Entertainment For Lively Minds
"At least one major music magazine is fairly obviously engaged not in reviewing albums,...
...but in trying to second-guess what their readers are going to think about them, terrified of causing offence."
So says Alex Petridis here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/aug/02/alexis-petridis-writing-albu...
I think I can guess to whom he is referring in this column, but is it really the case? I know we've discussed this sort of thing before - Be Here Now being the oft-cited prime example - but that was long ago in a Britpop far away. I admit Word is the only music magazine I read, though I idly flick through others when I pass them in the shops, and maybe that's the case with the big reviews but I don't tend to read them.
Also interesting to note the main point of the article, which is the Guardian's new plan to invite anyone who wants to to review every album ever made. There are apparently 3 million pages of albums to choose from, or you can add your own if that just isn't enough. Will we now see a drop in Word traffic whilst the Massive swarms across the Grauniad, discussing every last syllable and semiquaver recorded by the Richard Thompson/Morrissey/The Fall etc.?
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Be Here Now
I don't blame any journalist who praised it to high heaven. I too thought it was a masterpiece on the first few listens, as did everybody else I knew.
Sadly, it was the opposite of a grower.
I can't guess...
...who they mean, but hasn't it always been the case?
Magazines/papers tailor their copy (to various degrees) to their readership. Indeed, they'd be insane not to.
Can't see a heavyweight literary mag giving Jilly Cooper a glowing review (even though Riders and Rivals are masterpieces of their type), and Grazia are hardly going to wax lyrical about a book on classic car maintenance.
My guess would be
the magazine with only one letter for it's name.
What did anyone else think?
the Guardian's Friday review
paper thingy has dreadful pop music reviews: if you're a white British fella with a guitar, you automatically lose two stars. I'm happy to be corrected on this, but they never seem to give big American stars a kicking: Beyonce, Kanye West, Britney Spears...all seem to get treated with more reverence than their efforts deserve (to my ears anyway).
Podcast
The Music Weekly Podcast by The Guardian, is, dare I say it, so dull.
I listen to it now and again, but it seems to lack spark.
Is Q
still going ?
Amazing.
Sales
Have dropped about 50% in the last ten years
Of course it is.
It's the biggest-selling music monthly in the country.
There's more to life than (The) Word, you know.
Depending on content/free CD/a whim....
....I'll get Mojo, Uncut, Record Collector, Word (of course) but, for 21 years now, it has never occurred to me to buy the magazine with one letter.
If it's the only music mag in the station bookshop before a journey, I'll still buy WSC or a cricket magazine or even Book Collector.
I was in hospital last week with limited web access so
Mrs Stimpy bought me a bag of magazines - including Q. It was the first time I'd read an issue for, probably, 20 years and it just didn't 'speak to me' in any way.
Having said that, I suspect if I was a 14 year old Muse fan, it'd be perfect. I think they probably know their target audience very well and produce a magazine tailored to that audience.
The first Q I bought was the 20 years of Sgt Pepper issue
so quite an early one. I never subscribed but read it every month until Word appeared. I had just decided that Q wasn't for me anymore and Lo and behold, Word took it's place. My point is, when Q appeared, it's target reader wasn't 14 years old. I felt at the time that it was perfectly pitched at ME! (I was mid 20s at the time), 14 year olds read Smash Hits or the inkies. Do they really read Q now? It seems to have moved a long way from it's original market if that's the case.
It isn't any more
Mojo is. And Classic Rock is gaining ground fast.
No, I understand he died in 1999...
...replaced by a man who used to run a small hotel in Torquay.
Nobody ever paid attention to the record reviews of either men, as far as I know.
'Pay attention 007
now this ordinary looking ipod actually sends 50,000 volts through the listener when they select AC\DC's 'Thunderstruck'
"Shocking....."
Be Here Now
Nothing that a bit of prudent, sober, remastering couldn't cure. Plus losing two or three tracks.
5 or 6 good songs on there underneath the blizzard of coke and the guitar layers so deep that Jacques Costeau would have trouble finding them.
I still stand by the view that
history will see BHN as Oasis' finest achievement and the very zenith of 1990s cocaine drifted production techniques.
Think of it as the Rumours of it's day.
Fleetwood Mac? On drugs?!
That nice Stevie Nicks?
Pah!
Be Here Naked
Strip back some of the intros, outros and guitar solos and you have a fine album.
Mind you, I love Noel's description of the recording process
'Er. Noel, don't you think there are too many guitars on this track?!'
'What?!!' (sniiiiiiif) 'Fuck off before I have you beaten up'
I'd never read that quote before...
in other news, are you setting your alarm clock to get tickets for one of his solo shows? Hoping that the Olympia, Dublin isn't too oversubscribed, but i suspect that I'm going to have the devils own job getting at ticket!