Entertainment For Lively Minds
Andrew Harrison appointed Q editor
Posted by Darcy on 9 February 2012 - 6:11pm.
Two questions:
Will it mean Q gets good again?
and, more importantly,
What does it mean for The Word?
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Q *is* good already.
I can't understand why some people want AH to change it into The Word.
Because
then there'd be twice as much Word - and at least half as much Liam Gallagher!
Q is...
....alright. There seems something lacking these last couple of years, perhaps because it's all getting a bit too retro. I trust AH will work his magic...
(puts cancellation of subscription on hold)
Given that Q was founded...
...by journalists of this parish, might this prove to be an injection of some of its original vision?
I'm not suggesting any Fifth Column style action...
Q has been
SHITE for many years Hazzer will turn it around and make it good again. Bad news for the Word great news for Bauer. Good luck sunshine make it work! We have faith.
It's the times
Q came along when the 70s NME/MM/Sounds readers had grown out of the habit of reading the weeklies. I misssed the first two but then bought the next 150 or so.
It was aimed at music lovers who had been through both the Bob Harris years and the punk years.
After a good few changes in the editorial team someone must have decided (rightly) that they would have to lower the average age of the readership. They did it and I left soon after.
Q is now aimed at the youngest age group of the big four rock monthlies. I can't see that changing.
I liked AH's writing in Word but I won't be following him to Q. I'm in my 50s for god's sake.....
For me Q was always Danny Kelly.
I loved the magazine that he steered. He is lost to the world, marginalised on Talk Sport.Excellent Writer excellent broadcaster.
Turmoil!
Congrats Andrew
I bought Q religiously and I suspect given our polar opposite music tastes mean I am unlikely to buy it in future, but I am sure Q can only improve with the arrival of Mr H.
Andrew Harrison?
Q Ed
Blue Shirt
... but remember, if he wants to win the "Music Magazine Of The Year" award, he needs a blue shirt.
If Mark Ellen gave him a reference does that mean...
...that Andrew is effectively 'The Editors' Editor's Editor'?*
And if he takes personal control of 're-tooling' any feature submission to Q by a moonlighting Mark Ellen on the subject of a certain Joy Division soundalike band, will that make him 'The Editors' Editor's Editors Editor'...?
I must say, I'm enjoying this.. :-D
*[note punctilious use of possessive apostrophes]
Given your punctilosity
I know you won't mind if I point out that the band name is simply 'Editors'.
And so now you must be the editor of the Editors Editor's Editors Editor joke.
No, you misunderstand, I think...
...the band's name is third of the four variations on 'editor(s)':
In other words, in my frankly unlikely scenario of Mark Ellen moonlighting to do some additional (sub) editing on Q under Andrew Harrison's editorship, he would thus be the Editor of a piece on Editors under the Editors' Editor's Editor (ie Andrew Harrison). Hence he'd be the Editors' Editor's Editors [feature] Editor.
Does my explanation need an Editor?
Q Magazine
For the first decade or so it was great (Tom Hibbert's stuff was unmissable, for example) but I always felt that Q had the rug comprehensively pulled out from under it when Mojo was launched.
It meant that all the 'interesting' bands/topics were subsequently written up in Mojo, while poor old Q was left to cover the lightweight stuff: The Spice Girls, Take That (and later Robbie solo, of course) and other pop acts.
The writing was still great in Q, mind you, and some of the articles were hilarious (eg Spice Girls), but there's only so much mileage in taking the piss out of your interviewees, especially when they're not in on the joke.
But good luck to Andrew. He's an astoundingly good writer, that much is clear. The pressure of an Editor's job is a whole different ballgame, however.
For me, it's not so much the bands they cover
as how they're covered. In fact, Take That and The Spice Girls - pop-cultural icons, whatever you think of their music - are probably more interesting than yet another feature on Pink Floyd or David Bowie or, God help us, Jon Savage trotting out his "why punk had to happen" feature for the 8 millionth time. Q's features - whoever they were about - used to be insightful and hilarious. Now they're reduced to using that local paper staple of readers taking picture of themselves holding a copy of the magazine in far-flung locations. Basically, Andrew needs to bring back Q Charts is what I'm saying.
Read it recently
Having subscribed for the first 200 or so issues.
I found it depressingly bad. The drooling over Florence, Coldplay and others that needn't detain us - as mojoworking says - rug comprehensively pulled out from underneath them. It seems to exist to give an uncritical platform for the labels' biggest stars. I found the going on and on about downloads you simply must have really grated too - shades of the Creme Brulee guy in League of Gentlemen trying to prove he's still got it.
Good luck Andrew. Just remember, it's a shit business.
When they started putting the likes of Britney on the cover
me and Q parted ways.
Needless to say, I haven't read this month's cover article in Word!
It just got shitter
From the cover of this month's edition:
'New column by Zane Lowe'
Are they trying to make me hate it? What next - the review system run by Jo Whiley:
* = Not on the playlist
** = Before my time
*** = Amazing
**** = Really amazing
***** = Incredible. And amazing
Butchered?
It wasn't TOTALLY crap when he edited it before. I daresay it can't get any worse. I'm hoping that means his awful, smug, Man With Two Brains byline pic and smug, crawly tones are absent from the mag and podcast from here on in.