Mojo Magazine: Classic Or Dud

the stax CD comp that comes with the amy winehouse cover is pretty awesome.

the article about her is "okay" i felt bad for the writer cuz he was supposed to have a big interview with her than she has a meltdown and he's gotta do the story anyway.

i haven't read the stax feature but it will probably be cool cuz it's about stax.

also had a buried treasure about some band called Home that was a weirdo/roots-rock/prog/concept album deal that featured cliff richard from AC/DC!

Cliff WIlliams??

duh haha yeah williams not the elvis of england dude

Hahaha!

I thought you might have meant Cliff Burton.

I'm sorry, I'm off to the paralell universe that has Cliff Richard of AC/DC in it!

Mojo is still a quality mag, but it's about time the CD coming with the mag contains some decent music soon.

the free CD's with mojo are the best reason to buy it

Actually they have done a pretty good historical job with those CDs lately. The only thing lacking now is that they choose some good genres to make CDs from. They write about a lot of great genres, so I am sure it'll happen...

i used to wonder what james brown had to do to get on the cover of mojo. apparently dying wasn't enough. when he was given the mojo honors lifetime achievement award, the cover went to jimmy page, winner of the far-more-coveted best dvd award.

The Heavy Nuggets thing is awesome. Thanks Mojo.

Was that the one before the Amy Winehouse/Stax one?

yes.

I bought it today, for the electronica CD on the cover. John Foxx! Gary Numan! Tangerine Dream! Great stuff.

this month's free CD is great..comp of old school Ska and Reggae stuff.

That's last months, UK dudes.

This months is a Paul Weller gets someone to pick stuff that they reckons Paul Weller probably thinks is endemic to what Paul Weller is all about, plus three Paul Weller Rarities. (being: One cover version of one of his very first songs that he never recorde dwith The Jam, one etc...)

well it's new to me! but yeah i guess we are late.

i don't really like the specials that much but i really enjoyed the article about them a lot.

Just reading "SKa'd for Life" Horace Panter's book, he the bassman of the specials.

Updated (2008) odds for the first hip-hop act to get a full Mojo front cover:

4-5 Beastie Boys (up from evens)
evens Public Enemy (down from 4-5)
3-1 Kanye West
4-1 Wu Tang Clan
5-1 Outkast (down from 7-4)
6-1 Eminem (down from 2-1)
8-1 Jay Z
20-1 50 Cent (down from 12-1)
25-1 Run DMC/LL Cool J (down from 20-1)
33-1 T-Pain/Li'l Wayne
40-1 Dizzee Rascal
50-1 bar

I fancy a punt on Jay-Z, especially if he pulls off Glastonbury.

probably won't be wu-tang because they just did a big feature on them recently that pretty much covered everything...

Yep, but they managed to prove to themselves that they can cover rap and do it interestingly.

Mojo hardly ever features new acts on the cover.

If Mojo ever put rap on the front it's gonna be "canonical" stuff like Public Enemy or De La or something. Maybe in five years time 36 Chambers will be some sort of fogey rock-crit classic, who knows?

I'm unloading about 23kg of Mojos from the mid-late 1990s. I'm going to dump them all on eBay, but if there's anyone here looking for fills drop me an email - I'd rather folks here got first dibs.

will swap 8lb 4oz of UNCUTs?

i've been trying to give away my deadweight of mojos for ages now.
free to anyone - collection basis only.
issue 45 onwards with one missing (richie edwards cover, ended up in river avon)

One thing I absolutely love Love LOVE about Mojo: The layout. You can read the whole thing cover-to-cover and not have to do any backtracking. They print each story IN FULL and don't start the next one til the previous one is finished - none of this infuriating "Continued on page 83" nonsense like you'll find in "Rolling Stone" or other inferior rags.

I don't know if this admirable approach is Mojo-specific, or if it's typical of other UK magazines (music or otherwise). Either way, it earns my approval. If only other magazines (newspapers even) could follow their example...

ha, i have the opposite experience. the only US mag i read with any regularity is Wired and the 'continued..' thing in that bugs me silly (especially when the continued piece is less than a full page or if the continued bit is itself continued)

(Wired has recently felt like it's 50% adverts. there used to be a lot but recently they've been more noticeable, probably because they switched to the right hand page of each spread. that and the bloody stiff pages they insert, normally for things like cigarettes made by native americans, stuff i couldn't buy even if i wanted to.) (offtopic!)

cigarettes made by native americans

LOL!

currently selling my mojo archive for a wallte busting 99p : (#45 > #195)
so had to clear them out of the attic.
quite interesting to see the gradual change in the magazines layout
also, it really drives home just how few women are given cover status.
out of the 150 issues, only 5 have been by women
guesses for the 4 that have been awarded this status most welcome (one woman was granted the priviledge twice)
may have to count up the total of beatles/related covers just to see ..

Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell, Aretha Franklin, Tiffany.

kate bush : correct #111, #145

Debbie Harry was a cover for an NYC punk package, wasn't she? And that was that bizarre Amy Winehouse cover story a couple of years ago ..

ithappens hits the spot :

debbie harry : #63
amy winehouse : #170

so, who's the last one ..

Mo Tucker?

Hang on: Yoko!

actually, thats a good point re yoko.

but dont recall seeing her gracing one amongst the pile i have

i could have sworn she did !

unless that the one that ended up in bristol harbour.

Janis?

That leaves Sandy Denny and Madonna.

ok, she is on a cover with john.

therefore not part of this gang (solo covers)

same goes for abba.

xpost : bravo - janis .. #79

which is pretty shocking i think.

i mean it was something i was aware of, but to see the stats so black and white it really drives it home.

also, out of 150 issues, 15 of them are beatles/related (more if including oasis .. )

Compare it to any other British music publication of the era you'd get an equivalent percentage I reckon.

"of the era" = back in the sixties?

The 60s were a lot less obnoxiously 60s-ish than the last 20 years.

true.

ok, shall we do black solo artists next ?

i suspect the list will be even more limited ..

Michael Jackson

Curtis
Jimi Hendrix

I might just be speaking for myself here but I reckon ILM is not short of "is the music press and its audience a bit racist?" threads.

Amazed there's not a Joni cover in there.