Careless Talk Costs Lives is too Rockist Discuss

An utterly ridiculous assertion. So bereft of merit that its propagator should be struck in the head repeatedly with a large, frozen seabass.

CTCL merely costs about a pound - and that's all it's worth. I think it's a load of NADGERS. Then again, I would. Where's the seabass?

I say Miss Kittin,Fischerspooner,Fosca,Orlando(needs reevaluated),Human league, PSB(as relevant as ever)peaches,princess superstar, Stop covering rock bands. and silly bands like Cex,Kid 606,tigerbeat6 is the worst label ever! Still in recent months its covered Gonzales,princess superstar. so its improving. Still cant beat nme though. How can CTCL give good reviews to the likes of QOTSA? Heavy Rock is just SAD!

CTCL is not "rockist" just because it likes rock. Its decision to cover mostly rock bands and the way it covers them is why I don't buy it (cos I'm not much interested in them) but as far as I know Jerry and company don't pretend that what they cover is the sum total of interesting music out there. In fact CTCL is nothing like the NME, which does pretend that - it's more like an indie equivalent of Muzik or Mixmag, a gap in the market which probably needed filling.

All magazines hire staff that feel passionate about the SAME things so there isn't enough variety in the coverage and that is unfortunate.

Rock is fun. Also pop is fun. I like both rock and pop. Only when they're good, though. I don't think either one is particularly "dead". Thank you.

On the thread in general I am bemused by this rockist put down. Also by the amount of Smash Hits from the eighties fans... if I remember right, that great bastion of pop covered the likes of Stupids too - hardly PSB is it? Although I am struggling for more examples.

Heavy metal is where I think people are most critical because it is unapologetically dumb. Well often that is when rock is at its best.

Only rubbish music is shit - not any particular style or era

CTCL just celebrates what it likes - much like Metal Hammer, Mixmag, Kerrang etc. NME celebrates its farting attempts to spot a scene every week of the year averaging it out over the year by spotting major label signings (pretending to be indie) like Starsailor/Cold Play etc. to fund the promotion of the brand - just check the latest Coke tie in advertised on the radio. NME is going nowhere no matter how much we whinge about it. it's going to get bigger and more corporate - but that's life. Always wanting to make money. Just a sham that best kept secrets need to eat and make a living beyond a squat in Clapton

- what was in the charts (as in WHATEVER was in the charts)

- what was likely to be in the charts soon

- what its writers would quite like to see in the charts

These are brilliant principles for a pop magazine to follow and would that SH - or anything! - did so now.

I got those issues out of a library a few yrs ago to check if it was just nostalgia and was blown away by how good they were.

2. First ever mention of my beloved Sea Bass on ILX.

Sea Bass - yes, thank goodness for sea bass.

Wait. Kevin Rowland? he's doing music again? and he was in CTCL? I need to start buying it again.

Actually, knowing Simon's fondness for deadlines, better make that three issues time...

Among the many 'rock' people I personally have interviewed for CTCL are Yoko Ono, Princess Superstar, Electrelane, Eleni Mandell, Jad Fair, Alma Cogan's sister, Kevin Rowland, M Ward, Oxbow, Lee Hazlewood...

I'll give you Slumberparty, Mogwai, Oneida, Songs Ohia, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Dirtbombs on the more macho, balls out, testosterone-fuelled side of rock, especially Karen O, now I think about it...

The word 'rockist' is cool, though - even if I did previously associate it with Bono's leather trousers and 'Keep music live' stickers. I RECLAIM IT RIGHT NOW FOR THE FORCES OF GOOD AND INTEND TO RUN IT INTO THE GROUND NEXT ISSUE (unless of course I forget). Ned, maybe you could do a column around rockist friends...?

I would hate to claim I'm genuinely anything - aside from ancient, perhaps.

One of those cardboard cutouts Michael Jackson uses to fill auditorium seats when he tours.

I will write you an article on seabass!

The cover has to be shot by Steve and written about by ET, and bless them, they like the rock. As a fanzine, they have no responsibility to anybody but themselves. CTCL needn't exist to give an overview of any current scene or trend... it's not like The Face, with a desire to tell 'the kids in the sticks' what's going on in the big smoke, a specific demographic to appeal to, a managing director telling the editorial dept what to do, how to please advertisers or sell more issues etc. I personally would love to see more electro in CTCL... but I understand why it ain't there, and why, until someone else gets to write and shoot the cover story, it ain't gonna be there for a while.

N.B. This is also one of the reasons why we haven't seen any women, apart from Karen O, the singer in a band where the boys play the instruments, on the cover of this much-vaunted 'female-friendly' magazine. Rock is a boys' game, with chicks the exception, and not the rule. As long as those whose tastes determine the content of the magazine continue to like rock and rock only, we're likely to see more pasty-faced guitar boys on the front.

P.S. I am not defining 'fanzine' here in opposition to 'magazine', nor am I privileging one over the other. I adore fanzines for their energy and passion... but there is a difference between this and a magazine, and I think this is why CTCL feels no obligation to cover any music that does not gives its creators a full-on boner.

Actually, the secret is very simple as to who is featured. We feature people who want to speak to us. It's very incestuous, you know, and we're very sensitive, so we don't want none of those nasty rough funk boys coming in and roughing up our party...

you are of course forgetting alizee and the fact the next issue's lead album review is THE NEW SUGABABES.

The nasty funk men are Bobby Gillespie, Oasis, Strokes, Vines and their gangs, got it yet?

one down one to go!

!!!

consequently we will not be interviewing pooey primal scream but running expose features on beyonce and britney and sugababes and christina milian and 21st century girls.

Careless Trout Costs Lives - pandering to the majority to make zillions and get laid.

yeah! CUNTWIT. who'd want to interview a fuckhead from faith no more anyway??

"(doesn't matter if he does primal scream though)"

hey! maybe they can bukkake all over his dumb journo head and drown him in a sea of rockistpigspunk!!

CTCL should just stick to writing about the music that matters - the strokes, the vines and idlewild.

oh wait.. won't they have to start paying me before i can resign properly?

"Else it's disturbingly like a CTCL editorial meeting"

Chris, how would you know? Brighton's 'too far' for you, you said... ;)

I write for CTCL, but I'm not part of the editorial clique.

I have to fight for column space with everyone else, and yeah, it's frustrating when you are screaming "Why isn't there more X?" until you realise that it's because everyone else is screaming "Why isn't there more Y?" or "Why isn't there more Z?"

1) re: Primal Scream. I WROTE a bloody great long massive fuckoff rant about Bobby G and co for the current issue, which somehow DISAPPEARED or WAS LOST somewhere between my computer and print. I would LOVE to cover PRML SCRM, and don't think cause I'm a little screaming girlybopper that I won't ask the big questions as well as gush about leather clad crotches.

2) FEMALES ON COVER. Yes, this is a huge bitch for me, and I nearly resigned over it last month after having a massive go at ET. Supposedly pro-female magazine, yet they'll put a man in a dress on the cover before an actual GURL musician (and I just don't think that sexy girlsingers count.) I'm sick of riot grrl rants, all bitching and no music, or tokenistic articles about the Girly Canon. But if I quit, even in protest The Man wins, it's self defeating. Better to be pro-active and just try to pitch more articles on females.

3) Rockist? Yes, of course. The editors have their tastes, whatever. Me, I fucking HATE the Bleah Bleah Bleahs *AND* Fischerspooner, so where does that leave me? Trying to stuff little articles about Fonda 500 into the cracks. I wish there were a greater range of people writing, so it wasn't just 5 big articles each by Everett and Stevie, but more people with more tastes, maybe some of which will match with mine/the other readers. But, you know, it's their ball and they can take it home.

One issue, I'll think it's the saviour of the music press. The next, I'll hate it and be embarrassed to let my friends know I even write for it, and then the issue after that, I want to be part of it again.

It's easy to bitch. It's harder to make up your mind to actually try and CHANGE things, cause, you know, that takes a hell of a lot more effort than just bitching. If you think it's rockist, write a fucking article about what YOU want to see, and pitch it to them. But nah, it's easier to bitch on IL* than it is to sit down and write an empassioned and interesting piece worthy of publication, isn't it?

oh do i wish. no, when we get to issue 0 and fail to have destroyed the music press we make our point via a big Heaven's Gate style suicide.. except ET who switches poisons and runs off to become the new editor of NME and part time evangelist.

regarding Fiona/Kate's comments: i do understand your concerns and certainly feel very much the same way about a lot of the things you mention. however, i think you're slightly off the mark with your comments about an editorial clique rejecting all proposals in favour of their whims. while an editor i'm certainly part of no clique.. we all have ideas about the magazine should be run/what we should be featuring and the whole point of there being a new network of editors is that these viewpoints (and those of the contributors as a whole) is fed into the production of the magazine so CTCL isn't *just* everett and steve's fanzine (although in the context of what it is, this is no bad thing).

the thing i like most about CTCL, and then sets it most apart from the other music publications is that each writer is allowed to plant a flag for what they believe in and defend their stance vociferously. eg. i get to twat on about the sugababes or whatever, houghton gets his 'i love lady stush' stuff, amp can do whatever of the three bands she likes this month and you can write your entertaining articles on french kicks and so on.

of course ET will reject stuff, but that isn't being fascist, it's being an editor. certainly the process, while not a democracy, is a hell of a lot more open than that of the NME or something.

i certainly agree with your comments about not having had females on the cover yet (apart from Karen O and her miserable bunch of retro- revisionists). i'm certain this willl change though, especially when you consider that it is the ostensibly the only (relatively) mainstream feminist music publication. and yes, for a magazine to declare that it wants an equal mix of male and female contributors, is still a feminist statement - especially when you consider how female writers generally appear to be dismissed as token on other publications.

but i don't know why i'm defending ET here, he can do that much better than i can. and i fucking hate songs:ohia anyway.

i think it really depends on who the band is. you could be the world's biggest fan of stereophonics, you could be so PASSIONATE about their music that you cry blood every time you hear 'more life's in a tramps vest'. but you're still not going in the mag.

which band was it, incidentally?

Context people, context. That's what you're all forgetting.

1000 Clowns? Sounds great. Send it to me direct Dom. Hold on...don't. Clowns are the greatest evil known to wo/mankind. We won't have room for it, what with the four page I Love Shit Bands section we're planning to run each and every issue from now on.

Context, people, context.

I just agreed to write a lead story for the NME because I have no idea what the publication reads like - is it any good?

actually, that IS particularly editorial. it is one of the editors' jobs to decide what goes in to the magazine.

there is a finite amount of pages. not everyone can have their pieces printed. there is only so much room, and it seems a more respectful and honourable way to go about things, to tell a prospective writer that the editors aren't keen on the feature idea before they write it, than tellingthem to write it anyway and then rejecting it afterwards, on the very same criteria they would've rehected it in the first place (ie that theydon't want that band in the magazine).

CTCL had only so many pages per issue. each one has to count. there are all sorts of bands trying to get in there, features ideas beingpitched. you would be SHOCKED at the things we've had to turn down.

print magazines are bound to a much less forgiving sense of physics than websites; each issue is roughly seventy pages of editorial content AND NO MORE. and we have to pay for every. single. page. that's not like just putting a webpage up on a server (this is no disrespect to fine web magazines), its a question of making very difficult decisions, and facing the relaity of this situation.

for the record, the amount of pieces i WISH we could put in the magzine, but are prevented from doing so for reasons of space/time, is a major frustration, but is just par for the course, ultimately.

Stevie chick kept promising Loose Lips Sinks Ships would come out soon :(

I think i have all ctcl's up in the loft. Wonder if they will ever be worth a fortune ;)

I wonder if I ever sent david those cdrs..