Word Up

I bought this yesterday myself, after being surprised how long it took me to leaf through it in Border last week.

Good things
High text to picture ratio (even the writing is of varying qualities);
Some excellent writers (Paul Du Noyer, Michael Odell, Damon Wise, Peter Paphides) given space to canter;
Good, wide-ranging interviews with Neil Tennant (where he agrees with me about pop!) and Foxgloves favourite Laura Cantrell;
Pretty good and surprisingly unDadRock music and film coverage – from Mel C to Missy to Eminem to Clipse popwise to Julie Christie, 24hrpartypeople and Shampoo filmwise.

Bad things
Features a lot of emap usual suspects: eg Andrew Collins
Future issues look set to get more blokish, eg features on Phill Jupitus etc
Big interview with Nick Cave is pretty dull

Overall I was very pleasantly surprised. The front section has lots of shortish items on items of general interest which reminds me of the best bits of ILx. They have an interesting middle section where people just recommend stuff they've enjoyed that reminded me of the dear departed papercuts fanzine. The whole thing seems to be very much driven by enthusiasm. But I worry whether it is going to survive in the current marketplace (especially with print advertising budgets plummeting). I'm reminded a little of that mens mag that the guys from Select started a few years ago (I can't even remember its title now!) - it was pretty interesting, but against the grain of the market... They tried to go more populist (putting nekkid laydeez on the cover) but emap still pulled the plug on it. I guess it comes down to how much money they've invested (it's published by Ellen and Hepworth's own company rather than emap/ipc), and how long they can afford to make a loss before it picks up a word-of-mouth readership...

Yes Deluxe! We were talking about that just the other night in the p*b with reference to Word - it lasted 9 issues I think. It was very good.