Most WTF NME cover - 1980's edition..

hahaha Charlie Nicholas

Please explain the occasion that merited putting Corrie on the cover.

They had ran out of Ian Curtis articles

This was done (more or less) from memory so apologies if I've missed anyone. Some of these covers are actually pretty smart e.g ZZ Top and Sam Fox but and probably deserving of much less ordure than say, the 8 covers that The Wonderstuff had.

xpost, Corrie was iirc a response to the post Toxteth/Southall riots and used as an example of strong, northern working class culture.

Animal testing! ah the things they got up to in the 80s

this range seems really good now, ridiculous as some of them are. i'm glad they stopped putting sports people on the cover tho.

why did Anfield Rap get a cover but not Hoddle & Waddle?

Liverpool mafia.

Just remembered that I forgot to put Daley Thompson as one of the choices.

You also missed Frank Bruno (1983).

Has to be Motorcycle Boy, though.

Also: WAR ON POP (1984).

I'm puzzled: wtf is so wtf about the NME putting Blue Rondo a La Turk (who were bloody great btw), Hipsway (who were OK) or Birdland (who not only weren't bad but were precisely the sort of band that I'd have expected the NME to champion) on their cover?

The 12-inch of "Me & Mr Sanchez" is quite spectacularly brilliant.

Baby Amphetamine

Remind me who these were again...

me and mr sanchez? who's that by?

BRalT

Cannot be worse than Bros. Possibly.

Big Frank's cover's up there.

My memory of Blue Rondo isn't as kind as yours, I always thought of them as dodgy ambulance chasing clothes horses, but quite happy to be proved wrong, will try to see if there's owt onloe. The Hipsway selection was as much for the 'Born To Be King' tagline as the choice of artist. Birdland were irredemably poor though a lot of the other selections from '89 were dull rather than wtf

Wikipedia has a more detailed but still incomplete list of covers.

I liked the Birdland I heard and have been looking for mp3s of the album for ages.

Voted Hipsway, cos of the ones I've seen SPK was perfectly fine, Kinnock (one of 'em) made sense, Birdland were completely standard roll-the-dice-on-some-hopefuls-we've-got-another-fifty-this-year material and the animal testing was just awkward, not inexplicable. But the Hipsway premise and layout were entirely WTF.

ZZ Top's car is the LEAST wtf!

the foetus one was a bit of a shock too. i must have missed the corrie one so i'll vote for that. wtf indeed!

the zz top eliminator car rules and pwns in equal measure

Coronation Street (1981)

Blue Rondo a La Turk was a band named after the song, right?

Pop in 1984 was not at all bad, so no point in a campaign against pop in 1983-84.

Pop in 1998 was really, really awful though.

yeah, I loved Hipsway in those days but that cover made me cringe. More hilarious: the year-later followup story trying to explain why Hipsway were not, in fact, dominating Planet Pop

Pop in 1984 was not at all bad, so no point in a campaign against pop in 1983-84.

Pop in 1998 was really, really awful though.

What in the thread do you think you're replying to, Geir?

baby amphetamine, but i voted for spk anyway

I think the NME's interest in Coronation Street started in a Julian Cope interview where he was ranting on about "corrie" and the interviewer didn't know this was a reference to the TV show. Cope said something like 'you do call it corrie don't you' and the NME picked this up as shorthand for being northern and not a public schoolboy. References to it turned up in other reviews and interviews.

Early 80s Corrie was pretty great though, and most of the readership would be watching it.... it was like a transvestite version of 'a taste of honey'.

They were pretty keen on Brookie too.

"Something like Baby Amphetamine will get front covers and something as genius as Momus won’t even get covered. That completely sums up 1987, and it’s sick..." - Alan McGee

"Chernobyl Baby" ahoy.

Corrie was iirc a response to the post Toxteth/Southall riots and used as an example of strong, northern working class culture.

-- Billy Dods, Wednesday, March 19, 2008 4:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

wtf!

I thought Baby Amphetamine was Alan McGee's idea? Or was Momus?

I thought Baby Amphetamine was Alan McGee's idea?

yup. well the one 12" that they released (??) is def. a Creation record.

sounds like a primal scream album title too.

I imagine Alan was trying to make some sort of statement about the music industry or somesuch - ooh, subvoisive already

http://www.creation-records.com/html/baby.html

"Something like Baby Amphetamine will get front covers and something as genius as Momus won’t even get covered. That completely sums up 1987, and it’s sick..."

;_;

Surely if BA are up to be included, then I'd have thought this gang of connected chancers would have been a suitable choice ?

lol i thought that was going to link to the art of noise

not that far off truth be told.

Age Of Chancers?

ha. v.good.

I voted for Youth Suicide, because it was (a) a dreadful dreadful cover and (b) kept Lawrence from Felt off the front cover at a time when he truly deserved it.

Publicity for Felt >>>>>> youth suicide in mid-eighties Britain.

Was this Thatcherism in action?

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