Do any Uncut or Mojo writers post here?

Now, all we want is for Nigel Williamson or Allan Jones to turn up here :).

or?
m.

Last time I look at one at the newsstand, these mags run reviews of new music alongside nostalgic cover features on "classic" rock. So they're sort of separate problems. (Or I could be wrong.)

Hey, that sounds interesting. How do you tie all that in with Fairport?

Enough about Fischerspooner already!!

Cut three noughts off those figures and it's *just* possible you might be onto something there, Custos. Although it's more likely to be payment in kind, methinks: I've heard many a tale from reliable sources of "here's some drugs, please be nice to our band"-type stuff in the past. In fact, I guess it's even happened to me once or twice - lucky I have a will of iron...

There is a lot still to say about the Beatles, Dylan and The Stones. The problem is there's a lot still to say about everything else too.

incidentally there was a thread a few months ago where we wondered what Williamson did before he became an old-fart music hack in that he wasn't a young buck at the NME or MM like Adam Sweeting used to be etc etc - according to a '97 Uncut, NW worked for Tony Benn and wrote Marxist tracts, before becoming editor-in-chief of the Labour Party's publications and was press officer to Neil Kinnock during the '87 election. then he took the Murdoch shilling and became political correspondent of the Times (if this was pre-Blair it would have been UNEQUIVOCALLY anti-Labour of course - it still is instinctively), then diary editor (yeeucch!), then news editor, then somehow scraped into writing about music for them. that kind of says it all ...

oh, and Jody - you will know soon, my friend, you will know soon :).

I only contribute reviews at the moment (or at least have just started to; the first lot will appear in the November issue) rather than features, but the truth alas is far less glamorous; Paul Lester rings me up every so often, reels off a list of albums in which I might be interested and I then tick 'em off.

Yes, the star ratings system I've never liked - seems to me that logically everything should get either five stars or no stars, i.e. it's worth spending money on or it isn't - but putting it into practice is more difficult. The sad truth is that to an extent I do get to choose which albums to review, and naturally I'm going to gravtitate towards records/artists in which I might be interested. The consequence is a lot of four-star reviews, which I agree isn't very helpful, but the fact is most of the records I've been sent so far I've really, really liked, or would have gone out and bought anyway. There's only really been one stinker so far; perhaps I ought to ask PL for some more stinkers, just to sharpen one's critical acumen. Or else do some really obvious artists and find something original to say about them in the 100 words per review I am generally allotted.

It's certainly a good exercise in discipline trying to encapsulate the essence of a record in 100 words, even though to those familiar with CoM they may look weirdly like abstracts or precis of CoM articles (indeed, a few "director's cuts" have already appeared on CoM, including the Beth Gibbons piece, which I understand from Polydor that BG has read).

I obviously can't talk too much here about the current internal politics of Uncut, but from my point of view it's definitely an advantage that someone like PL, who certainly doesn't march to the same drum as Jonesey or the sundry Nigels/Nicks, is their reviews editor.

The Uncut reviews seem to cover a wider range of artists than could ever hope to get features. As Marcello says, this must be down to Paul Lester. Morley hasn't written anything for a while, nor Penman IIRC, but Stubbs, Reynolds etc are good. The features are truly wretched - how much longer can they keep wringing out features on Lennon/Beatles/Stones/Dylan? Must be time for Hendrix again soon.

Yes, yes I know how mag circulation works. The problem is - they DON'T write the *decent articles on the more obscure stuff*!! Actually Mojo does a better job of this, but still not good enough.

- they are commercial publications published by companies whose fiduciary duty is to maximise shareholder's funds
- if there is a profitable market for what they do then someone will do it, whether they do or not.

If Uncut and Mojo do a bad job of giving their readers what they want - for example by getting the mix of obvious and obscure stuff wrong - they will not survive. Their editor's jobs are not to publish the hippest magazine on the stands but to maximise profits and the chances of their magazine's survival.

Obviously these difficulties could be addressed by a simple abolition of the free market and its replacement by a dictatorship of the self-consciously hip.

Is there really a need for a generalist music mag?

Come on Tom I woz expecting you to analyse this on NYLPM !

Best New Act

The Bees

Best Single

Sugababes - Freak Like Me

Best Video

Eminem - Without Me

Best Producer

Rik Rubin for Red Hot Chili Peppers - By the Way

NB not because of the RHCP but because of his re-recording of the new Andrew WK song.

Best Live Act

White Stripes

(only ones I've seen)

Best album

Doves - The Last Broadcast

(never heard it but at least one person I like likes it.)

Best act in the world today

Radiohead

Q Unwanted

Geri Haliwell

Hooray for analysis!

Incidentally, I recall that Uncut was much more differentiated from Mojo (ie "hipper") when it first started. I don't know why it became more conservative but I'd bet it was because it could sell more magazines. ie, they found out what their readers actually wanted.

No Adorno quoting responses, please.

Aaron: yes but what they can charge for an add depends on sales.

But those types in the UK have Classic Rock and Q. In the US: Spin and Rolling Stone.

this is just not true.

But those types in the UK have Classic Rock and Q. In the US: Spin and Rolling Stone.

I'm not sure whether that was sarcrasm or not, but the target audiences for these mags and Mojo overlap only slightly- I'm a fan of Mojo because they make features on a lot of past music, not just Beatles and Dylan (whom I never tire of reading about either, but then I'm a fan) but also Larry Williams, Funkadelic, Sugarhill Records, The Deviants, etc. I don't think this is atypical of their target audience, and I most certainly will not find it in any of the other rags you mentioned.

conversely the one-off articles on other acts, eg interesting oddball english stuff, ok it's nice that anybody is taking on the paradoxical stranglers or the phenomenal van der graff generator, but then mojo does seem to fall into the trap of being too general, trying to cover a whole band with one article, usually leaving me wanting more

it's not that it's lip service to these more marginal acts because mojo did include them in the first place presumably as some half-way labour of love, but the stranglers have all just been re-mastered, van der graff have a new-ish box set out, so the commercial links are still there -- these articles leaving me wanting more, so am i meant to go out and buy this re-rotated stuff ? i never expected a 2cd greatest hits form pink floyd for instance, but there they were, cover story and all

my conclusion is that buying mojo once a month is much more prudent than actually buying into the record companies endless cd re-issue racket, just so i know some of what's going on in the nostalgia industry, and occasionally i'll take the bait

If Mark S was here he could confirm that he left the NME at least partially because they'd just introduced marks out of ten in the reviews section (1988).
mark s, if you're listening...please explain why this is a bad thing. (the 1-10 scale, I mean.)

Substitute "great" for "garbage" and I'd agree 99%. Shift "fucking" from before "rating" to before "review" and it's 100%.