For someone who works as a music journalist, I don't get to read many actual music magazines -- mostly because they remind me a little too acutely how embarrassing a job this is to have. Patrick Kay has done the hard work of actually combing through the damn things for us. Check out his previous piece for us A history of dubstep, from grime to 2-step to Justin Bieber.
English language music magazines were hard to come by in Asia, where I’d been living until last month. Since returning to the UK I’ve sunk into an orgy of music journalism, spunking scorching wads of hot moolah into the gaping cash-drawers of slutty newsagents across the country, buying dozens of music titles. I have a deep affection for music magazines; before the internet they were pretty much the only regular source of in-depth information about music, and accordingly they played a pivotal part in shaping my taste. From my early teens, before I was old enough to go to gigs, I spent many happy hours poring over tomes like Select, Fatboss and Muzik, absorbing every ounce of information they provided. There had drawbacks, of course: often you’d have no idea what any given song actually sounded like. There were no updates. Your favourite artists might be completely overlooked or – perhaps even worse – given maddeningly cursory treatment.
But there’s still something magical about a magazine, its weight in your hand, the way you can return to it years later, that unmistakable smell of fresh ink and paper. Plus, in a toilet emergency you can’t wipe your arse with an iPad or a Kindle.
During my odyssey back into the papery media forms of yesteryear I was surprised by a number of things. Firstly, cover-mount CDs have gone from being a tempting repository of undiscovered treasures to being a boring chore. Unsealing the CD, listening to it, and ripping any songs I like seems like a lot of trouble. In fact, I’ve yet to listen to any of the promo CDs I got with this batch of mags. Two further limitations of the format: the “news” items were completely out of date and didn’t have enough detail, and the review sections were generally lacking in breadth and depth. Longer pieces and better writing are where magazines should excel over websites, and I did find some evidence of that happening; last month the Classic Rock/Metal Hammer stable put out two specials, The Alternative 80s and a Black Sabbath standalone issue which focused completely on long interviews, in-depth album analysis and career retrospectives. In fact, one thing that’s always annoyed me about music magazines is how few of them bother with articles. Interviews, reviews, news and lists, okay; but barely any magazines seem to write actual pieces detailing the history of a scene or an overview of a sound. I suppose “best of” lists and completely disposable fashion and lifestyle advice are much quicker, cheaper and easier to dash off than full articles. (The fashion and lifestyle stuff annoys me too – if I wanted to read about trendy pants or stylish merkins I’d buy a fashion magazine.)
The sheer amount of music magazines still available also surprised me; presumably they’re selling well. There were several titles I’d never seen or heard of before.
Here, then, is a rundown for US PTSOTL readers of some of the music magazines available in the land of big tits and rotten teeth. (I sometimes read US music magazines – XXL, Rolling Stone – but I haven’t bothered reviewing any of them because you can pick them up buy them at your local store shop easily enough.)
Mojo
Monthly/£4.60
Mainly 60s & 70s rock, but basically anything which seems to have stood the test of time
I love reading Mojo because it has actual articles, usually long pieces revealing how a classic album came about. Its feature interviews are good too – they’re beefy, with direct access to some of the biggest names in music. Like the rest of the magazines I read, the smaller interviews at the front are usually fairly pointless; simply bands raving about how good their new album is. The centrepiece articles are always an in-depth look at a particular point in a legendary artist’s career (inthis issue it was Bowie’s Berlin years) and are uniformly enthralling. The buyer’s guides, covering a single artist’s oeuvre each issue, are superb too. A great magazine.
Kicker: a cool little feature called Hello/Goodbye where people recall how they came to be in a given band and also how they came to leave it, often many years down the lines in acrimonious circumstances. Can be extremely poignant. Reading time: 1½ hours Pages: 130 Content vs ads ratio: 85% vs 15% Sample sentence: “It’s a switchback template that continues to frustrate the band’s fanbase as much as it delights and confounds” Good magazine or bad magazine? GOOD
Terrorizer
Monthly/£4.50
Metal
Terrorizer was a massive disappointment. Metal is surely made for magazines, with a long history of outlandish characters, strong aesthetics and crazy behaviour – so why is this such an anodyne and vanilla treatment of the genre? The interviews and reviews are particularly shitty; the interviews are interchangeable (“our new record is great, we can’t wait for it to come out”) and puddle-deep while the reviews utterly fail to give any kind of idea what the music sounds like. Terrorizer is also often rather amateurish, with typos, poor grammar and tortured syntax. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Kind of like this blog] Avoid.
Metal
Terrorizer was a massive disappointment. Metal is surely made for magazines, with a long history of outlandish characters, strong aesthetics and crazy behaviour – so why is this such an anodyne and vanilla treatment of the genre? The interviews and reviews are particularly shitty; the interviews are interchangeable (“our new record is great, we can’t wait for it to come out”) and puddle-deep while the reviews utterly fail to give any kind of idea what the music sounds like. Terrorizer is also often rather amateurish, with typos, poor grammar and tortured syntax. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Kind of like this blog] Avoid.
Kicker: a fairly middle-of-the-road feature called “Mixtape Mayhem” where they ask someone from a band to choose ten songs for a mixtape. Pretty standard but usually throws up a song or two worth investigating, which is more or less the point of reading a music magazine innit? Reading time: 45 minutes Pages: 80 Content vs ads ratio: 76% vs 24% Sample sentence: “Technical twists and growling grooves make up the flavour of this German troupe” Good magazine or bad magazine? BAD
DJ
Monthly/£3.95
Electronic music
The short interviews and massive club listings section in DJ are a waste of time; no-one has anything interesting to say in the mini-views (“our new record is good”) and honestly, who nowadays would bother checking some kind of telephone directory thing to find a club night? DJ is saved by longer pieces (the issue I read had a great article about the mid-80s switch from jazz funk to acid house on London’s club scene) and a huge review section covering every aspect of electronic music. Eight pages of new house music single reviews makes me a happy man.
Kicker: “7 Lucky”, a short interview asking an artist about seven records which have been significant in their lives. Missionary position stuff but inoffensive. Reading time: 1 hour (the reviews take ages – this is good) Pages: 162 Content vs ads ratio: 70% vs 30% Sample sentence: “Moody, groove-sodden and boasting a vintage vocal par excellence” Good magazine or bad magazine? GOOD
Classic Rock
Monthly/£4.99
Mainly classic rock (duh) but has a decent amount of coverage of new acts, although only ones playing rock
Classic Rock pulls off the hardest trick of any music magazine: making interviews with acts whose music I have no interest in compelling. It does this by using the best house style of any of the music magazines: measured and nuanced, if at times a touch too reverent, although that’s understandable considering its continued existence rides on access to some of the biggest egos in music. Every month CR features huge, weighty articles going deep into the stories behind seminal albums and legenday artists. Essential.
Kicker: “Heavy Load”, a one-page interview which is tailored to each interviewee and doesn’t shy away from difficult questions. Reading time: 1½ hours Pages: 138 Content/ads ratio: 72% vs 28% Sample sentence: “What happened with John?” Good magazine or bad magazine? GOOD
Kerrang
Weekly/£2.20
Emo/metalcore (at the moment)
Kerrang (I refuse to spell it with the exclamation mark) covers whatever is really popular with younger people in the harder end of rock. At the moment that means emo and metalcore groups; over the years it’s been the standard bearer for hair metal, heavy metal and nu metal. There’s very little actual content here – shamelessly softball interviews with big names, pointless gig reviews and a shocking amount of adverts. I remember as a young kid being too scared of it to buy a copy. When I finally summoned up the courage at the age of twelve. I was surprised to find that it never printed swearwords in full. It still doesn’t, possibly reflecting the age of its audience, or perhaps the concerns of their parents. Unfortunately the weak teenybop journalism it consists means that, ultimately, Kerrang is ******* **** and only little ***** read it.
Kicker: “The Ultimate Rock Star Test” – boring feature where they ask edgy questions like “Have you ever been thrown out a hotel room?” Reading time: 25 minutes Pages: 63 Content vs ads ratio: 63.5% vs 36.5% Sample sentence: “With their new album and their gigs in London and Reading, we’ve all gone Green Day mad!” Good magazine or bad magazine? BAD
Q
Monthly/£3.99
Everything, with a bias towards the most popular rock/indie acts
Probably the most high-profile and well-established music monthly, Q covers every type of music although it has a definite slant towards arena-bothering übergroups, whoever they may be at any given time. So it gets interviews with genuine megastars, but do they have anything interesting to say? Actually, yes; its journalists are skilful and experienced enough to generally draw something compelling from even the most PR-savvy stars. For example, in this issue featuring Muse, the Radiohead-lite elves are forced to admit that they “still have some convincing to do” as the writer repeatedly reminds us of the “border-line ludicrous”, “apocalyptic choral daftness” of their music. The reissues section of the reviews is particularly good, too. Worth a look.
Kicker: “The Q&A”, a min-terview with a star. It’s personalised to the subject and is pretty good! Reading time: 1¼ hours Pages: 138 Content vs ads ratio: 82% vs 18% Sample sentence: “As well as being caring and generous his behaviour could be just as unsaintly as any other man’s” Good magazine or bad magazine? GOOD
Metal Hammer
Monthly/£4.75
Metal!
Metal Hammer covers the same bands and acts as Terrorizer but the whole thing is simply better written and more adult (in the best sense of the word). Long interviews and actual articles plus awesome reviews make it indispensable. It comes from the same stable as Classic Rock and their shared pedigree is immediately apparent, although the tone is slightly swearier and more anarchic.
Kicker: “Confessions”, a feature asking rockers about nefarious behaviour they’ve indulged in. Pleasant. Reading time: 1½ hours Pages: 162 Content/ads ratio: Good magazine or bad magazine? GOOD
NME
Weekly/£2.40
Whatever’s popular with teenagers.
The NME is the flimsiest magazine of the lot – physically. It appears to be printed on some kind of recycled toilet paper. I hadn’t read NME for over a decade and had bad memories of cringingly childish journalism but the quality of the writing surprised me – the issue contained a satisfyingly beefy article about the greatest songwriters ever and a few decent interviews. The tone is lighter than the monthly heavyweights like Classic Rock and Mojo; ostensibly an indie-focused publication, there’s a surprising amount of coverage given to pop, hip-hop and electronic acts (which are often the same thing these days). It’s funny in places, too!
Kicker: a page where they quiz music ‘slebs on answers they’ve given to interview questions in the past. Sounds a bit shit, but was actually quite enjoyable (I’d never heard of the bloke being questioned). Reading time: 20 minutes Pages: 66 Content vs ads ratio: 82% vs 18% Sample sentence: “In 2008 they found themselves the Lehman Brothers of a rapidly crashing indie rock market” Good magazine or bad magazine? GOOD
Mixmag
Monthly £4
Electronic club music
Mixmag struggles to find a tone; it veers from matey hedonism and feather-light lifestyle advice to actually quite good articles about emerging strands of electronic music and reasonably beefy interviews with producers, acts and DJs. The reviews section is a bit irrelevant – the monthly publishing schedule means it’s almost impossible to keep up to date and it can seem hopelessly behind the times. Also, reading Mixmag interviews makes me wonder if there is something about producing electronic music which doesn’t necessarily produce the kind of amazing personalities and compelling characters we see in rock and hip-hop; most of the interviewees come across as kind of normal, fairly boring people. As a dedicated househead even just typing this feels blasphemous… maybe it’s just that we need some kind of black metal or sizzurp movement in club music. Satanic house? Mixmag is aiight but I probably won’t be buying it again. Loads of ads, too.
Kicker: “The Big Questions” – boring, missionary-style interview: “What’s the worst club you’ve been to?” Reading time: 1 hour Pages: 130 Content/ads ratio: 63% vs 37% Good magazine or bad magazine? BAD
Wire
Monthly/£4
Anything avant-garde, underground or obscure
Wire has a pleasingly mature and serious tone which often befits the groups and artists it covers – from analogue noiseniks to freefrom jazz collectives. Every time I read Wire I get exposed to dozens of acts I’ve never heard of before. Interviews are weighty and the reviews section is grimly comprehensive; every time I buy it I feel pleased with myself for supporting cutting-edge music. Wire also has the best design aesthetic of any of the magazines I’ve reviewed, uncluttered and crisp. The interviews stick closely to the subject’s music – there are no intrusive questions about personal lives or anything – which comes as a nice change of pace after some of the gossipy nonsense in other publications. My favourite part is a feature called Invisible Jukebox where an artist is invited to listen to un-named old and new music, identify the songs, and comment on them. Not a groundbreaking concept but often an illuminating read. Reading Wire is like talking to an intelligent, sensitive, musically literate chum.
Kicker: “Epiphanies”, a first-person account of a moment in an artist’s life when they were exposed to some work which deeply influenced them. Like the rest of the magazine, well-written and thoughtful. Reading time: 1.5 hours Pages: 106 Content/ads ratio: 82% vs 18% Sample sentence: “Its subtle lattice of polyrhythms projects a feeling of things on the move rather than outright triumph” Good magazine or bad magazine? GOOD
Uncut
Monthly/£4.80
In between Mojo and Classic Rock; mainly classic rock from the 60s and 70s but some limited coverage of newer rock and classic non-rock
Uncut is perhaps the most reverential of the mags dealing with older music. Like Classic Rock and Mojo there’s more coverage given to new music (new and old artists alike) than I’d remembered but it’s all stuff firmly rooted in rock traditionalism. Dylan’s new album gets 10 out of 10 and a thousand words; this issue starts with a breathless anecdote from the editor about Frank Zappa treating people like shit. But there’s some real gold here – nearly ten pages of an interview with Nick Cave which doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable questions and an in-depth tribute to Viv Stanishall featuring input from his friends, family and former bandmates.
Kicker: “My life in music” – a musician chooses the eight albums which were seminal influences on them. This month it was J Mascis and his selections put me onto some stuff I’d never heard of before, so job done! Reading time: 1.5 hours Pages: 130 Content/ads ratio: 77% vs 23% Sample sentence: “It begins fabulously, with a jazzy instumental preface” Good magazine or bad magazine? GOOD
Big Cheese
Monthly/£3.99
Punk/emo/metalcore etc
BC has apparently been running since 1996, but I’d never heard of it until I saw it in a newsagent the other day. It concentrates on the poppier end of the metal and punk musical spectrums, including lots of bands who play music I find hard to categorise - weepcore? Poutwave? I suspect it might be what people mean when they talk about “emo”, but I’ve never actually had “emo” music properly described to me. It seems to be mainly stuff old/unattractive/unpopular people like myself decry. Anyway, Big Cheese has a charming air of youthful amateurism about it - typos and awkward syntax abound - even if most of the writing staff look like they’re old enough to have attended the Sex Pistols’ first gig. It also looks like it’s been designed with Windows 95 clipart. It comes with a free poster. The letters are all paeans to the attractiveness of metalcore frontmen I’ve never heard of. For some reason, I really enjoyed it.
Kicker: The Grande Fromage – a pointless fluff piece about the frontman of a band which reads like a Simple English Wikipedia entry. Reading time: 35 minutes Pages: 94 Content/ads ratio: 75% vs 25% Sample sentence: “Aside from being an all banger, no pranger rap/hardcore anthem, Chris bellows ‘Man, the UK’s really smashing it’” Good magazine or bad magazine? GOOD /BAD/DON’T KNOW ANYMORE
brought to you by
3 comments:
I haven't read Kerrang! (with exclamation point goddammit) since the eighties. I liked it back then. It always blew my mind that the Euros got to see all sorts of killer shows. Nobody I knew had heard of Mercyful Fate and they were getting some good press. Sorry to hear it's a turd these days.
Thanks for the UK news. Something about that island that puts out so much great music.
Just for you, PK.
http://demonicdeathjudge.bandcamp.com/album/the-descent
My faves are tracks 3 and 7. Not British I know but it's in heavy rotation.
Great find, I'm gonna download that for sure - first song, 3 and 7 are my favourites. Good to hear some sludge from people who realise that staying bluesy and groovy is key.
I think the weather is a key part of why a lot of music comes out of the UK. It's so crappy and grey 70% of the time you might as well stay in and work on something. I don't think Kerrang(!) has changed that much, just that it's always been aimed at young teenagers so its pretty embarrassing to read now. Another example of life and time turning everything to ashes I s'pose.
laughed out loud (spent the time to spell it) three times. Pretty much summed up all the UK rags, weekly vs monthly?
Post a Comment