Entertainment For Lively Minds
Can we turn down the Bruce...
Posted by Simonk on 2 December 2010 - 5:35am.
Urgh, enough. Two Word covers in the one year.
And there is, everywhere I turn.
Can't stand him, never liked him. Let's drop a rock on him and hope he can't crawl out from underneath it, the little poseur.
Rant over.
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With you
Bruce.....nice enough fella but about as interesting as the 'Champions' League group stages or, indeed, the 'Champions' League per se.
Doesn't help that he released his first album in 1973 (in rock 'n' roll terms - a year to be dead, non-functioning or retired; see Brian, Syd, Buddy, Gene, Jimi, Jim, Janis etc.).
Still.....nice enough guy.
Bruce Springsteen is many things...
but surely a "poseur" is not one of them.
Bruce, everywhere you turn?
I can't say I've noticed. The other music magazines have Paul Weller (Uncut) & Queen (Mojo) as cover stars, Classic Rock has Led Zeppelin, Record Collector has gone with the reissued Who Live At Leeds and Shindig! features the Monkees. I can't tell you what the NME has, but I think it's unlikely to be Bruce.
So where is the visual assault from Bruce coming from?
Weller, Queen, Led Zep, Monkees...
Word has Bruce and I think the NME has Weller again. Welcome to 2010. As PW once yelled: "This is the modern world!"
Bruce on the cover of Word
I understand that; if I didn't already have the physical copy I can see the image top right of this screen.
You said "And there is, everywhere I turn." My reading is that you are referring to Bruce, (after all the title of your thread is Can We Turn Down The Bruce) not to the state of the musical world in 2010 as represented by magazines, and the presence of those artists. A different argument altogether.
It's not my thread.
Also, I wasn't trying to be snarky saying Bruce was on The Word cover, just using it in my list and making a general observation that no music magazine has anyone born later than 1958 on their cover. As you rightly point out though, that's a different point than the one the OP was making.
Apologies
I should have checked on the real author.
No
problem.
A Few Words In Defence Of Bruce Springsteen
I'm trying to put aside the fact that I really like him and his music, and be objective about this. Whether you're a fan or not, he (a) seems pretty Word-friendly and (b) he has an album out. Furthermore, I personally didn't cancel my subscription in the face of Dido, Jack Johnson or other cover stars that I forget but didn't put me off reading the magazine.
Indeed..
What we need is another issue devoted to inane Beatles trivia.
Ringo's real name is Richard
and his lucky colour is blue
But did you know
Paul is a vegetarian?
Bruce
Is one of the greatest rock stars and above that is a wholly decent and unpretentious human being. Respect.
Covers
can be quite nice and may make me try a magazine. But I rarely, if ever, get bothered by a cover on a magazine that I buy regularly. I normally read the magazine rather than look at it.
You may think that
And so may I, but ALL Simonk's posts appear to be about the cover. So it obviously matters more to some than others.
He must detest
Richard Thompson.
Problem For Me Is
it's usually the same faces on the covers of the music mags month after month it would be nice to see some new faces for example Andy Partridge on the cover of Word and I am sure we could all think of others who deserve more recognition at least The Word has had Robert Wyatt and Richard Thompson on the cover so it is not as bad as some magazines
Mr Partridge
does not like the Word Magazine due to their failure\poor reviews of Ape Records releases. Funny little bugger.
Double Post
Twice
Went to sleep, and woke up in 1986
Yes. If ever I saw a magazine cover that came out of a different decade, thats it! And not just the picture.
I very rarely skip an article in the magazine
But I have to confess that I really couldn't face (what seemed, possibly inaccurately, to be) yet another essay about him. The magazine lies open at the article, and has done for two weeks.
I know he's quite prominent on the Word radar, but his popularity baffles me - the music sounds turgid and resolutely middle of the road; his voice grates. God knows, I've tried to listen to him but I think he's not for me.
As for the cover, I was more perturbed that we'd lost the illustrations, which I thought were great. As a subscriber the cover makes no real difference to me, though I've always found Word a less embarassing read on the train than my other regular mag, Empire. With its covers featuring superheroes and monsters, I sometimes feel I might as well be reading the Beano.
I think Deep Purple are this week's Beano cover stars.
I enjoyed the Bruce article and have loved the tracks from The Promise I've heard. I suspect a photo replaced an illustration as there's already been a Bruce illustration a few months ago.
Surely most of the massive will just buy the mag whatever so the staff have to try and rope in new punters. Can't be an easy task considering it's almost impossible to find the mag in the shops up here in the north of england. In fact I've never seen it anywhere except WH Smiths.
I've never liked X *
Always seen X as overrated (ie I don't like them) and irrelevant. Could we please have less of X and more of Y. I think Y are the greatest and don't get enough credit.
And 1973 a year to be dead? Tell that to David Bowie. Who only looked like a corpse. And sang "we Are The Dead"...hang on.
* this is not directed at the band X
** although it may be aimed at the XX
*** or Castlemaine XXXX
**** but not XXX funnily enough
Bruce
is not for me either, but I don't care who's on the cover.
When you look at the mainstream music monthly magazines, the covers do tend to be the big names, with certain ones being used regularly.
I'd suggest it's cos they're trying to sell magazines!
Yeah, sales though is normally based on demand
…and keeping things relatively up to date.
…decisions which are clearly based on the personal preferences, justified or otherwise, of the editors. To put someone like Springsteen in the category of "classic, will always maintain its interest", as someone is clearly very willfully trying to do, is frankly ridiculous. Beatles, Stones, The Who, Zeppelin, even Queen yes. Springsteen, you got to be kidding.
Commercial considerations are supreme.You wouldn't
expect a magazine like The Word to have many whippersnappers on the cover. What surprises me though is that a monthly magazine has so little focus (as represented by the cover) on the month of its release.
This year you had such Word-friendly events as a stonking new Mavis Staples album, the heartwarming return of Edwyn Collins and Moffatt & Gatiss' "Sherlock".
All of these stories were covered - and covered very well - inside but I'm a little suprised they must defer to more general features ("Who's biggest?", "How live is live?") when it comes to the cover.
Firstly, a current event suggests a current issue, and secondly I buy Word anyway but if it wasn't my mag I don't think "How live is live?" would entice me.
Just a thought. In all other respects The Word is ace!
Consider my original post to be a bit of ill-tempered spleen but
..Yes, I am a grumpy Gen X bugger. And the 2 Bruce covers are a symptom not the cause of my whinging.
Call it the "little brother" syndrome, but it seems to me too many baby boomer heroes cast shadows that have denied sunlight to so many other worthy acts that have come after them.
(That's why Word is so feckin good because it illuminates the parts that other magazines don't reach. Are you hearing me, Uncut?)
In my youth I railed against the mainstream bands that polluted my world with crass overblown music & spectacle - an unforgivable offence to a teenage head full of punk attitude.
Now I find, 30 years later, the very same idols staring at me in the newsagent & scattered amongst the pixels. Surely in this opt-in, a la carte media smorgasbord I would be able to avoid this?
How long is this going to last? Is there not life after 1977? Gimme a freakin break...
And yet.
I know the realities of publishing, that these faces move units. And that is a good thing, when it that means Word has a long & prosperous span.
It doesn't mean I like it. It doesn't mean it isn't annoying in exactly the same way it annoyed me in 1980. Okay, so maybe the world & I haven't changed enough.
To the commenters:
Richard Thompson's two covers didn't bother me. Hailing from Melbourne, I only started hearing of him when I started reading Word. To paraphrase someone, It's not about the frequency, Kenneth.
Being enjoying the thread, I must say.
Apparrently...
..one of the "high-uppers" is a bit of a fan.