are cluttered with overtones that are usually dissonant with each other. Why did humanity bother to add, to the relatively clean single tone, "harmony" notes (and therefore, greater dissonance)?

The answer is that harmony's function has evolved mostly to make the notes of melodies "connect" or to make their connection to each other melodically more apparent to the ear by making their common inner overtones audibly explicit in chords.

It follows that harmony had no reason to exist among any people who are lacking scales. Scales are, historically, "congealed" or "generic" melody in the abstract.

Once scales developed (especially a favoured two, major and minor), then we are looking at a people for whom connections between notes is very important. The agenda is whether melody is important enough for them to overlook the dissonant elements in chords (compared to their purer, more consonant single tones), so as to allow them to use chords in the enhancement of their melodies. Only after the full scale and melody develop first can harmony even begin to appear on this historical agenda.

The oldest song dates this agenda far earlier in time and gives to the diatonic scale a near-universal status not formerly ascribed to it.

"Tonality", which is defined as a "loyalty to a keynote", is also exhibited in the oldest song by repeating phrases found at the end of sentences, usually on the same note as the keynote of the tune.

.II. Ancient Pictures Indicate Harmony

After correspondence with Kilmer, to review the whole notion of ancient uses of harmony, I looked back at my old music books and the replicas of ancient vases, drawings and bas-reliefs, which depicted ancient musicians and instruments. I noted evidence for harmony that virtually jumped out at me, yet oddly had escaped me, and apparently others, for years before now.

In the harp pictures the hands are on different strings. Could they be playing different notes at once? Another possibility is that while one hand is shown playing a note, the other hand has played, or is preparing to play, the next note -- which certainly is not evidence of ancient harmony. But this interpretation may be lacking:

We must digress momentarily: when we look at transcriptions of most folk-music, at ancient records, it is almost invariable to find that music for voices proceeds mostly in a step-wise manner, with leaps of 4ths, 5ths or greater intervals infrequently used. This would be true especially in religious participatory primitive music in which the choruses and soloists could be expected to be mostly under-trained and unable to sing accurately the leaps to far notes.

Now, here's the point: If the hands on the lyre were interpreted as being set, not to play two notes at once, but one waiting in preparation only for playing the next note in a usually step-wise melody, then the bulk of the illustrations from the past would show these anticipating fingers and hands waiting on the next string, or two strings later at most.

But instead, many illustrations show wide gaps between hands (more than would be common if these were notes in a step-wise melody), hinting at the note movement, not of melodies, but of the wider intervals of harmonies. In the nearest hand, indeed, sometimes it seems almost certain that thumb and forefinger have likely already plucked, or will pluck two notes.

There is more evidence in ancient Greek writings (Aristotle, Problems, Book XIX.l2.):

"Why is it that lower of two strings always has the tune? If one omits the paramese when one should sound it with the mese, the tune is there none the less; but if one omits the mese when one should strike both the tune is missing...." (Emphasis added.)

The quote seems more than clear that two notes, and not just one at a time, were usually struck on the Kithara's strings.

The Greeks and others had "double pipes" (aulos), sometimes one with holes, the second without. (Sometimes

(Sometimes one with holes, the second without. (Sometimes each had different sets of holes.) Both are shown in players' mouths at once. One, like bagpipes, played a drone (a keynote?); the other a melody. The harmonies must have been considered acceptable even then.

Indeed, the usual concepts about ancient music are changing.

--Robert Fink

"Started somewhere around the Mediterranean anyway": there are NO historical grounds for this claim, apart from bad guesses based on the region of genesis of a particular word (which is speculation not history). You are VERY MUCH NOT well-clued up on the history of non-European music — fair enough, it doesn't appeal to you — but you then use this ignorance to piledrive others into silence.

Western African cultures had never heard of music until the imperialists arrived them and told them the sounds they made when they dance could be called music. They did have a word for dance though. But dance and music isn't the same.

er, it's not really working, is it? :)

that's like saying you weren't a knob until i actually said: "geir, you're a knob." yet, er, you palpably were, as most of your comments on this thread prove.

it's probably true that some highly dance-orietned cultures were baffled that western "experts" distinguished the SOUNDS from all the activities that go with the sounds: their bafflement would have increased if they'd gone across to europe and witnessed the solmen and highly ritualised "sitting down dance" which almost invariably accompanied composed music (until recording arrived, and allowed listeners to decide on their own dance)

ulp: i just had a bad idea-flash linking protestantism and the coming of the book; 20th century music and the coming of the record: and the scary phrase LORD OF THE DANCE

(so this thread has not been in VAIN!! comin soon: the most frightening mark meme EVAH!!

YOU CAN'T ARGUE WITH FACTS!

In Europe, at least in certain social cultures, the "dancing" usually consisted of sitting down, not moving a muscle, while listening to the music in detail.

There was also dancing, but the sounds that accompanied that dancing is not the ones that have become the musical canon today. Simply because they were inferior to what Mozart, Haydn, Handel etc. were doing.

except for the "musical canon" bit, which is ill-informed ahistorical nonsense

the iudea that you listen to music in less detail when dancing is also obviously ludicrous: a good dancer almost certainly listens in MUCH MORE detail than an average sessile "art music" listener

(a lot of the more detaily detail in wetsern art music is really only apparent when reading the score anyway) ("music of the eye not the ear" someone called it)

This is simply false Geir, and very silly. Just because you WANT to believe something doesn't make it so. Your deep ignorance of and indifference towards music history—Western music history AND non-Western music history—really undermines a more subtly interesting historical point (about the Western composed canon and its complicated aftermath).

(lynksey's hints that this is all abt platonism are well-taken)

B-b-but then, no religion/worship, and ergo no music!

20 years ago, that would have been a staple feature of the NME!

whåt's his nåm3?

xpost er what mark said.

the "classical geniuses" actually worked and produced in a much more CHART-ORIENTED pop way than how classical music (so-called) is done today. they expected their opera or symphony to hit that season and then they'd have to come up with more for next year, cos no one gave a fuck abt seeing don giovanni a year later! (until after mozart died, and you didn't have to pay him to direct it anymore) (which also fell into a growing culture of past-adoration similar to what got encrusted around shakespeare). and they'd have to beat the other dudes for the commissions etc!! it was a game, and you had to run tings!

The European Classical Canon is a huge monument to the vanity of Kings, the glory of armies, religion-based class structure and every now and again is pretty much a call to the Aryanmobile. The entire setup of classical music was to remove art from the masses and make it seem like something unattainable, something Godlike. Something that could only be done by the mighty court of the King who pays you six handfuls of shit a year for washing his horse's cock while his favourite abbott fucks your wife and all of your daughters in the name of "Jesus". It ain't the glory days.

xpost wait i thought noel gallagher was frank abt his amateurism on guitar?

I would get too defensive if I read the NME these days. I wouldn't know the bands and I would hate them for telling me I should like them.

Professional maybe in the sense that they were making a living from it (so did Sex Pistols too). Most Britpop bands weren't all that skilled as musicians. Take Oasis, for instance: Noel Gallagher may have been an excellent songwriter, certainly knowing a thing or two about pop hooks, melodies etc. But he was rather unskillful as a guitar player, and so about most of his band. Liam Gallagher, in fact, had absolutely not talent for anything at all, and I see no reason why he was in the band other than his blood and family name.

There are exceptions, for instance, OCS were great instrumentalists, but mainly, Britpop was about songwriting more than profesionally musicians. Chris Squire was a guitar hero of sorts, certainly, but Stone Roses really predated Britpop, and was originally considered part of the baggy bunch rather than a Britpop band.

Then again he may not have been. Chris Squire? Was he in Yes or sumthin'?

this "entire setup" statement is totally untrue! haydn's english music was performed in a structure closer to a mall than anything, that's just one counterexample. you're just reconfirming the canon's enforced incorrect image of its music, only in reverse, seen?

dada i think the fact that c86 is still contentious 20 years on is kind of a triumph, though whose triumph i couldn't say

the "what constitutes professionalism and/or musicianship" question feels like opening the tardis door into raw space (aka a WHOLE CAN OF WORMHOLES!!)

Aout Noel. The main misconception by those who have never played or penned a tune is that its something that requires technique. Catchy things are simple. Get too complex and the brain loses interest.

Noelly G knew this very well - if you look at Oasis' choruses they tend to be 3 notes, 2 that alternate a few times which then resolve to a third. The 2 trill notes tend to be next to each other in the scale and the resolver is always the root or fifth. This is why you can sing the chorus of any Oasis song over the chords to any other Oasis song (give it a go - its funny for about seven minutes).

And did Mr. Monobrow spend hours in college to work this out? No. Why? Because harmony is inate in every bastard atom of this toxic boxing ring we call the universe. Everybody picks up on it (being omnipresent its something you pick up rather than learn, like you don't learn Blue or Clouds). This is why lonely, long-faced undergraduates called Mandy can bellow along to Daydream Believer without having ever having even given a thought to how music works. Ok, she's not in tune, but her brain knows whats there even if the muscles and motors in her body can't reproduce it through that long J-20 coated throat. Your Mr. Gallagher is just one of these people whose left brain has got good at recognising the patterns that are most pleasing and is able to reproduce them or make up new ones.

beethoven wasn't a royalist, he was a TORTURED ARTIST! the very first one! this is like music appresh 101 here!

anyway geir there are plenty of Actual Musicological Authorities that will back you up your (momentarily useful) luv of the "Classical Canon" but none of them will like ocean fucking color scene either.

Geir, just out of interest, who taught you about music in the first place?

Christ, its sunny outside, why am I concerning myself with this ridiculous thread?

(the cycle of fifths doesn't ground the standardised western scale: there's a funny little thing called the PYTHAGOREAN COMMA)

one of the reasons western composition went through a crisis of confidence in the late 19th century was the arrival in europe at a sequence of world fairs of asian musicans — chinese and japanese most famously, but also gamelan players — whose organisation of scale, timbre, non-"harmonic" counterpoint and other matters was at once highly sophisticated and rule-bound, and unrelatable (except very indirectly) to Western norms: composers like debussy were captivated by the hugely expanded scope of compositional possibility

so-called "academic" attempts to shore up the western canon untainted failed bcz the "serious" music that resulted was so boring: even non-avant garde and highly melodic composers adapted and absorbed a LOT from the spoils of empire, bcz it helped them hear in new ways

melody ISN'T a primary constituent of some kinds of music, nor is harmony: it doesn't really matter whether we call these kinds of music of "music" or not, since they are intrinsically interesting (because they are non-urgent activities undertaken by absorbed human beings), and bcz clearly they impinge emotionally on anything normatively defined as music (by the IRON LAW of attraction of opposites haha)

geir's terror is really only the flipside of (say) david byrne's* fascination: the same impulse coped with differently

EICHMANN

(x^xpost) I don't know whether I'm talking to Geir or to a Marcello who already knows more about this than I do, but the Greek "mousike" was originally any of the art forms connected to the Muses, and as I understand it (which is probably not very far) the approximately modern meaning of singing or reading poetry over lyre playing was not until quite late in the day, just as the idea of different Muses for each strand of the arts was a long time post-classical-Greece.

Basically I think the idea of separating "dance" from "music" entirely is not one that would have made sense to the Greeks, if you want to play the Greeks-invented-the-word card. Plus as for inventing harmony I gather that for all that they had multi-stringed lyres they're thought to have played only one string at at a time. Did I say this last time we had this argument? I forget.

Strange thing about C96 was that its "bleak tinnitus of pig-iron guitar drone" (or whatever the phrase was) seemed very little to do with what the paper itself had been interested in plugging at the time - in other words I thought the comp was a'right (Quickspace! Ligament! Spare Snare! Mogwai! yeah I know, but I am enough of a corner indie fux to defend at least half those bands even now, though I am not about to do so here) but had found the paper a little too heavy on the Oasis side of things for some time. I don't really know what relation my half-remembered teenage surprise bears to the C86 thread of the conversation but there it is.

the fact of its having been built (and been fun) does not require that all subsequent vehicular action be subordinate to the pennyfarthing principle nor does it mean that rockets (invented of course by the chinese!!) can't be vehicles

Folks, about ten years back Geir and I engaged in a massive battle royale on alt.music.alternative that lasted for about two days (scary but true) wherein I finally got him to concede slightly on something after battling through circular/limited arguing quite like the above. It was a weirdly triumphant feeling but also exhausting and pointless as a process.

Unlike, say, Zertain Other Posterz on Thiz Thread, Geir does not come on the board to project his insecurities and attack people directly due to the lack of a life. The spectacularly wrong-headed conclusions he advances about musical history are things I've learned to skip over in my head. I can understand wanting to give him a logistical beatdown but unless you *really* want to spare the time, I'd avoid the impulse.

Oh granted, there is always the 'one must sharpen one's claws' aspect.

a tantaslising vision!

I want your skulls
I need your skulls
I want your skulls
I need your skulls

As for MM, again I bought the NME line wholesale, and - assuming that it was a bunch of Genesis fans playing catch-up - avoided it for years. I kind of regret that now.

(Autumn 1973 to Spring 2002, maybe missed a few in 78 when I defected to Sounds for a bit.)

(see also: entire discography of Fields of the Nephilim)

b) Do I have to?

(see also: entire discography of Fields of the Nephilim)

Haha, VERY OTM. :-)

I also remember a period where I stopped reading the MM, because all of its writers were REALLY terrible morley/penman copyists, and you could read through whole issues w/o one word having any sense or meaning whatsoever.

Excellent posts from lynks3y on these subjects, as always.

Where the bloody hell have you been, rebecca space cadet! Please post more!!

*i* remember that issue norman: the silly thing was it came in the era when they were TRYING to be all-embracing — the anti-metal exclusionism was a hangover from earlier, and they kind of wanted to END it and didn't have anyone to ask who knew how hence result = (yet another) v.poor issue

i remeber dele and i grousing during the ousemartins set about womad: "WHERE IS THE NIGERIAN HEAVY METAL!!"

there needs to be a shorter way of describing that, or an emoticon even

None of the people I know who go to such events are what I would call musical purists, oddly enough. Actually, come to think of it, one is.

St3v3 G3ng3 ran an indie fanzine called "R3d R0s3s For Me".

Ah, some guy indeed.

Student Newspaper Forum - Music pages
... but what's up with mike sterry's review of michael jackson? ms artemis. IP Logged. ...
Wow, did anybody see that Mike Sterry is now writing for the NME? ...
http://www.studentnewspaper.org/cgi-bin/yabb/ YaBB.cgi?board=entertainment;action=display;num=1065896561 - 32k - Cached - Similar pages

http://www.brandnewhero.com/staff/mike.html

Yay, it's the Plan B forum! That's where I first saw the Sterry quote that got this thread started. Some good vitriol there and Everett True hasn't even entered the debate.

Judging from the boy Sterry's musical picks he obviously never listened to Peel in his life. So, indeed, what does he know?

mistermike141

http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/community/showthread.php?p=486843

Which reveals that his e-mail address is

the_lone_assassin@hotmail.com

http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/community/search.php?searchid=503311

Ha - this is fantastic, and true! Staple audience of gigs we've played recently wiv N'Gales, Attila, I Lude etc is balding 45 yr old Fallfan with overcoat and ancient Rough Trade carrier bag that survived the punk wars. Where are the burds!

believe it or not, they were down the front for the wedding present in glasgow the other week. seriously.

(Dr. C, you going to be around London in July when I visit? No out of town trips this time, dammit.)

I dislike the NME for completely different reasons that most of the ILM'ers dislike the NME. I dislike NME because they are too hostile against yesterday's music, while you guys seem to NME because they don't completely ignore yesterday's music.

i. geir never listens to any of the records he likes to talk about
ii. geir never reads anyone else's posts
iii. geir has next to no grasp of western music history

http://www.coastaltown.nildram.co.uk/porl/PEELBLASPHEMY.jpg

Just doing the photoshoppage made me unspeakably angry. It's not nice to look at, is it?

Says the one who never leaves this forum and travels to other countries alone - no girlfriend, no companions, just people on a message board to look forward to meeting...

I only know you from words on a screen, you might be extremely nice in person. We share some similar music tastes so I don't see why not.

I think the important fact everyone seems to be missing is that Menswe@r are back and on the cover of this weeks issue of NME!

No. I will do it in stages. Subtle stages that you can either debate or ignore. Choice is yours, Disco.

does anyone want a bunch of old issues of "Select" magazine?

I hadn't realized that the Left Banke had come to define the 1960s.

If only.....

But, the "Menswear" comment will probably hold good for a while yet...

The seventh on the A may not seem much but it makes a fairly dreadful impact on the thing as a whole.

NME was the first to:

* Put Stone Roses, Blur, Oasis, Radiohead, U2, Manic Street Preachers and Eminem on the cover, plus loads of other bands which have gone on to great international success
* In 1952 NME was the first publication to invent and run a weekly music chart based on record sales
* First music publication in Europe to launch a website
* NME Brats were the first awards to recognise the talents of Radiohead, Suede, Blur, Oasis and Fatboy Slim
* The first publication in the world to extensively cover Punk, with the first reviews ever of The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Stranglers
* The first ever Oasis release was on a cover-mounted NME cassette

The ones that aren't are laughably of-their-moment.

Well, they closed down the NME messageboard because it didn't support the magazines views, so I doubt they'll print that

Is this true? I've long suspected that it might be the case.

* Put ... Eminem on the cover

i find this hard to believe.

i find this hard to believe.

You're right to find it hard to believe, NME weren't even the first to put Eminem on a cover in the UK (Fat Lace hold that honor).

I am currently in the process of moving and finding this chillingly otm. I KNOW that some of those boxes must contain copies of The Catalogue and Underground, and even an NME with a B.MCGUIGAN cover!

And now I finally have that long sought-after claim to fame. Oooh, shiny.

-- mark grout (mark.grou...), March 19th, 2005.

One of my favourite things about ILX, this.

have you started a pro celebrity wrestling thread yet Dom? I didn't see it obv Dr Who is rather important but well, you seemed somewhat excited by the prospect.

cya,

ELLEN THE MYSTERIOUS (WHOO>!!)

And what on earth is going on with all Mike Sterry's friends turning up?

Also: is it a coincidence that the iTunes window between the track numbers and the price column is precisely 666 pixels wide?

NAME THEM NOW.

1. Andy Dick-Taylor from the Artic Monkeys

More like "We Are Rubbish", amirite?

A bit like the mighty acting career of James Lance!

http://www.petersearle.com/jameslance.jpg

DO YOU SEE?

29. Big breasted one from B & S [sorry wrong magazine that is plan b]

B&S have had a top 20 single, Plan B wouldn't touch them.

look this is you two getting ready to be pwning the nme amirite???????

not sure who's more stupid, guardian, nme, or nme readers.

THANKS DOC THAT'S AN INTERESTING QUOTE THAT NOBODY HAS EVER HEARD OF BEFORE.

So who is the 'hero' worthy? (ans: none of the above. Or any other)

really? 'all' rock stars are pro-feminism and gay rights? for serious?

thing is britpop probably WOULDN'T have happened without him.

xpost

I don't think I read that issue, which is odd cos I bought Select quite regularly back then. I turned 17 in 1993, I was hardcore corny indie fuX0r back then.

1) 'magic america'

was it trying to break new ground? i'm just sayin. but it was a 'watershed' i think, for better or for worse or for in-between.

still less so now.

cf all music ever

And was Britpop really so anti-America/grunge? Or was is just some bands from Britain with more or less of a mod fixation?
-- eyesteel (david.rotho...), May 18th, 2006.

more the first than the second.

Still, that made me start listening to music that wasn't "indie" for a change, so in that respect it was positive!

or am i just being too much of a pedant..

though maybe saint etienne's 'i buy american records' was some kind of commentary on this.

basically my only ways of hearing abt 'indie' music were the evening session and the nme. i don't remember there being all that much shoegazing going on c. 1993, but that's how music journalism works, you have to be mean to what came before.

NME on Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures:

Ranked #4 in NME's list of The Greatest Albums Of The '70s - ...Ian Curtis made epilepsy momentarily hip with the funereal brooding of 'Atmosphere' and panicky congestion of 'She's Lost Control.' Let's party!...
NME (09/11/1993)

waow