Isn't an Oasis Special.

for that

Their latest edition has Pink Floyd on the cover, as various luminaries choose their favourite Floyd tracks.

I mean, come on, show a little imagination! Surely this has been done many, many times before?

I hear the next issue has a 70 page Northern Uproar retrospective

that there's no need for any magazine to ever feature the following artists on the cover

The Beatles
The Beach Boys
Eric Clapton/ Cream
Oasis
The Sex Pistols
Led Zeppelin
Radiohead

never mind the retrospectives, let's look to the future!

I recently palmed off my old music mags to someone. The usual suspects, Mojo, Uncut, Q etc. I gave him a pile and a few weeks later I gave him another pile.

As I handed the second lot to him he saw the Gallagher brothers on the cover of the one on top and he said "Hmmm, you've got a fascination with Oasis."

I felt like I had to defend myself so I said "It isn't me!"

Please, please, please don't put Oasis on the cover! I mean ever!

that some heartless bastard should push a copy of 'Q' through your letterbox. Are you a random victim or have you offended some local gang? You should report that sort of behaviour to the rozzers.

I subscribe to Word because it's the sort of magazine that wouldn't put Oasis on the cover. It would be worse than Dido.

oh sugar, i've not gotten the hang of this, have it...

has a new album out in November...

Whatever we've done to deserve this, it must have been very bad...

that these Oasis articles and interviews all follow the same pattern, which is "That last album was a bit dodgy, but THIS one is THE one." And that's about it.

The same can be said of all REM articles and interviews since the Monster album, which is precisely why they are such an ordeal to plough through.

It's a shame that R.E.M. interviews don't go more along the lines of, "So, the two albums you made after Monster were top notch; is it fair to say that you work well under pressure?" or something. I love those two albums. I can never understand why Up, particularly, gets such a hard time around these parts. It's a wonderful album.

Sudden urge to buy Q.....an urge I have never felt before....

But I would be looking forward to it even more if it was a Hepworth/ Ellen interview

I read, and later subscribed to, Q from the second issue up until a couple of years ago, when I realized that I had gone from reading every page, even about groups I knew little about, to skimming through it trying to find something, anything, about someone I liked. It had descended from in-depth pieces about the reunited Pink Floyd, U2, Bruce and other heavyweights to four and five-page puff pieces about groups who had released one hit single and had not yet completed an album.

The final straw, the proof I needed that their musical taste no longer matched my musical taste, was their one-star review for Marillion's Marbles.

So Oasis are back. Who, honestly, cares any more? They ceased to be interesting after the first few singles when Noel's limited songwriting talents ran out and he began recycling himself.

I'm a recent convert to The Word (I know, I know) not necessarily because it covers radically new and innovative music - it does and it doesn't - but because the writing is such a pleasure to read. I would buy it when drawn in by an article flagged on the cover and found that I missed it when I let an issue go by.

Uncut used to be much better and I felt it used to 'stick its neck out' more - it played a key role in getting alt.country out there, for a start. But it's become very set in its ways.

I do like Mojo - it feels 'in depth' and they're not afraid to print lengthy historical pieces.

One of the really irritating things I find with Q is that it tries to be 'wide-ranging' but its heart isn't in it. Their 'metal' reviews - they pick a bunch of 'metal' albums that are about as extreme as Val Doonican covering Daniel O'Donnell and then give them all bad reviews, because they don't like metal. Rubbish!

And another thing about Q magazine - lazy journalism! By that i mean how many times have they had the '20 best this albums made by lazy sods' or '100 songs about dying you must own'... god it irritates me that a once fine music publication (well a good few years ago now) has descended to doing feckin' lists each month and padding out 20 pages of more fluff than Fluff Freeman!

I've avoided Q like the plague since they went this way, thank god for Word and Mojo - although Mojo are guilty a bit more recently of the publication 'list' phenomenon too, shame on them!

Coldplay lead Q award nominations

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7593585.stm

I can take or leave Oasis's music but Noel always gives good interview. If it comes down to what is entertaining to read then I'd give them a chance, though not enough of one to make me want to buy 'Q'.

A piece on anyone can be of interest if written well enough. That's what I used to find with Q years ago - even if it was about Sting or Elton John say, someone whose music I didn't much care for. That's what I find with Word now, by and large. Great writing can be about any music related subject and be worth a read. Often it used to be the writers more than anything else that drew me to a publication - Charles Shaar Murray in his heyday and the like, regardless of who the featured artist was or cover star - I'd buy a copy knowing it would entertain me. That's what once made certain magazines special and currently Word has that quality I'd say.

When I pitched Word to my brother a few years back, I described it as being put together by some of the people who used to write for Mojo and Q before those magazines got shit. I still think this is accurate, and why Word is still good and the other two aren't. As Sven says, it's about the writers.