Entertainment For Lively Minds
NME: "It's all a bit Word Magazine"
Posted by Neil Walker on 11 March 2010 - 9:37am.
Hurm. Stumbled upon this NME online article pondering whether iTunes has killed 'the classic album': http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=10&p=8133&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1#mo...
"It's an old argument, all a bit Word Magazine" was the line that grabbed my attention.
What does that mean?
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IT's like many things written on the internet
It doesn't actually mean anything. It's just a bunch of words herded in the vague direction of a thought in the hope that the readers' prejudices will somehow magnetise those words into the shape of an intelligible sentence. It's mainly designed to make the writer sound knowledgeable and dismissive at the same time.
If it's any consolation
he almost certainly wasn't paid for it.
I think you're being unfair to the writer.
It struck me that it was at worst a bit of gentle mocking, and that given the content of his blog, it was probably in line with the self deprecation that was included later in the article.
Surely its just a handy bit of
shorthand for "I'm a cock, feel free to ignore anything I say". Not that I'm in any way prejudiced you understand.
true though, innit?
i think we may have discussed that kind of thing on occasion.
Yeah...
... no more harmfull than saying "landfill indie". Jeez.
Crikey
That's an incredibly badly-written article. I could go on all day about the wild assumptions and how it's been focus-grouped towards its imagined readership, but I won't.
However, is it slightly a compliment to have something described as "a bit Word magazine"? Obviously, it's lazy and means the writer doesn't get the ethos of the magazine at all (though I've described things as "a bit NME" in the past), but on the other hand, does it mean you've broken through and are nationally recognised? I mean, the writer wouldn't have made that (wrong) comparison unless they thought people would get it. I doubt they'd say something was "a bit fRoots".
They mean someone's
actually giving something a bit of thought. We have attention spans that last longer than five minutes. We debate stuff.
What a novelty. It must be very hard for them to comprehend.
As any fule kno...
...only teenagers are allowed to listen to pop music. Us cardigan-wearing bastards with our kids and our, like, jobs and... yeah, our attention sp....
Sorry. I lost the thread of what I was saying.
Look!
A squirrel!
Two squirrel's!
Look out...
Here comes Andrew Collins!
You Have Been Warned
'A bit Word Magazine' means
a concern more with the music than with the haircut, trousers or politics of the musicians that made it.
It means an ability to see an albums place in a long evolutionary process of popular music.
It means not falling for the latest short-term hype.
It means not adopting a 'build 'em up, knock 'em down' approach to music and musicians.
All in all, being 'a bit Word Magazine' sounds pretty good to me.
This sounds like it should have 'Lust For Life'
playing in the background...
'Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.
Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends.'
Choose Word Magazine. :-)
Do They Mean
It's a load of old blokes banging on about Fairport Convention ? Sounds preferable to the NME any day. I'm with Stimpy.Well put,Sir
I'm not an old bloke.
I'm a beautifully preserved fifty four year old bundle of fun and charm.I do chunner on a bit about the Fairport's but not exclusively so,I also go on and on about Film,Football,Books,Technology,Art,Television,Food,Drink,Politics,Clothing,Women,Economics, well you get the point.I'm with Stimpy too.
It's a silly little snide knock
but the strange thing is that, in the article, he turns out to be on the side of the "tweedy, reactionary twat", as he so charmingly calls it. For all the modish posturing, he's actually in the traditionalist camp. Fair enough, that's nice for him.
Next.
I bet he's a Word subscriber really
In fact, he probably posts here!
Who *could* he be? :-)
Bad Article
A bit Nathan Barley.
A good deal of angst here....
The NME long since ceased being a relevant publication. Take a look at one now. It's just puff piece after puff piece intermingled with band product placement. IPC killed their once golden goose.
Hmmm.
A bit sniffy chaps, I feel.
Having read the article, would any of you fundamentally disagree with what he is actually saying?
I suspect not.
Which perhaps does make it 'a bit Word magazine'.
Just sayin', like...
I'm with you , Paul...
I thought the "A Bit Word Magazine" line was actually a good natured, light hearted jibe, and I agree with you that the other posters on this thread have actually been a bit up themselves about it.
I also thought the article was reasonable, and I always like a bit of self deprecation in a writer.
"a bit up themselves"
Hardly a 'Word magazine' sort of thing to say about your fellow Massivistes surely?
No , but...
...I just thought the tone of some of the posts was a bit superior. And, I thought it was a reasonable piece by the NME blogger.
Sorry if I have offended.
I'm with Iainso
on this one. In fact I feel I discern a knee jerk bias against NME in many of the contributions. I wonder how many people actually read all of the article and not just zoned in on a few words to be offended by.
It's all a bit Daily Mail really.....
I can't really see where anyone's explicitly criticised the NME
Haven't most responders simply been suggesting that being 'a bit Word magazine' is a GOOD thing without making any disparaging comments re the original article or the NME itself?
Personally, I thought the main focus of the article made a lot of sense although the author seemed to be trying to put across a point that he himself didn't support.
I suspect he knew the opinion his readership would want expressed.
A new catchphrase
"as always the answer is Stimpy" couldn't agree more ,mate.
Yes but.....
without scrolling back up through each and every post I can recall a least one where the writer was referred to as a "cock".
but that's criticising the writer rather than the NME.
The same writer could have written exactly the same article for the Word (although, I suspect he'd have been a little more honest how he really felt rather than having to clothe his opinion in a gentle 'anti-The Man' sentiment.
yay aren't we great
it's great being great!
treble post -error
...
treble post error...cont..
..see correct post below (sorry)
as a Word reader...
...and a former NME reader (up until either it became rubbish or I became too old - not sure which), I would say that the sentiments of the piece are "A Bit Word Magazine" - and I'd even go so far as to say that whenever I think about the rise of itunes / decline of album issue I tend to think of Word Magazine...
It's a backhanded compliment
(or do I mean an unintended one?) - it's become a shorthand term for (I assume) middle-aged but still musically and technologically literate, perhaps slightly "boring" to a teenager. Like all stereotypes (Guardian reader = trendy lefty social worker, Mail reader = late middle aged bank manager living in middle England and bemoaning loss of empire etc)it probably has an element of truth. I've seen it used elsewhere - in a debate on the 6 music closure on another forum someone referred to the Freakzone dismissively as "less like The Wire*, more like The Word" in its musical choices.
So we should all be pleased - Messrs Hepworth and Ellen especially - that the magazine has achieved such a high profile (the article didn't say "it's all a bit Mojo" did it?)
*that's the music magazine not the cop series, obviously.
Actually Daily Mail readers...
... are unsuccessful lower-middle management and the unemployed middle classes in a seething permanent rage about how they are being 'done down' by an uncaring state and a conspiracy of scroungers, immigrants and the BBC (though they also think "wasn't the Vicar Of Dibley a HOOT"). This is a rage the Wail is adept at stoking (there's no news in it at all) - though oddly its a fact that the middle classes as a whole take significantly more out of the state in subsidy than any other group.
I don't like stereotypes mind
Are you still looking for T shirt slogans?
Because I think "It's all a bit Word magazine" might be just the ticket.
Hear Hear!
.
As far as I'm concerned...
The Word community is a thoroughly modern place to be. Except when a prehistoric Luddite called Patrick Crowther posts about his love for 40-year-old documentary series and Supertramp and his loathing for pretty much all pop music made after 1990.
Don't give me
any of your new-fangled teenybop groups like these Super Tramps, whatever their name is!
And you're never sure
if it's a boy or a girl.
I might copyright that line.
1990? Pah!
Any fule kno that nothing new of any value has emerged since 1975 :-)
Yes, of course you're quite correct...
it's just that I was afraid that I might seem just too much of an old fart if I said 1975. :-)
Nurse! Horlicks and meds
for the two old coves dribbling in the corner...:-)
No way
Music didn't really get going until 1976, everything before was a rehearsal surely?
I think I recall
Danny Baker and Tony Wilson having a spirited debate about this. After Tony Wilson had left the studio, Danny said that neither of them had believed a word of what they had just been arguing about.
Isn't that the very debate
that the two squirrels up there ^ are re-enacting?
My earlier 'nothing good made since 1975' statement
is an oft-repeated Baker-ism.
Interesting exchange
in the comments section of the NME article:
FuleKno [Visitor] //March 11 2010 at 11:25
This is a hilariously badly written article. What does "Word magazine" mean? I'm not familiar.
Luke Lewis [Member] //March 11 2010 at 11:30
@FuleKno - Google it. It'll take you literally five seconds, you monumental tit.
That's the writer of the article BTW calling FuleKno a "monumental tit". Not sure he actually understood the point of the question being a little bit too literal in his answer but hey! it's tough responding to readers who don't fall over themselves in admiration of your literary genius as a music writer.
Later on you get:
george [Visitor] //March 11 2010 at 12:27
as far as radiohead are concerned, they sure relented, but what a way to relent! @fulekno: word magazine is in fact a magazine, called word (just like nme is called nme). luke lewis doesnt seem to think very highly of it but IMO its not bad at all.
To which the Luke Lewis responds:
Luke Lewis [Member] //March 11 2010 at 13:15
George - I love Word, was just making the point that the 'albums as a whole' debate is a bit stale and old mannish.
...thus begging the question: if the 'albums as a whole' debate is "a bit stale and old mannish" why is a young NME-reading hipster like Luke Lewis writing an article about..er..the 'albums as a whole' debate?
Perhaps there is a proportionately larger and more voluminous mammary moniker than 'monumental' that Mr. Lewis may care to assign to himself?
Anyway, must dash. I'm off to the Thames Embankment to cup Boudicca's left breast: my all-time favourite tit in monument form.
Interesting - Fulekno (user name)
.. can only be Molesworth - Geoffrey Willans wonderful unruly genius really does cast a long shadow - even 60 years later over todays hip and happening beat loving groovsters
In Ye Oldene Days...
...correspondents to the NME were always pithily dismissed with a withering, single-line put down on the letters page ("Angst", when I was reading it). The comments sections on NME.com seem to have made that tradition rather tricky, if not impossible, to uphold. I'm not completely sure whether this is a good thing or not.
Also in Ye Oldene days
Nick Kent was one of the writers that made the NME a thing of greatness. The same Nick Kent that features in a bit of the current Word Magazine. I'm sure there's some irony in there somewhere.
Agreed!
I want that T-shirt. Make it so. Please.
C'mon people, join hands...
*sings*
I'm a little bit Word mag
And I'm a little bit NME
I'm a little bit of Islington and South East 1
With a little bit of indie in my beard
I don't know if it's good or bad
But I know I love it so...