Who do the British seemingly hate Q Magazine?

Some of the reviews are a little short on 'what the music is like' content, but the features are normally intelligent. I guess the cover artists never normally match my tastes so i flick through it and leave it.

I think you mean Mojo.

"Hipsters" need to realise that what was good music 10 or 20 years ago is also good music today, and will be good music in 10 and 20 years. Music is supposed to be timeless, not "trendy".

It certainly can be.

Innit. The problem with Q is that it writes for an audience who think that music is inherently "supposed" to "be" something.

[x-post - Alan beat me to it there but...]

For the better IMO, but that's another story ;)

Incidentally, I apologise to Uncut readers who might have watched John Cale on Later With Jools Holland on Friday night. The album really is much, much better than that. Why on earth come on and play the two worst tracks off the album?

Q is a laggards music mag - it is slow on picking up new artists, it features high profile radio friendly rock bands, the front covers are boring.

Every year it holds a useless Awards event.

It exists as an Advertising medium for Major record companies to advertise to the casual 20something male. Before Mojo existed Q had a higher age profile - but these days this magazine is aimed squarely at 20something blokes that have music tastes that reflect playlisted Xfm or Virgin radio or MTV2 or Radio 1 Evening Session.

Each year it's album of the year choices are laughable.

My idea of a music magazine - is too inform me about music I am unaware of - Q is the opposite - there are NO surprises - it's predictable and lame - and therefore of interest.

It ignores much of the most creative contemporary music i.e cross reference with my blog.

Q bites because of the style it employs and the criteria it has for music.

When was the last time Q magazine - stuck their necks out and proclaimed look this a great new artist. No they are flaming laggards of the worst order - that reflect the status quo.

In the late 80s - MELODY MAKER - SET THEIR OWN AGENDA - they didn't wait for anyone else - they had GUTS, SELF CONVICTION, BELIEF, OPINIONS, ATTITUDES, IDEAS and IDEALS.

Q is the complete opposite !

yes its obscurantism is getting a little wearing.

Dude, you'd make a lovely editor but a poor businessman!!

you want joyce, kafka and borges you do.

And, for the record, I'd wager certain classical music is inarguably "timeless". And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with music being disposable, fleeting ephemera as well, but what's wrong with something exuding an ageless beauty?

I disagree - there are more than enough people that are not being catered for by the teenager oriented rock tedium of the weekly NME and also don't want to wait a month for something to read [The Wire, Terrorizer, Jazzwise, Jockey Slut, Knowlege, Uncut etc]

If a publisher - launched a new diverse agenda setting fortnightly music magazine - in the UK - then i reckon sales of 50,000 - 75,000 - could be achieved within a year.

Hmmm, perhaps that's another thread, in fact.

Also ILM does like some magazines, Muzik was very popular until it went bust! (as I always say in these cases)

Martian (and anyone else), what d'you know about Bullit? I know it used to be North-East only, and it's music and film-oriented (perhaps going for the Uncut market) but possibly a younger audience, and a fairly modest initial print run, but more details are extremely scant.

it's almost as if stuff has to hang around for a few years before it gets to be in the middlebrow canon

Rod Stewart's Ultimate Guide To Life? Guy Garvey Solo LP

I had that edition as a kid, and remember the list well.

you had this edition? easy to think that looking at it, but it isn't out til Tuesday!

For my sins I did buy Q fairly frequently when I was a callow youth, until I got wise to the fact that those "Top 100" lists they are always running are pure empty page filler. For such a chunky mag it was often surprisingly short on content, you could get through the meat of it in about an hour and were left with a nagging feeling you'd wasted your money.

The bigger problem has always been how it continues to reinforce an extremely conservative rock/pop orthodoxy, never challenging received opinions and always dishing out five stars to the same canonical big names. I guess that's the answer to how it keeps selling, it's like comfort reading for people who have a passing interest in music but aren't really interested in anything they don't already listen to.

https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/bauer-reveals-plans-to-close-merge-or-sell-ten-magazines-q-planet-rock-simply-you/

Magazine publisher Bauer Media plans to close, merge or sell ten of its print titles it says will not be sustainable once the Covid-19 crisis is over.

The titles affected are: music magazines Q and Planet Rock, car brands Modern Classics and Car Mechanics, “true-life” title Simply You, Mother and Baby, Golf World, Practical Photography, Sea Angler and Your Horse.

Bauer said for each of these titles it is currently looking at whether to move them to a digital-only format, merge them with sister titles, sell them, or close them altogether.

rip big man, heaven needed a magazine i assumed had stopped production at least a decade ago

Claiming Sea Angler and Your Horse for the name of my terrible new band.

I'd be surprised if some other publisher didn't step in and buy Q tbh. But who will save poor old Sea Angler?

Call him Ishmael Reed Publishing Company

* advertising jingle plays* Pick up your monthly copy of Golf World, now incorporating Q Magazine.

Uh, anyone on here ever write for Q?

sure, music can be timeless, but what's wrong with music also being fleeting, ephemeral? something to enjoy one day and forget the next? the joy of pop music doesn't require it being 'timeless'. you don't need to get married to every single record you buy -- there's room for plenty of one-night-stands, too
― geeta (geeta), Tuesday, 4 November 2003

i wish i could still have one night stands

With a magazine?

The magazine in Darlimg Nikki was probably not Q.

cover of the last issue answers the thread question nicely

begging to be polled. somehow.

i like it when you tag crappy old pop stars with their first names only because they're our friends

I thought Q was good in the late 80s and early 90s. It once got the Trouser Press record Guide’s endorsement.

I wish Geeta still posted here

― an incoherent crustacean (MatthewK)

geeta's presence on this board was fleeting, ephemeral, something to enjoy one day and forget the next

I have some bad news about @QMagazine. The issue that comes out on July 28 will be our last. The pandemic did for us and there was nothing more to it than that. I have attached our final cover and my editor’s letter for context.
On the plus side, we’re all available for work. pic.twitter.com/rm8qOcUBtB

— Ted Kessler (@TedKessler1) July 20, 2020

I haven't read it in a few years, mostly because it seems to have nearly disappeared from shelves around here, but that was formative for me in the 1990s. Really sad news.

I'm guessing this is a direct result of advertising budgets getting slashed in the pandemic?

The reader-submitted interview questions feature yielded some amazing results. Bobby Gillespie and Ian Brown’s were jaw-dropping

aw man, that's sad

good riddance to this fucking pile o' shite.

^ The genuine voice of the British

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdYHPSeWsAYRQSD?format=png&name=small

aka Pyjama Boy and the Wifebeater

what's wrong with being sexy?

The Beatles!

Plus! Paul Weller

somewhere in Equatorial Guinea is a landfill site full of 80,000 tons of Q FREE CD!(s).

Q has never been my thing but it doesn't seem a good thing that it is going.

why? will a dearth of Noel Gallagher magazine covers in W H Smiths bring a famine or something?

Like I said, haven't read a single issue in years and, by 2010, it was so far away from what I'd look for, but at this point the death of almost any print publication dedicated to music is kind of a disappointment, esp considering the larger implications for other magazines.

brit-pop industrial complex would have been supported by the state if you cunts had voted for Corbyn!

Well, I don't generally believe people losing their jobs is a good thing - and there will be decent people losing their livelihoods.

For all the tedious Gallagher (or whoever) covers, I'd also guess that lots of other groups, who are easier to care about, will be affected by this.

it's always a good feeling when people you can't fucking stand lose their jobs, anyone who says different is lying!

lol

Dipped back into Q again during Ted Kessler's recent stint as editor and it had massively improved from the dark and increasingly vacuous days post-2000, seemed to be gearing itself back towards it's better years, even if it was sadly too late.

At my barber it is either this or a men's "health" magazine.

thank fuck for phones, Kindles, staring absently into the void

rip big man, heaven needed a magazine i assumed had stopped production at least a decade ago

― a denim head and an aficionado of Japanese craftsmanship (bizarro gazzara), Monday, 18 May 2020 20:31 (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

It was often great the last few years. Fascinating behind the scenes stuff here from Ted Kessler

https://www.qthemusic.com/articles/almost-famous-ted-kessler

Who do the ilxors seemingly hate Q Magazine?

thank fuck for phones, Kindles, staring absently into the void

― À la recherche du scamps perdu (Noodle Vague)

being stared into absently by the void

lol yeah that too

I'd agree with Ted Kessler that Andrew Harrison's appointment marked a significant uptick, after the grim listicle days. I settled into buying Q about 3 or 4 times a year to read on long train journeys, and the innards were always better than the covers suggested. Sylvia Patterson's stuff stood out, and having invented the "stars answer readers' questions" concept, they continued to execute it well. The reviews section was always the weakest section, though. Way too cautious. There's no accolade thinner than a four-star album review in Q.

They used to give pretty much every album three stars iirc

I have every q mag from sept 1989 to mid 2003 in a bookshelf; they are alongside every mojo from 1994 to the same end point. From an american viewpoint, or at least my own, from 1989 to 1995, the dad-rock-orientation seemed a million times better than that of Rolling Stone, and I aspired to write in that manner, although a lot less PG Wodehouse-ish. to me, it was a magazine that was simply concerned with the width and breadth of anglo and american popular music. Ear Xtacy in louisville Ky did not carry NME or the Melody Maker, and I probly would have not wanted to read it if it did. I have no doubt that this sounds clueless to english ILXors.

And so in 1995, around the time that Q (and every other english music magazine or newspaper) got in the tank for brit-pop, I worked for TimeOut NY for the first four years of its existence (Tony Elliott, TimeOut's founder/publisher, died this week; he was a great guy) and the tone that i had cultivated worked well there. And then in 2000-2001, after I was fired from TONY, my fondest hope would have been to work for an american version of Q. I got my wish: I worked for Blender, which was easily the worst experience of my life. Shortly after beginning to work there, I did not want to read Q any longer, seeing as the Blender EiC was a former Q editor, and having an entirely unpleasant working relationship with an individual who strongly disdained americans and touted the Q formula (and english writers in general) as an unassailable ideal utterly extinguished my former enthusiasm.

For a long time afterwards, during my time at that mag and after I was fired, I strongly disliked english people, as well as the Q formulas and the accompanying editorial tone. Once I got over that, I still was not going to start buying it again, particularly as they would go back to the well over and over again for Oasis, Blur and Radiohead, and could only muster a head of steam for the Strokes and other G/B/D acts that they felt their readership would understand… I guess that Kasabian cover above speaks to that… was Q all about landfill indie in the late 00s?