I'm the only one getting a little bit excited?

Yes - " 'Time' and 'The Word' ".

Oh, OK, only me.

You cannot say things like that! I want mine NOW! Now! D'you hear?

PS "World's Greatest Bass Player"? Ooooh yes please, tell me it's Tal!

Oh, how the Irish race laughed as one*

(*With apologies to All at Word, we know it's DHL's fault.)

That cover is absolutely and uttrly fantastic.

was discussed in the podcast, and the question was asked if any of her songs had been better sung by other artists. Well Fairport Convention's version of 'Both Sides Now' which I heard recently on 6music was strikingly magnificent, and I would say, better than the author's. It also had a certain guitarist on it who needs no introduction to the massive.

Only just got the Ian Dury ish here in Australia. It's wonderful. So plenty to read and listen to and more to look forward to.

Thanks for the mag, the site, the podcasts - the - er, way of life

(hums Alice's restaurant as puts on dressing gown and meanders out to kitchen to discuss breakfast with self...)

but I don't like that cover! Am I alone? I like the photo on the left more. Sorry!

I like that you've chosen a picture of electric Dylan to signify your, er, new direction. Here's hoping no one calls you Judas.

hope you enjoy our new direction. At the keyboard: David Hepworth, he wrote this..."

I think the cover looks fantastic.

I'm heading to the shops right away to get my copy ... maybe there's even a John Hiatt feature as well.

and his hoppo Richard Herring as the duo 'Collings and Herrin' did their 100th podcast this week in front of a sold out audience in London. They are just two blokes chatting in front of an Apple Mac.

If you book it, they will come

I think you're wrong. But then again I was one of the Nerd Army that went along this week,

As a one off or occassional event I can't see the harm

to have the opportunity up in North Albion? Much as I love the magazine, it's about time some of the editorial team shifted their sorry asses oop North for a skech (Scot. colloquial - a look)

... has Dylan on the cover (sort of) and an Arthur Conan Doyle feature inside.

Well, you've won me over right away!

Looking forward to receiving my copy.

- and Cream were fabulous and ELP were...well, er, ELP - but as a power trio Ellen, Hepworth and Lewry take some beating

Is it *really* staple-bound?

You'll be selling binders next.

double sided poster of the team at a Massive Mingle

Other side - a beard spotting wallchart (50 points for the 'Bepe From Eastenders', 100 for the 'Seasick steve') or a picture of Flintlock

"How the magical records were made by David Hepworth". Now that's what I call an exclusive; I thought he was just a journalist.

As you point out, it's just three blokes sitting in a room, but it's my kind of conversation.

I've decided that the next time I work from home (which, admittedly, doesn't happen often), I'm going to pack up my laptop and come to Word Towers. I'll sit in the corner by the mouse traps and behave myself impeccably.

*accepts OBN award*

When the worthy Word dudes started talking about J. Cameron`s Avatar, I was CERTAIN they would mention that the floating mountains had already been done before on 1/2 a dozen of YES`s album covers. IN FACT, the whole film looks as if it has art direction by Roger Dean, the most representative Prog Rock cover illustrator.

I really like the new cover... But I really miss the old CD look: one of the reasons for which I subscribed was to get the nice CD carton boxes. It's now about the same as the version in shops. And more annoying, le cover of the new CD looks like a patchwork of various photos and has no unity. I REALLY miss the old look...

I haven't listened to it nor read it yet, but I'd assume it will be quite good anyway.

...on the cover though - surely no need!

Did I hear correctly that there is 3000 word article in the magazine NOT read by the editor?
Surely the editor of a monthly magazine has read everything between its covers.

Introduced it at Christmas to my 12 year old son, he loved it and was less scared than his 13 year old father had been. [He's not been sea swimming since tho].

Timely discussion of this on the podcast. I showed to to my son for the first time the other night. He absolutely loved it; and his love made me feel like I was watching it for the first time. Which, given how many times I have seen it, is saying something.

I have never tired of this film.

For me, the one song that is worse than anything else that they recorded, the one that no one ever mentions, the one that's more trite than Maxwell's Silver Hammer, is All Together Now. It belongs in a very very deep hole, and is the easy example for anyone that ever wants to suggest that McCartney was the lightweight one that wrote shit songs for Rupert The Bear.

a nice surprise after the first day back at work post holiday. Love the binding. I don't know why, it's a very simple thing, but somehow the magazine feels more...interesting...to hold. A quick flick looks promising, although I was expecting a more radically different magazine. I guess it is the content that has changed more than the look. Further investigation needed. And what's this? I'm in The Massive Attacks! Oooh! Get me! With a truly awful typo as well! Please say that wasn't in my original post.

The new format looks great. I do miss the old cd sleeves though. I thought we were encouraged to subscribe to keep receiving the old sleeves? Nevermind. At least you've done away with those cartoons of semi-naked girls on the covers. My significant other hated them.

' Laika flew
Through inky blue
'Til Laika neared the atmosphere
And Laika knew
Laika's life was through'

http://open.spotify.com/track/0JXbKVQHd8YGlJCbG5IZ6G

Laika was the Russian space dog. She lines up in the cast list of 'those we have lost' alongside Jean Seberg, Woodbine Willie, Steve McQueen and Oscar Wilde in the beautiful, poignant but ultimately heart-warming, Absent Friends by The Divine Comedy.

Rinka was the dog belonging to the 'male model' Norman Scott and was shot dead by a 'hitman' in an incident that had nothing whatsoever to do with The Rt. Hon Jeremy Thorpe.

p.s where's Bob's gasper? Lost in transition from photo to drawing. As blatant a bowlderisation as that silly doctored picture of Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Just flicked through, I'm really looking forward to reading in detail over the next week. The team have set themselves a real on going challenge to match the quality of issue 1 of Word 2.0.

On a slightly private matter, I nearly fell out of my armchair when I saw that my review made the Massive Attack! Chuffed, absolutely chuffed!

gratulations!

I sort of wish the user name amnesty had happened now but Thank you so much....can someone get me down off the ceiling please?! I love the name of the feature 'The Massive Attacks' as well!
A magazine where the readers can contribute reviews rather than just writing to the letters page? That must be a first surely?

More interesting and stand out in the newsagents?

Maybe a few each year?

One by Gerald Scarfe, Peter Saville, Peter Blake, Ronnie Wood (arf!) etc...

Hearty back-slaps all round, I think. The magazine looks absolutely great. Great cover, loving the staples. I'm a very happy subscriber.

My tiny gripes:

- I enjoyed the first page of Mark's diary but my heart sank just a little bit when I turned the page and saw that it went on for another three pages.

- I'm not sure I ever knew the name of the section but at the end of the magazine, the main staff would each discourse on their cultural input that month. I found that myself turning to that feature more and more; it was a handy cultural digest. Any chance we could have it back?

Every cover illustrated, absolutely. There are so many good illustrators, young and old, and so few showcases on the newsstand now. Hurray.

What I love: more content and more bitty bits to get lost in. Can we have an illustrated cover by same artist each month? Two decades of reding such music mags has given me my fill of moody head shots and this sets you apart. The red frame around cover on your web-page would be a neat branding device.
Less keen on the staples (when married to the paper stock and thickness of mag) it feels cheaper and generalyy less substansial than it was when perfect bound. Sure feels like a cost saving measure. Also the illustrated cd covers are so much more appealing than the new(old) clutter of head shots.
But you win on substance over style: thanks for caring enough to give us more not less.

Just want to apologise for poor spelling grammer etc of my above post, which I blame on being a novice to the text set up of my new 'phone. And being thick.

(page 95) - made me laugh out loud - superb stuff!

Still rather good. I just cannot stop playing the cover version of That's All. Wonderful thanks.

I would appreciate a feature on how it is put together and the unsung heroes behind the CD, instead of the usual "look at me - I'm a media star" from the cast of bollockmongerers.

Disagree that the new mag looks cheap. I love it and think it looks very classy.

Miss the staff picks section though as that was the first bit I turned to each month.

Gabriel dressed as a marigold in 1970 ? Come , Mr. Ellen , such attire was not donned by the man until 1973 !

Totally agree about his new one being comedy gold , though ...

that may interest

http://community.whathifi.com/blogs/shows_and_launches/archive/2010/02/0...

'fraid I haven't even seen Avatar yet myself

Could you take the opportunity of the change in format etc to lose the definite article? I remember being slightly disappointed when you became The Word - not really sure why! But I would point out that the online presence is www.wordmagazine.co.uk not www.thewordmagazine.co.uk.
Probably just me...

..where am I supposed to find the time to read all that writing?

..sorry, hardly any of Roy's songs are in a minor key..they just sound that way.

How long has that been there? I've only just noticed.

I'm not sure I want to march under that banner... sounds like an advert for a whist drive in a care home.

I was a bit embarrassed by 'Planet Rock" as well, though - wouldn't join any club that would have me, etc.

"Something is happening here but you don't know what it is, do you, oh, poohsticks!"

It was the moment that changed rock and roll. A guitar strap snaps midsong, a wildly inappropriate expletive is blurted out, and the instant heckler's retort comes bouncing back - "'Oh, poohsticks'? Ooh, get her - The Queen of Cool" – as recorded for posterity on the much-sought-after bootleg Rhode Island Head.

Bob Dylan was, perhaps understandably, mortified. So mortified, in fact, that no sooner had he skulked back to his dressing room that fateful night in Providence, R.I., than he was on the phone to his manager, Albert Grossman, with a stop-everything instruction. He wanted a failsafe guitar-anchorage system, one so safe and solid that "that baby ain’t a-never goan a-let me dow-oon no more."

Grossman contacted the Hev-E-Gadjitz Company Corp., Inc., a Woodstock-based cool-accoutrements start-up that he'd snapped up a controlling interest in on the sly. He gave them until the end of that summer - when Dylan was scheduled to start a major U.S. tour - to come up with a definitive solution for his boy's potentially career-ending credibility problem.

The boffins didn’t disappoint. At a meeting at a secret upstate New York location, they gave Dylan a personal demo of their "Strapocaster" gadget, in full working order and with a thick manila folder’s worth of patents already pending. The device came in two parts, a passive component that was simply a steel plate firmly attached to the back of the guitar body, and an active element: a powerful electromagnet cunningly disguised as a belt buckle. The magnet was activated by a switch on the back of the artist’s belt. "That way," they told the tousle-haired troubadour, "when you switch it on, the audience'll think you're just scratching your ass in a perfectly natural, amphetamine-crazed-tic-type gesture."

Dylan was sold immediately. It was simple, it was subtle and, most important of all, it would keep his hard-earned coolness secure. Indeed, he liked the belt so much - it held his pants up just as efficiently as it anchored his axe – that he wore it every day.

Bad idea.

On 29 July 1966, Dylan decided to take his motorcycle into the shop to get a suspicious knocking noise from the engine looked at. (He was thinking big end, but he liked to keep an open mind.) As usual, he prepared to bestraddle his English-made Triumph hog by hiking up his pants, but little did he realize that in doing so he had inadvertently switched on the Strapocaster's industrial-strength electromagnet. Racing down the back lanes of Woodstock, he rose from the saddle and leaned forward to present a more aerodynamic shape to the wind. That was the moment when the critical distance between the magnet and the gas tank was, invisibly but no less dramatically, crossed. Dylan lurched down and forward, flailing his limbs in helpless panic.

The much-debated "motorcycle accident" was to some extent what Dylan always claimed it was – a motorcycle accident - but Dylan, understandably embarrassed by the whole Strapocaster débacle, managed to keep the details out of the public domain for 44 years, thanks to a non-disclosure "super-injunction" that his legal people had slapped on the world's music press.

But nobody had counted on Vanessa Perroncel.

When the English courts failed to support the attempts by soccer star John Terry, captain of the London Chelseas, to keep his extra-marital liaison with Ms. Perroncel out of the newspapers, the editor of the The Word Magazine magazine, an influential British men's lifestyle monthly, wasted no time in publishing an illustration of a strapless, soon-to-be-hapless, Bob Dylan - driving the point home by cleverly depicting the jack input in the position where the strap nipple would be on a normal guitar.

John Terry is 29.

In defence of Mark's diary - I enjoyed it and it could well become one of the best new features. Three pages is fine.

love the new look
love the new content

as feared, mag fell to pieces after 1 day in my bag and the rigours of my daily commute (ie not very rigorous at all).

everything else, great
staples - a bit rubbish.

I like it, large stouts all round.

Takes a very long time to get through. Just so much material. A hearty well done all round.

My copy arrived today and have only had a brief quick skoit(look), but first impressions are good. Classy production. But agree with some of the comments above in that the magazine does seem to contain an awful lot more words than usual.

I guess visits to the throne will just take longer. Note to self - don't stand up too quickly. Legs may have gone dead.

and initial thoughts are positive.
Personally like the cover, but not so sure it will prove a customer catcher!

One other thought, given that the magazine is now smaller, but has the same amount of pages, with what appears a similar font size, where does the "more to read" come from?

Anybody who has heard Robertson's solo records would have to challenge Mark Ellen's assertion that the Band had four great voices. They had three. Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir's range may be limited but both have a certain charm and tunefulness. Robbie barely gets beyond talking the lyrics on those solo records.

I picked up the new issue today - the new format is interesting. Not sure whether I like the staple-bound look, but that's not all that important in the grand scheme of things - the content is great, and that's what counts.

Heck, I even like the cover illustration, despite the fact I can't stand its subject! : )

Ok - only listened to the first few mins of this podcast, but did Mr Ellen say that the hand on the front cover was nicked from a Blake painting. And did Mr Lewry chime in with 'Ho yus, I recognised that'. Really? Really?
My favourite Beatles song is Waterloo Sunset.

I think Kurt Cobain's favourite band (obscure & British) were The Vaselines, not UK Subs. A couple of their cover versions turn up on Unplugged. His daughter is named Frances after one half of this Glasgow 90s cult.

In the podcast David H cites a complaint from an Australian about the amount of pages devoted to coverage of British television and ,possibly, radio personalities / programmes.

The response, to paraphrase was , well it is a British magazine and reading about British popular culture is part of the attraction to overseas readers. Plus you can watch /listen to any programme anywhere in the world these days.

As a long time reader of British and American music magazines.I think this applies to music, film, books and theatre but not TV shows beyond a certain point and certainly not popular radio programmes beyong the Charlie Gillette, John Peel ilk. I accept this is a judgment call. But for example Terry Wogan means nothing to me. Yes I could possibly have listened to his programme via the net but I am not likely to and I suspect most overseas readers would be the same.

Some programmes get international distribution but not that many.

What is the percentage of British readers to overseas subscribers by the way?

I accept that the obvious thing to do is just flip the page however when it comes to editorial decisions might I suggest that these highly local topics should be weighted down.

...and putting the write up on the CD in the middle because it's easier to check out what you're listening to.
Also very pleased with the new look. If I were not a subscriber and saw the current issue in the newsagents, I would definitely have had a browse and on seeing the contents, bought it. In the words of young Mr. Grace: You've all done very well.

Blake, Mark Ellen? Mrs Angelo's boy Mikey surely?

Mrs Buonaroti.

Yes, very good.

Cracking Conan Doyle piece.

Like Danny Baker I have been rehearsing with The Beatles (and With The Beatles) for 40 years, always singing the backing vocals. My family members now regret buying me the Mono Box for Xmas.

In the Jack Bruce article it is mentioned that they rolled Robert Stigwood downstairs in a drum case with no repercussions.

Surely they would have had to roll him back upstairs in a drum case for RE-percussions?

Just a thought.

Yes to staples - I really like the way it opens on your lap/desk - and yes to the overall redesign.

I think there is one missed opportunity. As the mag now gapes opens naturally in the middle, I think this could have either a stronger feature than the free CD introduction or, better still, a really great photograph. I like The Guardian (or is it The Independent?) which has a large photo or photo montage across the middle pages. This will have a great impact and even though the readership may be too old to remove it and blu-tac it on the wall, we all have fond memories of doing that.

..A naked man with a beard pouting coquettishly.

It's great!

this morning, think it's the earliest it's ever been so thanks! I love the new look, and the Danny Thompson article.

I like it. Staples = good, no more bending the spine to see the last word of a line.

More reading = definitely good. I used to just get a month out of it (picking through Shindig too) so now it'll last even longer.

Recommendations at the back missing = not so good, but a small gripe.

Less readers letters = good. We can log on here for all that bullshit...

First impressions:

more compact in page size, and spine, and all the better for it.

also more writing on the subscriber's cover than normal.

cd cover art has been lost, which I personally liked.

still no subscriber's letter (boo-hoo).

illustration, instead of photo, is refreshing.

Overall reaction: like it, like it, like it.

Now..... I have to read it.

The new look is just excellent. I love being swept along with the momentum of the new 'rolling narrative' pages and they way they segue into one another. Genuinely unputdownable. I also love Carrilho's illustrations and he deserves his front page. And I really like the way the spreads flop open easily, thanks to the saddlestitch. It stops my arms from aching

Happy bunny, me. . .

First impressions: Excellent

... here in California yesterday.

I like it!

who thinks the reviews, and interviews are now too long?

I get guilty sitting on the pan and reading more than two full pages of text.
I also think the too many average contributors have been given rather too much space (perhaps like this comment), I was reminded of
the NME when it was at its most self important.

Will not stop me reading and enjoying the articles, but for reviews perhaps less is more?

..personally the only thing I could do without is "99% true"

I’m a lazy reader. When faced with a full page of body text I find my eyes go sliding off ahead of my brain, looking for something - a line of italics, anything - to grasp hold of. When I’ve only got five minutes to read (or ten, dependng on the previous day’s fibre intake) I like to know that I’ve got an exit strategy before I start.

So I like page furniture. I like crossheads - they’re the equivalent of a storyteller pausing for a reflective pull on his pint. They give the reader a chance to sip his tea, yell at the kids, wipe his arse or simply refocus his eyes without losing the thread.

I like sidebars. They act like appendicies where you can put the back-up information that supports your argument without slowing momentum to a crawl. The first page of Hepworth’s studios piece - the list of closed premises - is a box out if ever there was one.

I like punchy writing. I like to think a writer starts with 1000 words, works and works to get it down to 500, killing half his darlings along the way. And then the editor trims it again. “The band has released umpteen albums, compilations and EPs. Who Killed Sgt Pepper is their eleventh” is stodgy. Two film quotes in one article (not about films) is filler. (Sorry Mr Collins, for picking you out for egg-sucking refresher training.)

And I like pictures. The Danny Thompson piece is the best thing in the issue, partly because it’s his words, not a journo’s, partly because the Q+A format gives it space to breathe, but mostly because it’s built around that photo of DT and John Martyn. Both interviewer and interviewee refer to it. That’s a thousand words right there.

Maybe I just don’t take rock music seriously enough to want it presented like this. I prefer the buffet to the banquet. Just me? Probably.

or did anyone else think of Norman Wisdom and/or Laurel & Hardy when Kate's bid to move an electric piano upstairs was mentioned ?

And if it had been dropped, would it have been a Fender bender ?

[gets coat]

this

cos we get it late here in the Bel Paese but I love the new format - well done all.