If the NME were still like it was in the 1980s...

bah, it's all ringtones and downloads. What happened to the revolutuin? etc continued 100 threads...

Who wants to read about Muse?

I'd be reading it.

I'd be way more interested in Haruki Murakami. But interviews mostly seem pointless.

Jamie Oliver as interviewed by S.Wells.

Now yr talkin.

sWessl was briefly great, he just ran his schtick on for way, way too long.

Far be it from me to impugn Mr. Wells' reputation.

What you don't get in the modern NME I suppose is Mark E. Smith going out for beers with Shane McGowan, Nick Cave and Steven Wells and annihilating all of them (while drinking all of them under the table, natch): you're a useless drunk perpetuating negative Irish stereotypes/ you're a self indulgent middle class junkie playing at being a rock and roller/ you're working-class-redder-than-thou-skinhead-who-actually-went-to-public-school

00's - raving in print about bands who are signed to the parent co's rekkird label w/o declaring an interest somehow.

00's - who be this?

wonder if lex likes him (or 'would like him if he'd heard of him' obv).

the very fact that the paper is now owned by a big record company = nothing it prints can be trusted.

Me too.

These bright young people, putting words next to words for the NME, were wasting their time, in the 1980s.

This short ode
Is to give you a code
So that in this season
You have no reason
To cause a rift
And see your friends miffed

just go to http://www.clareflorist.co.uk?lpemail=ac and use code XMA at the checkout for a 10% discount on all products from Clare Florists.

I mean, what've you got to lose?

That was a waste of time.

Geir, can I make a suggestion? Try posting to ILX during GMT office hours, when bored UK deskworkers may actually be dulled enough to respond to you.

Wasting time is a waste of time.

A while ago I went through a whole pile of NMEs from the late seventies at the British Library for a research project, and I can't say I was <i>that</i> phenomenally impressed.

Late seventies was fairly nmeh. Try around 1984 or so.

Oh I like that mistype, keep that.

They did a magazine-style compilation of the 'legendary' Burchill/Parsons punk rock era a few years back. I'm not a fan of their later writing, but even so, I was aghast at just how wretched most of it was.

In contrast, I had a copy of the 1976 hardcover NME annual, and that was pretty much wall-to-wall protopunk, and great stuff: dolls, iggy, alice cooper . .

(and while the rubbish punk singles thread was running, I actually found myself missing Sounds. Just for a minute, though.)

I never actually ever read Sounds.

They had cartoons by Alan Moore and Savage Pencil, and Pencil/Pouncey wrote for them. Standard of journalism rarely rose above fan level, but they did cover genres like metal and streetpunk which NME regarded as utterly beneath them.

The NME, on the other hand, gave you Penman and Morely banging on about Buck's Fizz and Dollar inna postmodern stylee. (Along with a lot of other good stuff, it must be said.)

Sounds was capable of being a bit more off-the-wall, NME bit stodgy. For instance Throbbing Gristle were always given a fair hearing in Sounds while NME wouldn't touch them, hated them in fact - well, not until they'd split up and they were mentioned in every third article

Sounds were best for early UK punk coverage - Ingham/Dadomo/Suck etc - and their spring 1978 "New Muzik" supplement was, well, mind-expanding.

I stumbled across some late 70s NMEs a while back and was surprised at the high level of lameness on offer. Easy to selectively remember the good stuff, I guess.

Well, you cherry pick, sure.

What would you cherry pick from thesedays?

http://www.pecorfamily.com/Blog_202006_2D04_2D01_20Trees_thumb.jpg

What would you cherry pick from thesedays?

In those days, there was the NME, Sounds and Melody Maker. And that was about it. I'm not sure even the Guardian covered pop music then. Nowadays, you have all the daily newspapers and their various music supplements and review sections, you've got quite a few magazines, you've got hundreds of blogs... Sure, 90 percent is crap, but it was ever thus, only in far smaller quantities. Having actually waded my way through dozens of copies of late 70s NMEs, I'm really not so sure it was that wonderful.

Everyone's saying "Late Seventies", I'm sure it was more about the mid eighties myself!

Well, maybe the mid eighties was much better, I didn't look at the NMEs from then.

I should add that it wasn't that there was nothing of interest from the late 70s NMEs I looked at, there were a couple of excellent interviews with Eno, for instance. But there was a vast amount of laddish fanboy crap too

There were still quite a few old hippies hanging about the NME in the late 70s

"I'm sure it was more about the mid eighties myself!"

You're right. And the answer to the original question is that the NME would contain the better stuff from the newspaper supplements and the numerous glossy music mags, which didn't really exist back then. Most of my favorite writers from the period seem to be at The Wire now.

Sounds is a sidebar that needs its own thread, though.

Yeah, you had to get both really.

Found a Sounds poll Sounds vs NME vs Melody Maker

Thread, not poll.

I think there's a good case to be made pegging 1984 as the NME's peak year, whereas I'd say 1978 for Sounds. Never was much of an MM reader, but was super-loyal to Record Mirror even in its wafer-thin final years (James Hamilton! The charts!). But I also got my info from Smash Hits (up until 1984 again), the style mags (The Face, i-D and Blitz), and Black Echoes / Blues & Soul. There was always a lot to wade through.

If the NME were still like it was in the 1980s, I'd be a happy man... but then again, I'm not like I was in the 1980s.

No one has mentioned (I think) that at the NME this week it is LIKE THE 80s AGAIN!!! As daughter of 80s NME LEGEND Paul Morley conductes her first ever interview with meaningful rock band The Arcade Fire. The renaissance starts here!!!

ILM branded as pretentious journalists

Nnnggghh.

the hell?

Are you sure? I think he's just treating that thread as a resource for the names of pretentious journalists from the era which he's discussing.

journalists more like gothtards.

which journalists were inspired by bauhaus and where can i not read them?

Are you sure? I think he's just treating that thread as a resource for the names of pretentious journalists from the era which he's discussing.

ah ha that could be it actually.
a case of transference on my behalf perhaps - ahem.

Which isn't to say that I understand his point, mind

Someone goatse this thread asap.

Maybe he searched for Bauhaus, found the fifteen Bauhaus threads which do exist and discovered that two of them included the word "pretentious" in their titles. I understand that this is what the Grauniad calls "research."

Two points:
a) We consider "pretentious" the highest of compliments.
b) Max Gogarty - let it go, chaps, you lost and you lost and you lost, deal with it and move along.

Guardian comin' thru with the rofflez again!

And a third point:
c) Nice of them to refer to us as "journalists" especially as Michael "Reclaim Camden" Hann is particularly keen on using "trained journalists" to rip off bloggers' ideas write coherently structural articles.

or "coherently structured" articles proves his point dunnit

I preferred "coherently structural" actually. you could get a social sciences degree with that kind of waffle.

Indeed.

A good thing Travis and Coldplay helped rescue music again not much afterwards, just like Blur and Oasis had done a few years earlier.

― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, December 5, 2007 11:57 PM (nine years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wish you were just trolling and didn't really mean that.

― Herman G. Neuname, Thursday, December 6, 2007 12:06 AM (nine years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh geir, that's an all-time low :(

― Just got offed, Thursday, December 6, 2007 12:09 AM (nine years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I expect he's said it many times before. The even sadder fact is that the uk public agreed with him and bought all those albums.

― Herman G. Neuname, Thursday, December 6, 2007 12:17 AM (nine years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Of course. Sane people want real music with real songs with real tunes, written by the people who perform them. And that's what they got.

― Geir Hongro, Thursday, December 6, 2007 12:21 AM (nine years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

LOL!

Does Geir still post here?

No, I see him on Facebook and that's the best place for him (not being nastty)..

the realness tripartite is interesting in that it implies the possibility of real music with fake songs with real tunes, or fake music with fake songs with real tunes, etc

e.g. Chris Gaines.

Im FB friends with him and he never mentions the things he's infamous for here except in the ilxors now playing group if he posts some britpop or synthpop act but usually with a ;)

Of course who knows what his posts in Norwegian are about :)

dude you're friends with chris gaines???

hah

Record collector bloke flips through and summarises old editions of the NME in an absolutely pin-perfect BBC Schools & Colleges accent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMm6kij3RN0