Stop press: NME editor revealed to be fairly ordinary young managerial type!

So he gave him a hair of the dog?

Well, he may be a git, but not by that article anyway.

did anyone read that piece by an ex nme staffer who was all like "while I was reviewing k-lame indie fux0rz, really i secretly liked supertramp and genesis and hawkwind etc" - I kind of felt a bit annoyed about it, because of the total bogosity of it, but the writer was hott in a kind of young shirley collins way so I couldn't get too annoyed.

Sarah Dempster I think? Yeah, I read it and thought it forced, basically because it crunched two ideas together as completely interrelated:

1) Stick to your guns with what you like and don't be afraid of saying that you prefer older x to younger y, or that the music of your youth still works for you if, indeed, it still works for you -- a perfectly fine sentiment

2) The natural consequence of aging is that one will, among other things, automatically like Phil Collins and start investing in U2 back catalogues -- a perfectly idiotic sentiment

(An overstatement on my part, obv, but she was talking how 'all her friends' more or less felt the same way re: classic RAWK man, and tried to show there was variety and that this was not as groupthink as you might think by saying that she herself didn't care as much for Billy Joel. This didn't cut the mustard with me.)

Stop press: fairly ordinary young managerial type revealed to be a git!

And is it just me who finds that this is almost invariably the case?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1476908,00.html

I think it's perfectly bogus, her claim that the music she really likes (prog rock, queen, phil collins) is "crap music", whilst she's bigging up muse and interpol, I dunno, hos stupid? Would she not have been a better force for music if she'd spent her time at the nme pushing bands she really liked instead of regulation foursquare indie? Feh.

Oh, and apropos Conor McNicholas - get yer hair cut.

John Peel dies and now there's all this, "Well, THAT's all over with, now we don't have to use him as a role model." (I wonder how much I am kidding.)

You were at the VdGG gig, marcello? I wish I'd known, I was there as well!!

The last time I saw them was when my dad took me to see them at the Glasgow Apollo back in 1974, and they were every bit as good and powerful at the RFH last week as they were 31 years ago.

Point of information: in 70s gay clone hankie code, a red bandana means you are into fisting. Just saying . . .

Times have gotten tough at the Algonquin Roundtable.

There may even be positive relationship between a writer's talent and the age at which they write that article, with the ones who never write it being the most talented of all.

(RIP)

that wasn't entirely true when i was there, and i'm sure its not entirely true now. i fought long and hard (and mostly fruitlessly) to get the stuff i loved in NME at the time, and there was some room for freelancers' choice, if you could argue it hard enough/well enough to convince the section heads. steve gullick and i would never have gotten our early coverage of the white stripes in the paper otherwise, because, whatever they like to claim now, there was certainly *no one in the editorial department who'd heard of them then, let alone heard them (though a number of the subs already had import copies of die stihl, which was cool).

i'd daresay that a large number of NME's current freelancers genuinely *love the music they cover, though doomie could obviously give us a truer perspective.

This is not strictly true. (x-post with Stevie - I've never written for them about a band I didn't like. Plus the process he describes above is common to most magazines, music or not.)

Plus, Muzik had a different editor when it folded. He and Conor did a damn good job, but the market bottomed out. (And this is true - all you have to do is look at the ABCs for similar mags at the time - I started out on dance mags and it was bloody hard going around that point, still hasn't really picked up.)

Right, I'm out of here. I always promise myself I will never contribute to threads mentioning publications I write for or people I know, but factual inaccuracies bug me.

Save me, oh save me
It’s unreal, the suffering
There’s gonna be a showdown."

"When I won the award," he explains, "Drowned In Sound put it up as its main news item and invited people to comment. Cue 14 pages of absolute vitriol." (Sample rant: "The bastard has simply sold out to those fuckin' wannabe CORPORATE PIGS!!!"). McNicholas clearly isn't overjoyed by this turn of events, but neither does he seem particularly surprised. After nearly three years at the helm of IPC's NME, during which he's openly killed off the last vestiges of the title's "inky" heritage and turned it into a smaller, more colourful (and market-leading) magazine aimed at a younger audience, he's had to put up with a lot of that kind of abuse.

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

He admits the flak he got for his new-style NME came not only from outside the magazine but from within as well. The first six months, he says, were so stressful he was on the verge of resigning and "a lot of people left".

"When any new editor comes in, noses are put out of joint," he says. "Staff members who'd been there a long time didn't want to go along with the changes.

They were saying: ‘It's been a really stressful couple of years and we're looking for a bit of stability', and I had to come back and say: ‘I'm not providing stability at all, this title has got to move'."

One of his aims was to bring in a new generation of young writers, and he claims staffers such as Tim Jonze and Mark Beaumont are now sought out by the fans in the way that writers like Steven Wells of the NME and Melody Maker hack Everett True were, back in the days of grunge and Britpop.

"Aside from winning the PPA award," he says, "building the new team on NME is by far my biggest achievement, in my view. It's a real pleasure to be able to work with a group of people whose talents I admire so much and whom I trust completely.

mark beaumont is young? i'd sought that useless fucker out, alright.

My Mentor: Conor McNicholas on Steve Sutherland:

I was really green when I took over the NME in 2002, and without Steve Sutherland I would have crashed and burned. I first met him at the launch of NME.com 11 years ago. I was working on an internet magazine and a press release came through about the launch. I thought: "It's rock'*'roll, it's going to be a good bash, and you never know what might happen."

http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article3059112.ece

;_;

Drew Daniel's post makes this thread.

Cloin McNicholas is rattled and hits back at critics...read and laugh

NME editor hits back at critics
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=40484&c=1

Conor McNicholas

five minutes on the nme site and i can't even tell what bands they're trying to push these days

I think Charlie Cairoli will be wanting those shoes back.

Has there been a big 'NME band' for this year? Seems to me they went all out with plugging the Klaxons and have dropped the ball a bit in 2008.

Later this year in the NME will be launching NME radio, to be broadcast from the basement of IPC’s Blue Finn building. The NME journalists will be heavily involved – with the news team delivering the news broadcast, some journalists with their own shows and round table shows with NME journalists “venting their spleen” about new music.

Oh joy

Holy shit that website is ugly these days.

if i was to take a guess at bands i've heard recently that sound like nme bands.. the courteeners, the author, butterfly bangs.. am i close?

The Ting Tings and Does It Offend You, Yeah? are the big NME bands right now. They've also decided that The Wombats are gonna be this generation's Shed Seven style "lol we hate this band" group. max r rip

New IPC Magazines Managing Director Max Gogarty was unavailable for comment.

Still think The Ting Tings sounds like a racist term you'd hear old women using to desribe some random minority.

I believe the expression was used as a running doorbell gag in popular seventies ITV sitcom Love Thy Neighbour.

The Tings Tings and DIOYY? are a pretty meagre haul really. I thought they would really have gone for it with Vampire Weekend.

NME's really going heel on _classic_ guitar/drums/bass indie, everything has to have keyboards and female vocalists and Erol fucking Alkan remixes these days.

what about this NME band: Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong - the name sounds like a drunken racist rant in a chinese takeaway on a Friday night

Do you have any Web 2.0 resources for racist epiphets, djm?

no: there is this though:

Random Insults
http://www.randominsults.net/

Sit down, give your mind a rest - it obviously needs it.

Ting Ting was as in "Ting Ting Poot Poot Fares Please" if you really must know...

And the jing etc was a Spike Milligam poem.

And Joe Lean's dad is a big figure in the music industry.

The NME journalists will be heavily involved

Like this is a selling point.

um erm yeh not as good assa last one innit iznot shex pishtelz (repeat to infinity)

Has the NME become less inclined to champion American bands since that third Strokes album? Ah who cares.

wait..the ting ting are still getting press?

They think it's all over for the NME...by Stephen Dalton
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article3497298.ece
With the demise of any real rock underground, plus fierce competition from online rivals, the magazine must adapt or die

NME has surely adapted.

It's a walking undead version of the paper it used to be, but hey...

Last week NME held its biggest-ever annual awards ceremony, with over 40 NME staff and freelancers covering the event. Live blogging and video content on NME.com pushed unique user numbers to NME.com over 2m for the first time in its history.

40 livebloggers liveblogging each other -- this is exactly what ver kids are demanding.

With the demise of any real rock underground, plus fierce competition from online rivals, the magazine must adapt or die

where's the original independent piece?

they printed this like two weeks ago:

http://www.independent.co.uk/student/career-planning/getting-job/my-way-nmes-conor-mcnicholas-gives-his-tips-for-success-at-work-784633.html

Did Conor Mack wank in Press Gazette's watercooler last week or something?

McNicholas is a deluded fool

Being able to go to any gig I want, but the best part happened a few minutes ago when the magazine came into the office. There is nothing like the thrill of the printed page, and that happens every Tuesday.

^^^NME only comes back from the printers Tuesday? Don't buy that.

I'll take that last sentence as an instruction, and follow it to the letter.

It's out in London on Tuesday, isn't it? It used to be. Sometimes'd go along to that stall in Camden to get it early. Not now though.

Yeah I'd assume it'd get delivered round London on Tuesday and then the rest of the UK Weds.

I liked that Stephen Dalton piece.

It still goes on sale central London on a Tuesday yes.

I know someone who moved to Londonm so he could get the NME a day early. This was pre-internet.

Andrew Collins was interviewed for Dalton's piece. Full answers here

http://www.wherediditallgoright.com/BLOG/2008/03/grumpy-old-nme-journalists.html

With the demise of any real rock underground

If ilxors can find real underground rock then there's no fucking reason why the NME cant.
DJ Martian for editor of NME!

SYSTEMS THINKING replaces PLANK McNicholas. Has he even BEEN to Fratton Park this season etc.

Marcello Carlin for editor of NME morelike

I thought you wanted to be in charge of The Wire

drummerfromgaydad.jpg

No comment right now for legal reasons (xp).

So what would you have in the 1st issue of New Marcello Express if it was out next week?

Taking sides New Marcello Express vs New Martian Express?

New Maracas.jpg Express, morelike

New Marcello Express - would starting educating the readers

1983 - 25 Years On - Music Before You were Born

starring:
Meredith Monk - Virginia Astley - The Blue Nile - Scott Walker - Brian Eno - New Order - Cocteau Twins - The Chameleons - Mark Stewart - The Fall - The The

Pretty sure that's gonna cause sleepless nights for the editor of Glamour

NME - is broken - it's too f***ed up to fix

However a new fortnightly competitor would be welcome

And what would be in New Martian Express?

the fortnightly competitor one obviously

Has resigned.

what a disaster for the iconic magazine that even his mum has heard of.

wait you missed the bit where he's going to edit bbc top gear magazine.

Really? Source, please?

Is he going to hype another car every week? (Second model syndrome! etc)

http://twitter.com/pressgazette

I can't find anything other than other chatboards.

Whoa, what do I mean, "other" hem hem...

That twitter post is newer than James Mitchell's

Straight from the donkey's mouth:

I'm leaving to go and edit Top Gear magazine at the BBC. Amazing job for a petrolhead like me. Will be at NME for a good few weeks yet.

i hope he starts putting really shit cars on the front cover and claiming how they'll change your life

'starts' har.

SEVEN years? Has the NME really been shit for that long? Wow. I feel old.

Your search - "conor mcnichobraff" - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

* Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
* Try different keywords.
* Try more general keywords.

TEN CARS YOU *MUST* DRIVE THIS WEEK

"Anyone who knows me knows that my twin passions are music and cars. To swap one dream job for another is a huge thrill.

"From Arctic Monkeys to Aston Martin, I’m looking forward to being at the heart of another iconic British multi-platform brand."

Or 'magazine'.

PLEASE RETWEET **** VOTE PETER ROBINSON FROM POPJUSTICE FOR NEW EDITOR OF NME **** PLEASE RETWEET

SEVEN years? Has the NME really been shit for that long? Wow. I feel old.

― Violent In Design (Masonic Boom), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 10:51 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Thinking that'll probably make quite a lot on here feel young if anything!

Indeed.

"Iconic British multi-platform brand". Is this a wind-up?

PLEASE RETWEET **** VOTE DJ MARTIAN FROM ILX FOR NEW EDITOR OF NME **** PLEASE RETWEET

"New rack revolution: The most influential new roof carriers that you must own!"

The annual "drool list" in 6 months...

as if more reasons were needed to illustrate the wrongness but editor of NME also being be a massive cockpetrol head...shouldn't they always be met-l33t lefty eco too-boozy-to-drive-even-if-they-had-a-car types?

DJ Martian as NME editor would be unquantifiably the best thing to ever happen to the British music press

thirded

Q: why did NME close down it's messageboards?
― DJ Martian (djmartian), Monday, 16 May 2005

fourthed
xp

I was quite thrilled by the reference to Sarah Dempster's attractiveness way upthread: I thought I was the only person who believed in it

RE: DJ Martian, sales would fall through the floor after the fifth consecutive 'new jazztronica revolution' cover in a row.

McNicholas is a deluded fool
― djmartian, Friday, 7 March 2008

New Marcello Express - would starting educating the readers

1983 - 25 Years On - Music Before You were Born
starring:
Meredith Monk - Virginia Astley - The Blue Nile - Scott Walker - Brian Eno - New Order - Cocteau Twins - The Chameleons - Mark Stewart - The Fall - The The

― djmartian, Friday, 7 March 2008

NME - is broken - it's too f***ed up to fix

However a new fortnightly competitor would be welcome

― djmartian, Friday, 7 March 2008

Stop press: NME editor revealed to be fairly ordinary....

Krissi Murison to edit NME | Media | guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/29/krissi-murision-nme-editor

Krissi Murison - the woman that once said music knowledge isn't important

Murison defected to NYLON and is now back at the NME, expect more Crystal Castles and MGMT

Was she saying it to Morrissey?

Murison defected to NYLON and is now back at the NME, expect more Crystal Castles and MGMT

http://www.skaneatelessuites.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/poet-creekside-books-coffee.gif

Only just noticed this - could be interesting. If there's one thing NME needs more than anything right now it's de-ladification.

That "iconic multi-platform brand" quote is much mocked but McNicholas actually did a really good job of creating an NME that could survive in the internet age (let's face it, the NME of the 80s and 90s wouldn't have) and a pretty awful job of producing a readable magazine every week.

But the magazine is less important than it's ever been. It actually doesn't matter if NME is losing readers as long as the website and awards are making money. And as long as the kids think the clubs are cool then they'll continue to ensure that's the case.

article in The Independent

Girl power rules as NME gets first female editor
http://bit.ly/hlcfX

i dunno, if he did such a good job of bringing the nme into the internet age, why is its website such an ugly, unreadable pile of shite?

and why is the website much worse than it was 9 years ago?

Thought that headline was your own invention djmartian :(

"It's vital that NME is created by music fans with the same passions, interests and concerns as the people reading it," said Murison. "And yes, it probably helps if they are of a similar age too.

How would they find time to edit a magazine when they're at school all day?

re: why is its website such an ugly, unreadable pile of shite?

McNicholas had little to do with the website. NME always had a separate NME.com editor and they probably have another executive in charge of User Experience / Web Development

Murison probably means the core NME readership is 17-24, the writers probably slightly older demographics range, with the exception of 90s britpop veteran mark beaumont

another article in the Independent

Krissi Murison to be first female editor of NME
http://bit.ly/kf5WA

God the website really is ugly isn't it? I haven't looked at it in ages. Dunno, someone must have okayed it - maybe people like ugly unreadable piles of shit.

Web editors tend to answer to print editors most of the time, in consumer media at least, otherwise the whole thing just becomes disjointed and incoherent. It often does anyway, but hey...

Millions of people a day read it though.

There you go. Pretty sure the NME.com that existed when I last regularly read the NME (ie coming up for ten years ago now) was pretty much a sideshow of no real relevance outside a handful of early adopters.

NME.com past editor history: Brendan Fitzgerald, Anthony Thornton, Ben Perreau.

at the mo editor in chief Anthony Thornton, and current editor David Moynihan

NME.com editor would have full responsibility for the content/content strategy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NME

In 1996 under the stewardship of NME editor Steve Sutherland and then NME publisher Robert Tame, the NME started its website NME.COM. Its first editor was Brendan Fitzgerald. Later Anthony Thornton redesigned the site, focusing on music news. In November 1999 the site hosted the UK's first webcast of Suede, 'Live In Japan'. In 2001 the site gave away a free mp3 of The Strokes debut single 'Last Nite' a week before its release. The site rallied around The Libertines after their debut single 'What A Waster' dropped from playlists due to its profanity - giving away the single as a free mp3 download.

The website was awarded Online Magazine Of The Year in 1999 and 2001; Anthony Thornton was awarded Website Editor Of The Year on three occasions - 2001 and 2002 (British Society Of Magazine Editors) and 2002 (Periodical Publishers Association).

In 2004, Ben Perreau joined NME.COM as the website's third editor. He relaunched and redeveloped the title in September 2005 and the focus was migrated towards video, audio and the wider music community. It was awarded 'Best Music Website' at the Record Of The Day awards in October 2005. In 2006 NME.COM celebrated with a party at London's KOKO featuring Leicester band Kasabian and was subsequently awarded the BT Digital Music Award for Best Music Magazine and the first 'Chairman's Award' from the Association of Online Publishers awarded by the Chairman, Simon Waldman in recognition of its pioneering role in its ten year history.

er, the internet in britain was pretty much a sideshow in '99. don't think mcnicholas can claim the credit for this one tbh (although i'm sure he does).

xpost

also, 3.5 million users a month no way equals millions of readers a day.

I recall them pimping nme.com in print as far back as '95 but I'd never even seen an internet web machine then so it meant little

Well, I'd heard different figures but still, 3.5 million uniques isn't, let's face it, bad for a country the size of the UK.

Murison probably means the core NME readership is 17-24, the writers probably slightly older demographics range

Yeah true, it was mainly a lazy zing - having said that when I was 17 I wouldn't've imagined a mid-to-late 20s hack as being any more 'of' 'my' 'generation' than one a few years older

I mean, quality or not, the NME sold about 200,000 copies per issue on average at it's peak and you could estimate that it had perhaps two or three times as many readers. It looks like they're doing significantly better than this on readership at the moment.

This is just a statement of fact by the way and not a comment on the quality of the site.

sold about 200,000 copies at its peak.

My sequencer is malfunctioning.

yeah, but people spend 2.6 mins on average at the site! same way that the guardian can claim 25+ million readers a month, but only around 3-400,000 daily sales: people click a link, read one story and go elsewhere. advertisers aren't fooled.

it's a success compared to plenty of other magazine websites, but it's not really very good either in quality or in providing a viable financial future.

Quite; like I said I wasn't making a qualitative judgement but overlooking it like some hastily knocked together aferthought is missing the point.

They have the basis of something that could be really good. They have a lot of regular readers and an archive of amazing/interesting features for one thing . . .

Doubt all 3.5 million views are from the UK

Yeah, there are a few problems from an advertising point of view but I doubt all of their quarter of a million sales back in 81 were from the UK as well.

but I doubt all of their quarter of a million sales back in 81 were from the UK as well.

Samuel KB Amphong for one

er, the internet in britain was pretty much a sideshow in '99. don't think mcnicholas can claim the credit for this one tbh (although i'm sure he does).

Oh yeah totally, I was just responding to the idea that the website was much better in 1999-2000, when in fact it was pretty crap even then.

I should point out that "creating an NME that can survive in the internet age" is not even remotely the same as "taking the lead in steering the development of the website." Don't forget that when McNicholas took over the majority of NME readers would still have been buying CDs and the role of the music press as gatekeeper/buyer's guide still meant something, rather than its current role which is pretty much reduced to providing news and helping define a scene/aesthetic.

"Where is Beatles band?"

the liverpool echo weighs in: http://www.peterguy.merseyblogs.co.uk/2009/07/a-few-reasons-why-krissi-muris.html

krissi's a great choice for the job, but that echo piece is just embarrassing.

Can men just, like... not *help* it? That they can't see a woman going for a high profile job - in fact, *any* job at all, without making some comment about their sexual attractiveness?

::bashes head against desk::

lol

sort of excruciating references to "the big apple" as if it's this mythical unattainable planet universes away from our own as well - dude, it's new york. it's ok, y'know, and it's *just over there*...

Kate I think your question is answered by the posts on this thread, almost entirely from men, who don't mention her sexual attractiveness at all.

I hope you didn't expect Kate to actually *read* the thread before posting! ;)

Kate you should read Matt's first post on her appointment where he says

If there's one thing NME needs more than anything right now it's de-ladification.

This is a thread on an internet messageboard. That is an actual published article in a newspaper. You'd think that the author would show a little more consideration, not less. I can't believe someone would actually publish that. That the writer argues against ladificaton, and then writes something like "plus, she's HAWT."

Clearly, that author is someone who needs de-ladification.

I'd say it's notable without relation to sex because McNicholas is all gross and greasy and ratlike and so on and now we don't have to put up with his face and bad clothes on TV any more. But maybe no one else would.

Yeah, I agree with that, but I think Matt's point is that it therefore shouldn't be men you rail at, but rather the press.

xpost

I'd assumed Kate was talking about that article.

Which for the most part, doen't mention her attractiveness at all.

Except for that last sentence. Which seems to prove the point somewhat.

(Oh xpost by quite a bit, am I really so slow in typing?)

and now we don't have to put up with his face and bad clothes on TV any more

i'd watch out for those special guest appearances on top gear if i were you ..

Yeah Kate making a (totally pertinent) point about sexism while going "Can men just, like... not *help* it?" is, well, a bit sexist. Without wanting to go all "y'know some black people are racist too" on you all.

Wow that article is embarassing though - the argument seems to boil down to "wow she's hot and she hates White Lies so she must be a great choice".

Pretty sure that's only a blog post by the way. I mean, why would the Liverpool Echo commission a print article that long about the new Editor of the NME?

http://www.peterguy.merseyblogs.co.uk/2009/07/maps-gorton-versus-berger-a-cu.html#more

Wow this dude is absolute solid gold. I started counting the number of unintentionally funny things in this post and stopped when I got to 20.

http://www.peterguy.merseyblogs.co.uk/css/peter_guy.jpg

Firstly, let's not beat around the bush (sorry), she's a woman - the first female editor in NME's 57 year history.

To be fair he did apologise immediately after referencing ladies' pubes - morelike Peter Whattaguy

"she...is downright 'lovely' (so says one NME scribe who wouldn't be quoted)"

i can imagine why you'd have to go on deep background to unleash that bombshell.

All hail, this generation's Terry Christian!

I feel like kissing. My Nissan is calling me.

first NME, now Kerrang appoint a female editor

Nichola Browne appointed editor of Kerrang
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44158&c=1

Does she actually write in the mag? I don't recognise the name at all

she joined from J17? oh great.

more info and picture of smiley face

Nichola Browne to edit Kerrang!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/17/kerrang-new-editor-nichola-browne

2nd female ed it says there

http://lincolnnz.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/yorkie-not-for-girls.jpg

xxp

NME looking for "non-regular readers" for focus groups: http://www.nme.com/news/nme/46727

Shall we? Shall we? Oh let's!

is there an age limit? if not Mark Grout should def go.

Already Am, mate!

Go and tell the NME Exactly what you think, you guys!

(xpost (!))

live blog it mark.

Tweet it! Then show NME your tweets. Then we can read NME's tweets about your tweets. And you can tweet about the response.

https://brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/twilight-of-the-gods-former-nme-editor

https://entertainment.theonion.com/history-of-rock-written-by-the-losers-1819567078

In case anyone doubted that this would be the true voice of McNicholas:

At NME, we didn’t come up with the New Rock Revolution the fans did, or rather, the haters did. It was a tossed-off line on a Datsuns cover -- “All hail the heroes of the new rock revolution.” It was a revolution in rock that was new.

This line will go down in history, surely.

Being NME Editor is a bit like being Pope or Doctor Who – there always has to be one.

Tragically he was proved wrong

They still have an editor, don't they? Google says it's Charlotte Gunn.

I thought that was a great read. I didn’t read NME during that era, and it seems the brand is completely unsustainable now - and that was sown during those years in many ways - but he had a remit and a job and he went for it and it seems like it was exciting as fuck. I bet it was. Totally not for me, but I wasn’t the demographic and even when I was, I was a weirdo.

xp aw shit does it still have some zombie existence

Gunn quit in February iirc.

The website has new owners now, I looked reasonably recently and the quality of writing looked better and the range of acts more relevant than before, but I have no idea who its aimed at or whether it has any cache or even name recognition among young people at all any more.

www.nme.com

ppl I know who know CmcN say he is much happier and more fulfilled and a better thing as a motorsport journalist (which was his pre-nme job that he since went back to)

not his words, the words of Top Gear magazine

"The moment paper music journalism ceased to matter was in 2006 when Pitchfork reviewed the second Jet album. They just put up a gif of a monkey pissing in its own mouth. It wasn’t about the nature of the criticism - it really was an utterly forgettable album - it was the manner in which it was delivered. It wasn’t the product of a subs desk trying to shape something into the NME-style or the Q-style, it wasn’t crafting words to communicate a devastating putdown. It was a uniquely contemporary digital response to a band that felt like it was from another age. It was a new age sticking two fingers up to a previous generation in a way that they couldn’t respond. It was something that could be shared on mobile phones. Print was fucked from that point."

Interesting how little writing or criticism is mentioned throughout up to this point.

yes, I still have very little idea how he feels about music

not his words, the words of Top Gear magazine

*chuckle*

I'm sure there was once a Swells review of a My Vitriol single in NME that was pretty much just 'FUCK OFF.'

I'm sure I remember reading somewhere he mainly just like classical music and the be****s

the Be Sharps were good tbf

I think Swells best work was never really music related!

I can't remember if was in the nme, but I recall once seeing Swans single review that was just: This Is Shit (Wankers)

Dom Passantino was doing gif reviews at Stylus before p4k.

(which was his pre-nme job that he since went back to)

not according to his account in the linked article. somehow he was at Ministry Of Sound magazine and then editor of Muzik despite his lack of interest in either sound or music, let alone dance music

"Richie Hawtin had made some records in the 90s I guess, but until he grew his hair out and had a tidy fringe, me or the kids had no way of paying attention."

"I had booked a national stadium tour featuring the biggest trance acts, and turned up to the final night when it was close enough for me to expense a cab home. Tiesto did this thing where he put his hand to his ear, then pointed both arms out wide, beaming at the crowd. Nobody had pulled a move like that off since the 60s. At that moment, I knew he was going to make it."

The Charles Pooter of music journalism

he was consultant editor at landrover magazine until may this year according to LinkedIn (which is not formula 1 but also not a music magazine)

and a freelance motors editor at various titles from 2012-17

im p sure I remember writers beefing abt his not coming from a music title when he arrived at nme but I may have misremembered the exact route

It's as if... you don't need to be into the subject to edit a magazine, and that you have to hire people to do the actual writing, or something.

(I know, I know..)

I mean that isn't entirely untrue!

He definitely had a background in the dance press, there are posts from the time about that and people who have posted here worked with him on it.

I agree you don't need to be into the subject if you have the right writers but you also need to create and articulate the right vision. It may be that the NME he created was the right NME for that specific time in rock history - it was fortunate enough in that it rode a wave that had begun a year or two previously rather than creating one for itself, but it did so reasonably successfully. Obviously I had no interest in reading it but enough people apparently did.

It also trapped it in amber and made it virtually impossible to respond to what was happening by the late 00s. Completely failing to make a half decent website was one of them and I don't know why they allowed themselves to be so wrong-footed by Pitchfork etc.

I have this vague memory that the NME website was quite good when I first had a job with internet access so would've been about 1998, had searchable archives of reviews etc, then at some point there was an overhaul that removed the only things I liked about it and I stopped going there. I may have imagined that.

I used to have an nme.com email address, an old schoolfriend whose band got a terrible review from the nme was suspicious of me for using it

The chatroom was good.

(It was bad)

I feel like having a chatroom was probably the laurels they were resting on?

I feel like ultimately his strength was also his undoing, he picked a solid target market (indie music), reaped the benefits of appealing to indie types, then watched as that market faded away. Who was actually buying the NME from like 2007-2015? Those Libertines fans had probably moved on with their lives, they were never going to get excited by Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong or whoever.

Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong

disappointed to find out this band actually existed

It appears that NME put Palma Violets, very very late doors haircut indie band, who no one cared about and barely anyone remembers, on the cover on five separate occasions. You can't say they didn't try there.

more bad news groovemaaan

https://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/55/2014/12/2014KingGizzard_ImInYourMindFuzz111214.jpg

(I actually quite like that album, sorry)

That's a good album! Nowt to do with landfill whatsoever!

. Palma Violets' first single, "Best of Friends", was voted NME's song of the year for 2012

That King Gizzard album looks like it was a fantastic 80s video game which I feel like I remember very fondly already, A+

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are a real (and great) band with a name that actively inspires people not to listen to them, was nashwan's joke

not as bad as Joe Lean & The Sultans Of Jing Jang Jong FC though

I have this vague memory that the NME website was quite good when I first had a job with internet access so would've been about 1998, had searchable archives of reviews etc, then at some point there was an overhaul that removed the only things I liked about it and I stopped going there. I may have imagined that.

― CP Radio Gorgeous (Colonel Poo), Thursday, August 13, 2020 10:54 AM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

IIRC there was a point around 1999 when NME had big investment from IPC in the website and had numerous editors covering specific genres and was generating lots of content, and then the first internet crash happened and everyone got sacked and it was horrible and that was the end of that

https://www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/rmjdvp/landfill-indie-johnny-borrell-razorlight-the-strokes-kooks-definitive-history?

Thought this was relevant to the discussion:

"I guess nothing in this era can even be considered without taking in the rise of social media, and the decline of record sales.

Exactly. And it wasn’t just the labels. For instance, once upon a time there used to be an actual magazine called the NME. And I don’t want to be too hard on NME, they’ve been pretty good to me – every time I said something outrageous to sell records, they’d print it to sell copies. Then they’d usually slag me off for it two weeks later in order to sell more copies, but that was just the pact we made.

But, what we all witnessed over this era was many magazines and radio programmers switching from having an actual editorial perspective, to being run as focus groups for companies to shift products to 16-24 year olds. And I mean that very literally: groups of kids in a room being played demos to see which they liked most, in order to boost advertising from Motorola or whatever.

I’m not saying that we need a bunch of self-appointed musos instructing the vulgar masses about what’s good. But there needs to be some sort of editorial integrity, right? The balance seemed to go out of whack in this era, and you can see the result in all the magazines folding, and Radio 1 losing millions of listeners. To me, that’s what “landfill” meant. The airwaves just became a dump that needed to be filled with product that looked a bit like other product that had done okay"

That Vice list of 50 landfill indie songs is extremely bad, mostly because it kicks off with Pete & The Pirates, who were absolutely not landfill indie but actually-good indie

that's exactly the response a list of shitty indie records is supposed to elicit

I should do a Music I will never listen to thread and just post a link to that piece but I think I've accidentally heard a couple of those.

there are several records on that list i quite like or have quite liked but they all belong on that list

"many magazines and radio programmers switching from having an actual editorial perspective, to being run as focus groups for companies to shift products to 16-24 year olds. And I mean that very literally: groups of kids in a room being played demos to see which they liked most, in order to boost advertising from Motorola or whatever."

Is the above true? I've really been out of the loop what with reading about that experimental music lark when some grand experiments were being conducted in unlikely places.

some form of focus grouping had always gone on*, but it definitely became how (and why) publishers exerted leverage over editorial from the late 80s onwards, as the last remnants of countercultural solidarity were dwindling and the techniques of niche-marketing began delivering marginal sales competitiveness -- a few titles were able to pitch themselves to a readership as valuable resource bcz exactly not this (e.g. the wire!) (also tbf MM until i dunno the mid-90s, i wasn't following very closely), but it was a market force almost impossible to push back against in the long term when advertisers were paying the bulk of the bills

*it's what the xmas readers' polls were in the 70s, it's why almost all polls are (a) bad not good, and (b) part of the problem and nonew of the solution

Thanks - makes sense as a process.

Polls -- despite being fun to do, for some -- in the way put here, end up as a kind of consent manufacture, its terribly corrosive.

Blimey, Johnny Borrell otm!