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)

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!