The anti-NME

Sounds good, except I would edit out anything you believe to be 'intelligent, soulful & stylish' writing, which will leave you with stuff that's REALLY 'IS&S'. Or rather - the editing should be IS&S, not the writing. So you get a magazine described as IS&S by readers, not just the writers. If a writer fancies himself 'intelligent' then subject his think-pieces to rigorous analysis. If 'soulful', get writer to justify the hyperbole and self- baring, and is the heart-on-the-sleeve a unique and interesting one? Avoid the millenarianism that disfigures the UK Press ("I have seen the future of rock and roll and it's name is Chainsaw Kittens" etc.) If the writer fancies himself 'stylish' then red-pencil any signature idiosyncracies that occur in more than one submission, if they're any sort of prose artist they'll come up with new ones every time.
Also, critically, do not assume for even one second that the lives, dreams, adventures, ambitions, and appearances of the writing staff are of any interest whatsoever to anybody buying your magazine. If the stuff is good then you'll become media stars like you want, anyway, without the futile self-promotion. Also, maybe have the editorial office in France or somewhere.

First sentence should be 'edit out anything the WRITER believes...' Of course, if you have the calibre of writers you appear to want, they'll pretty much do it themselves.

The dilemma as I see it is that you can only understand music through a personal filter, but that as DQ says you can't assume your filter is remotely interesting to anyone else. So the trick is to get your readers to wake up to *their* filters, and then they'll wuv you.

More cynical answer - this sounds a bit like UNCUT.

Even more cynical answer - you ought to name some names. "Cult of irony"? Whassat then?

Also you might want to read this discussion.

a) Get some new people involved, not just the same old UK music press names.

b) Favour NEW music above OLD music (but do both). There's a gaping hole in the market for something which covers new music in a thrilling way.

c) Avoid the 'canon'. Make your own canon. Then destroy it.

d) Don't favour guitars. If you do, you'll stiff because no-one under 35 cares any more. (Or MAKE then care). Get involved in the bleeps n'beats as well and help us figure out what's essential therein.

e) Slag people off who deserve it. No-one does this any more.

f) Stick to music. Screw films, books etc. FOCUS!

g) Have HUGE ambitions for your magazine!

h) Do a free CD on the front

Jerry, I wish you all the best with this. Get going!

Oh, yeah, good luck and all that - I forgot that bit!

Also - make it better than Johnathan King's REVVOLUTION.

Don't allow anyone to write anything - even the most miniscule piece of copy- based on press releases or information from managers, etc... If the magazine was made entirely of real feature stories that would be much better, none of those one page hype articles with a big picture and a paragraph of bullshit. It would be great to go about covering bands in a new way, for instance, more than one band at once - ie looking at a city or a scene - of course, it is also a terrible idea to assume there is a scene. Also, try to make your writers hold back on vague descriptive adjectives and, for that matter, metaphors about how this or that music sounds like machines grinding together or birds or whatever. That never seems to describe anything.

Also, do not let Iain MacDonald ANYWHERE near it. I think it was him who wrote the UNCUT review of 'Beaucoup Fish', the single most desperate, obvious, and failed bid for journalistic immortality that ever failed to make the papershredder. (I mean, couldn't he just say "this year" instead of "Century XXI" like on a Rush album or something?)

i think the dr. c plan for success is the way to go.

and jerry, if you do decide to follow the good doctors advice, esp. number one, i'd be happy to help. ;)

best of luck...another good music mag is ALWAYS appreciated.

OH blah. It will just be the same. More meanderings from cynics forcing the message onto others and trying to guide (see: manipulate) taste in a nazi like manner.

Oh well! If you don't have anything nice to say about music magazines, read them at the store and don't buy them.

See you tonight, Doomie.

Perhaps you should start by assessing 'what went wrong?' Jerry. Various theories are in circulation; IPC, Brit-pop, marginalising/ignoring rave culture, shoddy rates of pay etc. As an outsider I've no idea where the responsibilty lies but if you want to avoid the same mistakes be clear what exactly those mistakes were.

As a 'consumer' by the mid-90s I'd lost all interest in reading patronising pieces about Oasis, whilst the 'club-culture' mags covereing the music I mostly listened to did so with processed-cheese journalism. Much as I miss the Maker in its prime (+ Steve Gullick's camerawork) is there now room for a music journal when many of us now look on-line for reviews, gossip, interviews etc. I hope so, I wish you well with CTCL.

As Dr C but also

i. Don't be afraid to be intellectual.

j. Don't be afraid to be stupid.

k. Look good, graphic design in music magazines is so disappointing nowadays.

l. GIVE RAY LOWRY SOME WORK- One of the UK's finest critics and you never see his stuff anymore.

Good luck.

I think the important thing is to not talk down to people; that's a major fault of the NME and the last couple years of MM. I'm sure you know what I mean by this.

Another thing: have you found any female writers? A female perspective is something that's lacking from the music press lately, among other things. This isn't a cheap solicitation for a job either, I'm far from qualified!

I was enthused until you got to the bit about Mogwai.

I don't consider them a great band, (I'll give them 'occasionally quite good') and think their prima-donna attitude stinks all the more as it's in inverse proportion to their merit.

The Lester Bangs character in Almost Famous warns the young writer to avoid being friends with the band. Its perfect advice. I would cite some of the articles about Mogwai as some of the most useless, craven and cowardly writing in the last few years, and the cause would appear to be friendship getting in the way of critical thinking.

Anyway...

My suggestions for a new mag:

0. Make it about music, not lifestyle or websites or woodwork.

1. Don't have "album reviews" or "gig reviews" or "interviews" - and especially don't have sections devoted to these. Just have "views". Write articles which may or may not include these things. If the band wont give an interview because you intimated that you wouldn't sign a promise to only talk about the new album then write about them anyway (interviews are over-rated, interviews on approved subjects are usually awful). A few years ago Swells took Three Colours Red round an art gallery - it could have been a brilliant piece (except it was Three Colours Red and was written by Swells). Take Rothko on a weekend hike round the Trossachs. Get the Dudley Corporation to show you the best tea rooms in Dublin. Find out Lapsus Lingae's favourite ancient monuments. Turn up to an inteview with Hearsay carrying a collection of Sun Rockabily CDs and insist on playing them 'Invisible Jukebox' style. I would pay money to read about Noel Hearsay saying 'put on that Malcom Yelvington one again'.

2. Please the readership with the writing, not the musicians and especially not the marketing department. I would suggest that for the first time in a couple of decades it may be possible to operate like this and still sell advertising space if you can deliver the eyeballs.

3. Have a free CD on the cover - Put it in a cardboard sleeve. Go out and find some great music (old new large small any genre at all) to put on it too. Surely this is cheap now? I dunno if you should charge bands to be on the CDs (as I once heard The Wire does ??? anyone confirm?), I don't think a computer mag can survive without a cover disk, and pretty soon neither will a music mag.

4. Upset people. I'll pay to be upset if its done well.

Just to clarify since I messed up the points and clicked submit when meaning to go back and edit. There is no contradiction in my points about making it about music and making the articles based on a selection of tearoom visits by Dublin Math-pop geniuses. Its still about music.

i'd like a magazine identical to The Wire, except without the strange, obscure noise/improv artists covered

Dave Q’s points about editing, IS&S are already taken on board – as is the idea of having the editorial office in France (one MAJOR problem with music mafia is that it’s all London-centric, yawn).

When writing about music the important part is to not write about it: this necessarily will incorporate some of the hopes, dreams, ideals, etc of the writers involved – but you don’t have to be stupid or obvious about it. (Maybe I’m not the right person to say this.)

Tom, Uncut doesn’t cover NEW bands, certainly not as part of its agenda anyhow: even after all this time there is nothing to compare to the sheer THRILL of hearing a great fucking new sound, from anywhere, any style. What do you mean, what’s the cult of irony? It’s fucking everywhere, from editorial juxtaposition in The Guardian that sees two-page interviews with Dani Behr on being ‘a list person’ next to items on germ warfare, to every single bleedin’ ‘list’ programme on TV reinforcing the consensus while simultaneously making out Mr Blobby’s spots out to be as important as…

The discussion is good though. Thanks.

Dr C, to take your points on one by one

a) Done. I have had 50 (looked for) responses in the past five days – about six of these are from people I respect in the music press

b)–e) (especially e) done and done

f) you’re right about film, but wrong about ‘screw everything else’ only because music is part of everyday life

g) oh yes, absolutely

h) fuck off. No free CD on the front, we have more self-respect than that, but we will be doing a ‘mix CD’ for subscribers

And yes, I would love to find more female writers – and if anyone knows how to get in contact with Ray Lowry, I’d be up for that too.

The Lester Bangs chapter in Almost Famous about not being friends with bands is abject bullshit: Bangs was almost as big a whore as I was. It’s fucking fun hanging out with people you like. You can still go ahead and slag them to buggery afterwards. We already have an anti-Mogwai article commissioned. And the whole idea of features not having to be centred around interviews – and especially not around PR handouts – I’m way ahead of you on. During my eight-month sojourn as music editor of The Stranger in Seattle a couple of years ago, I think I called a press agent back once. Interviews are the least important part of writing mostly.

Outside of music critics and really open minded people, I can't imagine why anyone would want to read magazine articles trying to convince them to like things they either don't like or don't know about (I guess cuz they're open to new things, blah blah blah). But anyway, the reason I mention this, is because there are plenty of ways of writing about music that could be profoundly interesting if they weren't trying to convince you of something. I would imagine them to be like some of those New Yorker articles about weird "quirky" subjects like Ron Popeil that are entirely enjoyable but are of course, not really trying to sell you Ron Popeil. I know that music critics are supposed to be looking at things from an artistic and analytical view point, and are not really just selling music, but I think that description can be somewhat justified. They are basically playing as taste makers. I think right now a monthly magazine is really needed that approaches music in a fashion that differs from criticism and focuses more on decent stories, things that could grab anyone's attention, not just people obsessed with certain genres or forms.

It’d be great to see a fresh perspective on the shelves but the sad thing is that the kids really don’t give a fuck anymore about music. It’s not centre stage with them like it was for the 1977-1994 generations. Now it’s only a backdrop. It’s taken Uncut long enough to build up a respectable market share and whatever aesthetic aspirations you may have it’s going to be near impossible to dent an already overstuffed market. Also with dance after fragmenting into micro scenes and genres like rock it’s going to be difficult to get a focus. And yes, online has become the way to go for discourse. The site I’m on now is as good as it gets. Unless some of you guys set up your own mag with Tom as editor!!

With no cd on the front how will up your circulation figures during crunch times? Hmmm...NME 30,000 normally, during crunch "here kids a free cd on the front" ... 70,000

Good female writers = URGENT and KEY.

OK, this is going to be my obvious bias showing through yet again, but it has been "proved" by discussion on this board (and other forums) that females simply have a a different - therefore new ergo exciting - approach to listening, digesting, thinking about, and therefore writing about music. Won't get into specifics here about differences between male and female fandom, because it's been discussed to death. But the most exciting pieces of music journalism I've ever seen have been smart women applying girly logic and girly style fandom to "serious" music. What you need is the Anti-TomEwing: Tom Ewing's criticism is great because he applies typically male super-serious fandom criticism approach to stereotypically "girly" top 40 music. Take the opposite approach, and it would be the best writing ever.

However, most of the very good female writers about music that I know have given up on music journalism and gone on to other fields (marketing, PR, god knows what...) because they can't seem to get above a foot in the door by adapting their girly and enthusiastic fandom approach to cynical, trainspottery, superfan male typical muso magazines.

OK, enough of that soapbox.

Other suggestion is to echo the "Ban Press Release Writing" sentiment. If you can't find enough information or passion to come up with a full and original article, then don't print it. Not saying there shouldn't be short articles, but regurgitating press releases makes me switch off in boredom.

In fact, get rid of press release journalism altogether. Don't be afraid to talk about "unknown bands" but if you're going to do that, for gods sake, talk about a band that you really think deserves more attention, instead of whatever the flavour of the week "hot new band" that someone is pushing down the throat with a pitchfork. I understand the need to have one or two big bands to grab peoples attention and actually sell issues, but why make the entire magazine an organ for PR firms?

Many more rants brewing, but must get back on the illustration work. Good luck and see you Friday.

David: flattery is nice but editing, nein Danke. I'd happily send a few submissions to this new thing but I doubt I'm the kind of writer being looked for.

Jerry - I meant the cult-of-irony in music writing (you might reply - "what music writing?" and you would have a point). No, UNCUT doesn't cover new music...I suppose my point was more along the lines of what I was saying to Doomie yesterday re. clubs - what club/mag *doesn't* set out its stall to be fresh/eclectic/passionate/soulful/intelligent? I'm not sure how much these adjectives mean, you know?

Took the liberty of forwarding the thread to my favourite female music writer, so she might get in touch.

Jerry, when you say "done", you mean "we're going to do it", right? Do you really have huge ambitions? - the anti-NME thing worries me, they're irrelevant, not even on the map. Don't even consider them as an example of what's bad. They're too bad for that!

David G - an overstuffed market? What? Two overlapping 'old-music' dominated mags (Mojo and Uncut) and the awful Q. What else? By the way these mags are all competing for the same core market (30-45 yrs old demographic I'd guess) with slight variations. Uncut and Mojo have probably built market share at the expense of Q. Maybe Uncut has also brought in some disenfranchised ex-MM readers of the early 90's. (I should say that I have a lot of time for Uncut - some good writers, but they're all OLDER THAN ME!!)But who's writing about NEW music???

Jerry be careful what you say on your journal about your plans - I know for a fact that your journal is read inside Uncut towers. A 'person who is in charge there' asked me which website he could find it on - Tangents or Freaky Trigger.

Thanks for your concern Dr C, but I really don't care who reads my - our, actually - plans. The more the merrier, bring 'em on. Let them worry, let them scoff. When people try to second-guess, they always get it wrong. Those without imagination and ideas will always run scared because they know how precarious their position is. Uncut and MOJO do what they do fine (sure, I'd fine-tune them, given the option, but whatever). That's not what we're talking here.

Fair point on NME. I already knew it and I only titled the thread that way to grab attention. The paper is a complete irrelevence.

Fuck free CDs. I will continue to say this until everyone gets my point.

I too have experienced exactly the same sort of exodus of female writers as Kate mentioned. It saddens me terribly because I too agree that female writers have a fair fresher perspective on music (in the main) than their male counterparts. So...

I agree Dr C. but what about The Face, the American mags, The Wire, all the dance mags, specialist hip hop mags ..... Uncut is the retirement home for old MM heads and there's a great comfort in that but Mew Country overload, American bias and lack of street culture featured is making me cringe more and more. Never liked The Face but this month's So Solid Crew article is what Uncut fails miserably to do

Would go with the point about forgetting about album reviews although that is the one section by habbit that most prople immediately jump to in WH Smiths at lunchtime. More essay orientated hyper subjectivity is needed in any potential new publication.

If everyone was to say start their own magazine and its first issue was say November 2001, then what would it include? It seems fine and interesting to savage these other publications (they are all quite tedious) but perhaps it would be more fun/informative to see what would actually be the features/departments/columns/reviews/miscellaneous junk of everyone's dream publications. Of course, a real magazine would take longer to begin, but just for the sake of argument let's make it a November 2001 issue as that what will be hitting the news stands next.

Jerry

A few quick questions

Have you decided what frequency/ either fortnightly or monthly? I would aim for fortnightly - bridge the gap between the decaying weekly NME (therefore have better quality control) and the longish wait for the monthlies (therefore able to respond to change quicker and cover new music) or if finance is an issue do you plan initially to start as monthly then maybe switch to a fortnightly frequency?

Through the grapevine I am aware that you put in a counter bid to take over as editor @ Melody Maker from AJ in the late 90s, except your brief was turned down and then that Mark Sutherland ruined the MM. What was you plan then and how does it differ from your intentions now that you are going alone?

Is your aim this time - to go back to discovering a diverse range of music like MM did so well in the late 80s - when writing about music that matters with equal passion was paramount, actively setting and creating your own distinctive agenda based on individual writer instinct and subjective response regardless of the profile/sales potential of an artists music.

PS When do you plan to launch early 2002? or earlier.

I will reply in more detail of ideas for the new magazine, later.

All the best for the future - as I stated earlier this year that there was a clear gap for a new music magazine. I firmly believe there has never been a better time to launch an intelligent, informative, instinctive new music title that smashes across the spectrum of genres/different styles and selectively covers a diverse range of music that matters - and actively ignores a lot of bullshit and irrelevance.

The key question is not any more 'what do you have that your competitors dont?'. It's 'what do you have that your *readers* don't?'. You must think you have something or you wouldn't be fooling about with print (unless your reason for fooling about with print is primarily nostalgic, in which case don't bother).

In the old days the answer to the question was 'good writing and loads of free CDs'. But it's much much easier now to hear music free. So what else? Sincerity and passion? For a start those should be a given, and anyway nobody buying a music mag believes anyone writing them is sincere and passionate - and the not-believing is part of the fun, too. You can easily get into a dutch auction on how much you 'love music' - it generally leads to precious, gushy writing and a fear of covering anything that might be taken the wrong way.

(I'm not saying your thing will end up like this, Jerry, I'm just thinking aloud)

In which case you say "I like this, I don't care if you don't." Every article should have something like that.

As I mumbled to Zer Man when he sent out a note about all this, I'm game for writing for this mag. But I think getting Nicole, Kate, Suzy and Ally for a start to contribute would be a fine way to begin things. :-)

a) Long articles. Let the writers explore their own tastes a bit more (can't be done in 3 paragraphs).

b) Don't have more than one feature/review on one artist in each issue i.e. a feature telling us they're wonderful then a review saying the opposite. this looks rather stupid. I think, anyway.

c) Kind of goes with the long articles but let the writers say what they want and be subjective as long as they make it clear that this is their personal view. (NME is basically the opposite of this with a stifling editorial consensus and lifestyle-mag-ism about it. Music can not be grouped into a lifestyle due to it's subjectivity.)

d) Cover every genre.

e) How viable is this? Surely with the death of music mags recently, the dwindling sales figures of others which aren't dance culture mags and the exponential growth of the internet in this area this could be quite difficult to sell?

f) Despite 'e', good luck!

But I think getting Nicole, Kate, Suzy and Ally for a start to contribute would be a fine way to begin things.

I second that. I'd third it if I could.

Fuck free CDs. I will continue to say this until everyone gets my point

What is your point? I was just in Barrats (local newsagents with large magazine section). If you think there is some important point to be made that says music magazines should not have CDs then the war is over and the good guys lost.

Oh and an anti-Mogwai piece seems just as one dimensional as a pro- Mogwai piece.

It used to almost be a cliche in the NME letters page to complain that the writer had been so obtuse that the reader was unable to determine if the writer liked the band or not. I always liked the articles that caused such letters.

I don't really know if I like Mogwai but Im sure there are loads of interesting articles to be written about Mogwai, not just "blah blah Slint quiet loud quiet, blah blah kappa, blah blah pretending to be neds".

Take that last point, Mogwai (nice middle class public schoolboys from Hamilton, 20 miles from Glasgow) appropriating 1970s teen gang slogans. Whats going on there? Is it a good thing? Have they read Tongs Ya Bass? Have they been searching the second hand shops for Arthur Black shirts? What was happening in Glasgow in the 70s anyway and what point are Mogwai trying to make about it?

No free CDs. You want to buy a CD, go buy one, or download some stuff off the 'net. That's not what magazines are for. Sorry to not pamper or preach down to the consumer.

Diversity of views, in the same issue, on the same page, by the same writer - contradicting themselves in the same sentence if need be, on the same band - is only to be encouraged.

You're getting hung up on the Mogwai thing. Not reading the press or hearing the radio, I didn't realise they were such a big deal. Are they? That's your call, not mine. I thought they were another Great Band, like a 100 other new CDs I have jostling and jousting for position.

Where's Mark S? I want Mark S

1. Hilarious when DJ Martian finally replied to the thread - cos this has been his hobby-horse for - ever!

2. People keep talking about meet-ups on this thread - featuring Doom Patrol? Weird.

3. Broadly I agree with what Tom E has to say. He knows what he's on about.

4. Naturally I disagree with the good Dr about people not liking guitars. Yes, it's true, people don't like guitars - but I do. And by the lights of this thread so far, that ought to be enough (for me - if you see what I mean).

5. Let me be the first to disagree with the 'Women Are More Interesting Than Men' [for whatever reason] consensus developing here. It's unnecessarily offensive, misleadingly homogenizing and, at the end of the day, unconvincing. 'People' are interesting - lots of different people, in lots of different ways. Let's not divide ourselves up needlessly.

6. Oh, the pinefox's main Recommendation: cover Lloyd Cole - *in detail*, *at length*, *in depth*. That includes criticism and disappointment, not just praise and hero-worship.

Pf you must be a happy man, loadsa new LC material coming soon I hear.

here i be honeychile, there were no 38s and i nearly walked the whole of essex road!!

haven't read all the thread properly but i will when i'm out of cr*fts-mag pressweek

some of me says that the way we write here on ilx is more where my heart is (home finally at last until Father Ethan wakes and crushes the sun): certainly i nevah finish anything long these days as some present will note....

But count me in (if that's what you mean). I wuz ill is why i didn't reply to yr email.

response to some of Pinefox's points :

2)I did. I was mucking about. I was intending to see the Soft Boys, but was hit with a work deadline that means I'll not be going out this evening after all. Damn. (So why am I idling on ILM?)

4)No, you agree, don't you? I know YOU like guitars, and so do I, but PEOPLE (the kidz and that) don't. Don't you agree?

5) Agreed.

My only advice: not only don't be afraid to disagree with popular opinion, but don't be afraid to agree.

Someone said this:

d) Cover every genre.

I cannot stress how important this is - that an artist/band/whatever should at least be in w/a chance of getting their releases at least fairly reviewed. Look at the most laughably UN-(whatever) music, and try to give it fair coverage (does not need to be positive, of course) thus is gained a wider readership in every sense of the word. likewise, the regions of Britain (assuming this is to be brit-based for the most part) - everyone who lives in one of Britain's provincial cities knows of at least 2 or 3 artists who are as good as, if not better than the stuff that "makes it". Try to find a way through for such bands, perhaps by running the magazine from a central office, but having e.g. 9/10 of the writers distributed nationally/globally. I know that the potential for nepotism is there, but I'm sure you'll find a way to deal w/it.

If you're going to have a back sect based on muso stuff (like in M.M.) mail me Jerry. I have written for Sound on Sound, Audio Media the late (but not terribly lamented) The Mix. At the very least, try to poach Holly Hernandez from NME (assuming she's still there)

I wish you the very best w/this project, and I'll certainly read it.

xoxox

I guess I have to agree that, although getting new perspectives is a must, thinking that women writers are by nature more interesting is a mistake. There are many more interesting ways to divide people/get diverse opinion... why not have young people write? I mean REALLY young, like 16--before they've been polluted by the throbbing glut of discourse. Also, have people write about genres they think they hate and force them not to fall into the same old criticisms they (or other people) always use. (The Pinefox on glitch-core, anybody?)

About the free CD, I still don't see why you're taking such a hardline on this. If you're not going to have overly descriptive album reviews, then unless you give your readers some sort of way to hear what you're writing about, you'll just be referencing things that people are unfamiliar with. "Well, they can just buy the CDs or download the mp3s"--true, but (a) not everyone's rich and/or online, and (b) what are they supposed to do, read the writing solely for its own sake and go out and buy the music later? Granted, a lot of people (myself included) do this. But I feel that didactic journalism goes only so far. The most rewarding experiences as a reader are when you're at least partly familiar with what's being written about, and you can really engage with the content and the views being expressed.

More points - this is a hobby-horse for MOST of us heh - on contradiction:

The thing that has made reading the good web journalism special (and no not everyone is online but close to 50% of the pop'n is - your competition is not the NME-them but the ILM-us!) is the sense that yes the writers *were* contradicting themselves, because they're not sure what they like and they're writing in order to find out. That would really be something radical to see in a printmag - an end to the didacticism and certainty which has marked UK pop writing since [whenever].

The Pinefox on glitch-core, anybody? - LOL

Sod it. I'd like to withdraw what I said about contradiction. Especially since my point 'c' contradicts my point 'b'. Still think coverage of each band/artist etc should be equal tho'.

Maybe something 'different' could be done with the free CD.
Have a CD with a small number of sampled sounds on them, invite readers to make a track with them, and review some of the crap that comes in. Better yet, use some of these in a 'blindfold test', and tell the blind guy that's it somebody famous. Or, tell readers to send in cover versions of some featured tune every issue. Entire CDs of instrumental studio outtakes and people have to guess whose outtakes they are. This could provide some unexpected insights!

Hey fat boy how many issues one or two will be the life of the magazine?I think with a circulation of 2000?[if your lucky]....

Not subscribing then *hakester*?

Ian Hake, Poptones bod. I knew I smelled somethin' fishy ;-).

Let me be the first to disagree with the 'Women Are More Interesting Than Men' [for whatever reason] consensus developing here

PF, when I called for women writers it was because I don't see very many writing for music mags right now, not because I think they are "more interesting". It would just be nice to see some different perspectives, that's all.

Memo: Demand more, care more + impose yourselves. Be independent, irreverent + iconoclastic. Tell us why something matters + make it matter.

A few thoughts.

DG, of course there's LOADS of good writing about music on the net - but most of the people doing it are not paid to do it. And you can't take it on public transport, which is why magazines still exist.

Good writers promote themselves best through BEING GOOD WRITERS. Any fule editor kno dat. Also, their function is to be an intermediary between reader and subject in the sense of interviews and stuff, and the drive to shoot the messenger is a favourite British form of complaint, so I consider all the bellyaching about writers to be a sign that the readership are paying attention to what they say.

Any music magazine has to be time-sensitive: there will be a chance that everyone out there will be running a LeTigre interview at the same time, but the idea is to make the one in Jerry's mag be the good 'un. There should be a certain amount of collaboration and a certain amount of art direction deployed to make it happen. Music mag art direction in this country is APPALLING.

Also, you've got to cover things that are of interest to the readership which might not be Just Music (look at ILE, there are things we're all interested in that are part of a sensibility/worldview). Artists and authors are part of that - and something you won't get elsewhere.

I've sketched out a few things that are worth doing in mail to Jerry so won't repeat myself. TREMBLE IN FEAR, YE MIGHTY: my filofax is coming in handy.

I, as many, feel nostalgic about MM's early-to-mid 90's era too, but now in 2001 i dont see any point in musical press/papers. You wanna write about music you like in whatever way? Fine there is internet with audience of hundreds of millions. You want someone to pay you for writing, going to gigs, getting fancy photographers, designers? Fine, get some sponsors, put a banner here and there on your page, it won't hurt. Not to talk about mp3s, forums, chats and all the interactivity and the joy getting everything NOW AND THIS VERY MOMENT... Times change, i bet millions are checking NME's site each week, while perhaps only 100,000 (dunno exact numbers?) are buying it. While we're at NME, why is everyone so harsh on them. Think, they're the way they are because they have no choice...

whoops i just wrote something that DG has already said (in a way), oh well...

"Millions are checking NMEs site each week" - this I suspect to be untrue, but then 100,000 buying it is way off too.

"You can't read the Internet on the bus" - as a long-term raison d'etre this seems flawed. Yes magazines still exist, of course, and they always will, but on the other hand music is about the only thing the Internet does really really well, thanks to audio-clips, MP3 tech, *interactivity*. Other big-selling magazine sectors - fashion, men's stuff, even gossip to an extent - don't translate well online. Music translates and then improves the experience, and the popular sites are starting to get visitor numbers to match. And in a few years you will be able to read it on the bus, too.

I know, net evangelism seems a bit silly nowadays, but music is the one area where the Internet has had a revolutionary impact. Like everyone else I like the idea of a good print-mag to read on the bus and I'll certainly buy Jerry's (especially if he's poaching all my favourite contributors ha ha) but I'm worried that good writing isn't enough any more: bus-journey reads are nice add-ons when you can't be arsed to pick your book up, they're never *essential*. Still, it's a damn good thing that somebody's having a go.

(one issue not addressed anywhere here is the revisited dusty archive: i haf music magZoR (or clippings thereof) going back to 1975 = yes my sad problem sure, but also part of the erotics of the beast, no? but interweb shenanigans = v.v.v.hard to store or archive sensibly, yes indeed i also have run-outs of ile/ilm/ft/v.voice/other crowding me out of house and home, buty whereas an old zine grabbed and looked at first time in ten years is rich in benjaminian whatever, hard copy is just interchangeable hard copy)

However, one thing the internet zines have really failed miserably at is photographs and art direction -- at one time a big part of the appeal the music rags of old. There are very few sites out there I can think of where the visual appearance is anywhere near as striking as the content --- Mike Daddino's one of the only ones that springs to mind right now.

A lot of people treasure visually interesting pictures of their favorite artists --- what person hasn't put a picture of their favorite band/singer/etc. up on a wall at some point in their lives. There's no net equivalent to the pictures of Anton Corbijn or Steve Gullick, unfortunately.

Am I saying that visual appeal is as important as content? No. But I think it is an element that makes print mags (when done well -- print NME is a grey old mess) a little more tangible and sensual than their net equivalents.

Good point Mark but in many ways the archives live on, also online - the dusty archiving is done for you by Google etc. Which has the effect of breaching the boundaries of the 'zine - Google racks the piece you remember with scores agreeing, disagreeing, tangenting and so on. This breach-effect also happens with hyperlinking and the forum - the basic law of the web (and there is no doubt this is scary, repellent even, to some capital-W writers) is that nothing stands alone and nothing is completed, the writer is the reader and so on. So Benjaminian memory-thrill is replaced by something else but something perhaps more powerful.

(This should really be a different thread - as Maura could testify from several discussions the web/print thing is something I find totally fascinating but it's not germane to advice-for-Jerry's-mag.)

Art direction is the great flaw of print and web - though printzines at least have the space to give big pictures their due. But it's rare to find an exciting-looking publication in either medium. Online zines mostly look flat at best (raises hand guiltily) whereas offline zines are in danger of falling prey to distracting design-fads eg. mid-80s Face, mid-90s Raygun. Actually this is a great thread idea hold on...

Jerry, I believe you. My experience with the music press has only been from 1996 onwards though, and in a way this worries me. The only way I know that the magazines are shit now and they were better 5 years earlier etc is that older people have told me. Sometimes I think they may be just pining after some sort of 'golden age', others I believe them (NME's 'what's on yr mobile?' low low low point). Also worries me that NME does actually do it's job, in that it does write about all sorts of new music and is limited to what is out there and, unfortunately, what sells. But never mind, I'd still buy a new magazine if I thought it would be better, and undoubtedly all this has promise.

P.S. Get Piers Martin - he seems genuinely enthusiastic and a good writer to boot.

Glitch-Core, if I'm not mistaken, is the genre made up by collating loads of 'cutting-room floor' moments from the production process in which - let's say - a four-guitar fade which is slowly reverbing out is interfered with by roughly one-sixteenth of a second's worth of silence, ie. a 'glitch'. By stitching several of these 'glitches' together and running them in a constant playback for long periods of time, it is possible to produce wholly new rhythms, which (esp. given some discreet twiddling of the knobs during stereo mixdown process) take on an 'organic' minute slowing-down / speeding-up effect which is normally associated only with live performance, rather than technological tomfoolery.

It is rumoured that one inspiration for the genre (if it can really be called that) is the moment halfway through Wings' 70s epic 'Rock Show' when the splice between two different rhythmic sections is botched. The glitch was never fixed in the studio, and when it coincided (pure chance, this - Dawkins meets Eno on Neptune, let alone Linda McCartney) with a scratched record in Bootle in 1978 the seed of the movement was - so they say - sown. (So - and here's *my* angle on the whole phenomenon - Macca's 'anything goes' aesthetic had revolutionary results after all, despite seeming at the time to represent rockist retrogression.)

Pinefox, brilliant theory, and I'm sure yr not 100% 'serious', but you really should hear some of Teo Macero' 'botched splices' on 'In A Silent Way' (1969) or 'Bitches Brew' (1970) by Miles Davis for the true origins of glitchcore. Maybe.

Clarke: yes. I'm not sure why I wrote what I did above; it wasn't a reaction to yr post, more a reaction to the reaction (real or imaginary) to yr post.

Pinefox: the line from Wings to alva.noto is straight and dotted.

Andrew L: for Miles-related clunky edits, check out "Porgy and Bess". Not so much cuts as bruises.

Firstly we have to give Everett the rub of the green. This may be the only chance we get to break the NME hegenomy. Buy the paper even if it doent always accord with your every desire. I for one will take out a subscription if it takes off.

I know three or four people who used to buy either Sounds/NME/Melody Maker, but like me cannot bring themseleves to buy NME. We are all 30ish, listen to Peel, mourn the passing of the night time Radcliffe show and desperately want an alternative to NME and Uncut.

For myself a good mag is one with a good tv and film section (proper films not the rubbish NME reviews) similar to the old inkies, a Mr Abusing character to make fun of the punters, records reviewed by someone with an open mind - but equally no reviews of albums we know are unlistenable anyhow (Why waste space?). There are mags catering for dance/urban/nu metal, so be honest, there is nothing wrong with liking drums, bass and guitar. I like and enjoy other styles of music, but GIMMIE (DECENT) INDIE ROCK.

For myself some of my faves : Galaxie 500, Clinic, Strokes, Field Mice, Sonic Youth, Suede, The Fall, Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Godspeed...., Sisters of Mercy, HMHB, Television Personalities, Nirvana etc. Basically music of festive fifties past, but not lumpen lightweights like Stereophonics, Travis, Catatonia....

As for the internet, I see either a tv or computer screen too much. Give me paper.

Lastly have a word with Les Inrockuptibles (http://www1.lesinrocks.com/) how they grew Everett. After a decade they are selling 90000 copies i believe.

Break a leg

Steve

'Celebrity Skin' is worse than 'Melon Collie' because it was actually a disappointment at the time! Tho they are both monuments to tragic waste, 'MC' being a waste of everybody's time and record company money.

The best idea here is to have no interviews. - unless they are ALL preceeded by the title “My Moronic Views”.

Thanks for the tip on Les Incoruptibles, I was thinking of them as one of the few positive role models. And I like the 'My moronic views' line. Sorry I haven't posted any replies to this recently, but I've been frantic busy, non-stop email, trying to commission an entire 96 page issue in two days. It's fun! And thanks for the (mostly) overwhelmingly positive response. It means a great deal to us (as hopefully the magazine will grow to mean for you).

The very best of luck with your fantastic new organ, Mr True.

And I agree with not having free CDs on the front.

What if they were slipped inside his, ahem organ?

Everett, please update us with final name and from when it is available so i can urge folk to buy it. I posted details on a football discussion site and it got 70 views (150 is a lot; 70 is an average figure for views).

I dont know what the office politics of MM was, but i really enjoyed Andrew Mueller's writing. Any of his scribblings, even on a monthly basis, would be welcome. Does he still write for the Indie anyone?

Have you seen this discussion board? A more efficent demolition job on NME, it would be hard to find:

http://mudhole.spodnet.uk.com/~frogger/cforum/forum561.html

Actually i just checked the link worked, and Im afraid there are one or two folk who dont like you Everett! The thread has been going since March and indicates just how much people have lost with NME. Myself I dont even look at it in Smiths and Im that close from deleting NME.COM from my faves list.

I met your cousin last night, Jerry.

Burn the fuckers. Burn ALL the fuckers. I am the future.

Any news on this? Did the mooted late-October 'launch' happen? Is there a website we can find out any latest info from?

Be on the shelves in just under two weeks time...

Well bloody done Jerry, I can only imagine the amount of work it must involve. Now for those of us outside the UK how can we get a copy?

At last. Thank Christ!

so will the first edition hit the shelves this thursday or friday?

Well bloody done Jerry, I can only imagine the amount of work it must involve. Now for those of us outside the UK how can we get a copy?

Yes, would be interested in paying for a subscription even because I don't know if the newsagents here would import it. I am pretty desperate for some new stuff to read about music...

What Nicole said.

Erm, is this out yet? I had a look in Oxford on Friday but couldn't see it. I've been looking forward to it (when I stopped reading the NME it was because I'd realised the only bits I bothered reading any more were Stevie Chick's live reviews) so if anyone knows when it's coming out or has enough info for me to wave at newsagents to get them to order it or whatever I'd be very grateful. Cheers.

Rebecca - according to Jerry it is now due out Dec 12th.

Hey. You can buy the firts issue by sending a cheque for £3.50 made payable to EMINENT Management and Production. You probably won't find us in your local store right now, because I'm deliberately going underground for the first few issues to build up a good solid support. And... THEN! We pounce.

Eminent's address is: Studio 4 4th Floor The Old Truman Brewery 91-95 Brick Lane London E1 6QL

Mark the envelope ref: Careless Talk Costs Lives, and please write your name and mailing address on the back of the cheque. Subscriptions are £15 for six issues. If you're abroad, add on a sensible amount of money to compensate. Any queries please talk to Colin on colin@carelesstalkcostslives.com

Jerry - mind if I repost this info on NYLPM? I'm assuming you don't, but my guess is more random potentially interested people will see it there than here.

Of course I don't mind!

What is NYPLM? (Have I got that acronym right?)

New York London Paris Munich - it's a singles reviews, links and occasional commentary thing.

Mogwai? BLUGRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHH. I must admit all this WE WUV WIMMIN tubthumping is making me raise my eyebrows. Haven't you already written a book about this, or something? Then again seeing as I once got told I couldn't be a full supporter of wimmin in rock because I didn't really look the part and therefore make an effort (IE I don't dye my hair durty blonde) you can see why I'd be a wee bit cynical about it. If this magazine had my article about why the Essex Green ming WHICH I WROTE LAST NITE (zestrokes!) ACTUALLY! but left at home oh well it would be BRILLIANT.

My ideal music magazine features the bands who are usually covered by the Wire being treated in the style of Smash Hits, and the bands who are usually covered by Smash Hits being treated in the style of the Wire. But with no sense that this is in any way unnatural, and as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

Who needs a new music magazine when there'll be another Papercuts along in a minute?

Where is that Papercuts? It's got an OK thing by me in and lots of stuff I want to read by other people.

Ho and indeed ho! Um, yes, leaves on the line or something, looks like February-ish at the moment.

When available, could someone please post Papercuts info here as well? (Or on NYLPM?)

alext is my new hero!

It's no coincidence that Alex T is the co-creator of the Freaky Trigger 'concept'. Sadly honoured more often in the breach when we came to actually do it.

February-ish: this could be the biggest comeback since Stereo MCs!

Hmmm, perhaps it's time for alext to put his money where his mouth is, freaky trigger wise. *And* to finish the article which proves by SCIENCE that Wyclef Jean's 'Perfect Gentleman' is the most romantic song ever written.

"Tom, Uncut doesn’t cover NEW bands, certainly not as part of its agenda anyhow" - Who were the first major music magazine in the UK to lift your much vaunted Lift To Experience from the shadows? Eh?

isn't the NME of my NME my friend?