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"Look at their clothes! Look at their hair! Such pub rock ugliness, how can you like them?"

Started by 23 Daves, July 22, 2004, 11:25:48 AM

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Lumiere

I hate NME, and only read Kerrang! for a laff, because it's so funny - all the writers are thoroughly opinionated, and week to week its funny to see diverse opinions on bands in reviews or articles (i.e. "such and such is the best band ever!" and then "such and such is the worst band I've ever heard!"). I find it funny to see them championing utter shit (like HIM), and trashing truly talented death/black/thrash metal for no particular reason.

Q and MOJO are the best.

TraceyQ

Q is fucking shite. Apallingly bad.

How's about you just get out there, discover and listen to the music yourself and then have an opinion?

23 Daves

Trouble with Mojo, though, is they're not much use for new music, are they?  If there was a magazine with the emphasis placed upon new music written in a similar, in-depth style I'd buy it.

T'trouble with NME is the fact that over the years, it's become less and less interesting to read.  I'm not being misty-eyed and nostalgic here, I've got old NMEs at home, and believe me some of their interviews were very in-depth and even attacked the bands they were questioning (which, due to overwhelming PR control, they wouldn't dream of doing now).  Over the years the articles have got shorter and shorter, and they've ended up printing tons of dull, uninformative Q&As where it's quite clear the musician didn't even need to be in the room - they could have just e-mailed them the questions.  It's all just a big PR exercise these days, that's the problem.  The NME in the early nineties would have sneered at the likes of Kelly Osbourne, not fawned over her.

As to the points about image having a place in rock music, I do know that, but recently it seems to have taken an overwhelming emphasis.  When you find out that there are actually bands that NME won't give coverage to just because their lead singer has been beaten with the ugly stick, you know there's a problem.

23 Daves

Quote from: "TraceyQ"Q is fucking shite. Apallingly bad.

How's about you just get out there, discover and listen to the music yourself and then have an opinion?

I agree, but few people seem actually willing to do this, which is why tons of perfectly good bands exist on the breadline at the moment and may have their careers cut unfairly short.

Plus, good music journalism about exciting new bands (their history, their ideas, their humour) always is great to read (well, for me anyway).  The fact that there's not much of it around is a massive shame, and a great loss I reckon.

Still off-topic, I must say Kerrang! did have the best album review I've ever seen:
QuoteCrap. Really crap. Don't buy.
(No Ks) - And when I was fourteen they printed my letter bemoaning the inclusion of the likes of Marillion, and anyone else using synthesisers, in their vessel. I said if they wanted to do that, they'd have to change their name to Tingpiddlybvvvvnyow! The incisive wit and well-reasoned argument has never left me has it.

TraceyQ

Quote from: "23 Daves"Those last two posts

Totally agreed. I've not read an article in the NME that I've enjoyed for  a long time. It's all "ooh, look at the clothes, look at the hair, they're going to rip rock a new arsehole, ooh, they do a flang-y thing with their wah sound and the drummer goes like the clappers". Yawn. It's also far too Londoncentric (if that's a word).

23 Daves

It is now!  

No, it's a fair observation, but then they've always been lazy about travelling the UK to find other bands.  I suppose sending a journalist to review a band in Hull isn't that cost-effective on a music mag budget (given rail fares, accommodation, etc) but they could still have more local writers than they do.  There's plenty of young freelance talent in far-flung Northern and Scottish towns crying out to get their work published.

They're just fucking lazy, basically, which is true of most Londoners at the moment.  Why try hard when you could be half-arsed and still get an audience?  That seems to be the general attitude.  I'm fairly sure the next big music scene in Britain will come from outside of London, but where I really couldn't say.  London is just far too conservative and media arse-licking at present, plus I asked a London gig promoter recently what he honestly thought was the last exciting new London band he'd seen.  He admitted he couldn't remember because it had been so long, and therefore couldn't answer my question.  That's pretty shoddy.

Shouldn't say it again, but you've got a fantastic band in Birmingham in the form of Misty's Big Adventure, Tracey.  Their studio output so far has been a bit shaky, but live they're one of the best bands in the country at the moment.  The lead singer has a receding hairline, though...

Geraint

even in the 2 1/2 years since i first read the NME it's really gone noticably downhill. of course it was flawed anyway but as someone else said, the interviews are getting smaller and more formulaic, and the articles are increasingly dominated by 'TOP 10 A-Z OF REASONS WHY <new band> WILL ROCK UR WORLD' type rubbish. There are plenty of people on the staff who obviously have talent, but they're told exactly which angles to go for on interviews and tour features, and reviewers are given a very narrow band of possible scores to give sutff (i.e if they've been hyping the Thrills for nearly a year, the reviewer will have to give the album 8 or more - probably why there are so many 7 and 8 scores and barely ever 9s or 10s). The Vines second album was given a score of 3/10 in it's original review, but the guy was told to bump the score up to 5 and add a couple of positive comments and ".. but remember they're still young" rubbish, AND gave them single of the week to appease the record label.

Last year i got a couple of those one-off magazines where they compile all the old articles about a particular band, and i was very surprised at how good the interviews were for giving the band members themselves the chance to go off on tangents and help dictate the topics of conversation. if the manics circa 1990 were a new band today they'd cut them off after one of Richey's famed ludicrous soundbytes, make it the headline, and base every single feature or review about them on that angle for the next two or three years.


Another worrying trend is the regularity with which they are paid to hype products and services, as opposed to bands. The awful recent 'Sid Vicious punk special' or whatever they called it, where they reapraised him as a style icon and triumphant godfather of punk, and shouted down skeptical letters with 'he represented an ideal', 'he is timeless', was all to sell a new biography of sid vicious out that week - very 'punk', that is. Whenever they report on internet filesharing they play up the U CUD GET SUED aspect of it, champion all the major-label approved pay-for-use ones, and put down the ones that actually work (first Audiogalaxy, then briefly WinMX, now Soulseek) as 'unreliable', despite being highly functional and with THE best selections. Their recent support of the new Napster and iTunes is disgusting, especially when you consider that the people who finance these huge advertising campaigns are the same people who sue 10-year olds, make it impossible to listen to their CDs through your PC at CD quality, and actually install a backdoor virus on the computers of Asian consumers who shell out for certain albums (the new Beastie Boys and Velvet Revolver albums are the most high-profile) to conflict with their cd-writer software. If the NME 'care about music' like they claim to, why do they happily collaborate with companies that damage the property of their customers?

(p.s. this weeks editorial is the funniest thing i've read in a long time (the issue with the alternate libertines covers))

Bonely Child

I remember a few years back the NME printed a letter complaining they were too Londoncentric. Their response? "It's not our fault, it's because you lot, our readers, are crap and don't send us reviews of bands playing where you live". I pretty much gave up at that point. Encouraging readers to take a more active part in their local scene is a good thing of course, but their reply was worded so snottily that it basically amounted to "Fuck off, we're too lazy, do it yourself". The fact that they're failing to do their job properly apparently doesn't count for much. It's just as well newspapers don't take the same attitude, otherwise coverage of events abroad would be replaced by stories about how their milk arrived slightly late yesterday.

I hate the NME, can you tell?

king mob

Quote from: "BetaKarraTene"I don't see why everyone gets so worked about the NME.  I bought my first copy a couple of years ago for a free CD.  I read it, thought it was a load of guff and have never bought it since.  Easy.  


I bought my first copy in 1983 and have been stuck with it ever since because of the gig guide mainly, its become a worse habit than picking my nose or biting my nails.

As for it being Londoncentric, its always been like that, only now there's no excuse for it apart from lazy journalism & editorial leadership.When ever they go outside of London its always so fucking patronising & again its always been like that.

MarmiteCarpenter

I hate the NME. But if people want to buy music based on image, thats fine with me. The more the NME pimps mainstream formulaic flavour-of-the-month tripe, the longer the music I like avoids the bandwagon jumping cunts who would turn it into 'the next big thing'.

Once something becomes fashionable, it stops being cool. Thats a fact, that is.

lazyhour

Quote from: "MarmiteCarpenter"Once something becomes fashionable, it stops being cool. Thats a fact, that is.


I've written this down on a little pad next to my computer.  Ta.

23 Daves

Quote from: "Presque Tous Les Ans"Still off-topic, I must say Kerrang! did have the best album review I've ever seen:
QuoteCrap. Really crap. Don't buy.
(No Ks) - And when I was fourteen they printed my letter bemoaning the inclusion of the likes of Marillion, and anyone else using synthesisers, in their vessel. I said if they wanted to do that, they'd have to change their name to Tingpiddlybvvvvnyow! The incisive wit and well-reasoned argument has never left me has it.

To be fair to Kerrang as well, they're one of the few magazines to interview the Vines recently and just completely lay into them - well deserved, in my view.  It was one of the most entertaining interviews I've read in ages.

Sadly, the Vines PR company will probably refuse to send Kerrang any more CDs or give them any exclusive interviews for the next six months now.  What we need really is a strong fanzine again (akin to Jamming in the eighties or House of Dolls in the nineties) that has a large scale distribution and doesn't go along with the industry crap for fear of alienating fellow corporates.  But it has to have good writers as well.  I fear I can dream on...

BetaKarraTene

Quote from: "23 Daves"... tons of perfectly good bands exist on the breadline at the moment and may have their careers cut unfairly short.
I don't buy that.  If you're making music and you geuinely believe in what you're doing, you'll carry on regardless of whether you're famous or not.  It may take years before you get a break (Pulp, Elbow, Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips) or it may never happen, but if you love what you do then you'll find a way to carry on doing it.

Let's not forget that 90% of all bands aren't going to be worth a second listen.  If you think mainstream music is bad, the ratio of good to poor bands playing in pubs or in their bedrooms isn't going to be any better.

Quote from: "23 Daves"I'm fairly sure the next big music scene in Britain will come from outside of London, but where I really couldn't say.
I don't see why music has to be based around a scene.  I like to see bands that are one-offs rather than a scene where all the bands sound the same.  Saying that, I've enjoyed quite a few Liverpool bands in the last couple of years, although whether it's a scene or it's just that all the record companies are doing a sweep there is another matter.

chand

Quote from: "23 Daves"To be fair to Kerrang as well, they're one of the few magazines to interview the Vines recently and just completely lay into them - well deserved, in my view.  It was one of the most entertaining interviews I've read in ages.

What happened to The Vines? Suddenly it seems they're not cool. When 'Highly Evolved' came out we were assured it was the new 'Nevermind'/'Sgt Pepper' or whatever, and that The Vines are, of course the 'most important band you'll hear this year'. The hype was immense, and now thier second album is out, as far as I can see they can't get arrested.

Is the music that much worse? I thought the first album was a terribly mediocre affair anyway.

Incidentally, I hate when critics feel the need to tell me why a band is 'important' (see this week's Libertines NME). If you have to explain to me why they're important, they're not.

dan dirty ape

I saw the Vines in the days when the NME fawnometer was locked on 'full', and it was the worst gig I've ever been to. An hour and a bit of Craig Nicholls rolling around on stage and making mewling noises. Written up the following week in the NME as a 'in years to come more people will claim to have been at this gig than can be held in three venues' type affair. They piss off for five minutes, come back with a new album that sounds more or less the same as their previous alleged meisterwerk and find that someone somewhere with editorial control had phoned round and said 'Chaps, what say we don't like the Vines anymore?'  Gotta laugh.

There's always been hype, the NME and the Maker were continuously inventing and terminating new 'scenes' like New wave of new wave and Romo back in the mid nineties. The writing was a good deal more creative back then though. Latterday NME on the couple of occasions I've thumbed through it recently does read like a press release that you can read cover to cover in about 15 minutes.

Lumiere

The summer of 2002 was really when The Vines hype machine went into overdrive, with every music magazine saying how great they were, and giving their live shows 5 stars. Then the album was released and people started realising they were shit, so the music magazines immediately started trashing them.

The Kerrang interview was hilarious, I'll give the mag that. Really, I always hated The Vines, and how pretentious they were. From the interviews I've read about the band (circa hype overload) the guitarist makes himself out to be Hendrix, and Craig Nicholls said it was pleasing when 'girls come up to me in tears over how beatiful my voice is'. What a twat.

23 Daves

Quote from: "BetaKarraTene"
Quote from: "23 Daves"... tons of perfectly good bands exist on the breadline at the moment and may have their careers cut unfairly short.
I don't buy that.  If you're making music and you geuinely believe in what you're doing, you'll carry on regardless of whether you're famous or not.  It may take years before you get a break (Pulp, Elbow, Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips) or it may never happen, but if you love what you do then you'll find a way to carry on doing it.

Hmmm... I'm a pessimist where this is concerned I'm afraid.  For every Pulp situation where the band carries on through thick and thin, living in extreme poverty (and let's not forget, that band have almost shed more members than The Fall throughout their career) there's a Nick Drake situation where the artist just keels over and decides to forget about it, though obviously 9 times out of 10 they don't take the Nick Drake route all the way to the end (thank Christ).  Plenty of artists carry on 'creating', granted, but as soon as they get sick with the industry at large they may not do what it takes to get it heard, or may even give up entirely.  That's a common scenario at the moment, and a potentially worrying one.  

Quote
Quote from: "23 Daves"I'm fairly sure the next big music scene in Britain will come from outside of London, but where I really couldn't say.
I don't see why music has to be based around a scene.  I like to see bands that are one-offs rather than a scene where all the bands sound the same.  

Hmm - I don't think it's avoidable, unfortunately.  Most 'scenes' in Britain emerge as the result of a right thinking mogul in the town (see Tony Wilson, Bill Drummond) or a large bunch of right-thinking people working either collaboratively or encouraging each other regularly (see Bristol Trip-hop).  As individuals working under their own steam, it's unlikely most of these people would have made the impact that they did, and it's arguable that the net result isn't totally the creation of the media.  I think scenes are a totally unavoidable aspect of the British industry these days, and can periodically either be a right pain in the arse or else incredibly inspiring for awhile.  Whatever, if you're going to take on the mainstream edge of the industry, it's far better to do it with a large gang of likeminded people than completely and totally by yourself.  

Also, scenes don't necessarily have to consist of bands who 'all sound the same'.  The Liverpool scene the press regularly rambled on about in the early 80s consisted of bizarre anomalies such as The Xpelaires and Those Naughty Lumps as well as Teardrop Explodes, Echo and The Bunnymen and Wah!  Once the spotlight of attention has been moved on to a particular city where certain things are obviously going on, all variety of other bands start to make themselves apparent.  I honestly believe that most city-bound scenes emerge as a result of a creatively inspiring community, not always from a wish to create exactly the same kind of noise.

TraceyQ




BetaKarraTene

Quote from: "23 Daves"For every Pulp situation where the band carries on through thick and thin, living in extreme poverty (and let's not forget, that band have almost shed more members than The Fall throughout their career) there's a Nick Drake situation where the artist just keels over and decides to forget about it, though obviously 9 times out of 10 they don't take the Nick Drake route all the way to the end (thank Christ).  Plenty of artists carry on 'creating', granted, but as soon as they get sick with the industry at large they may not do what it takes to get it heard, or may even give up entirely.  That's a common scenario at the moment, and a potentially worrying one.  
Surely it's always been that way though?  I think the problem with artists getting sick of the industry is most prevalent with those that have had succes and then get screwed about.  Cornershop came close to packing it in when they were messed about by Mantra but, thankfully, they're back with a great single.

Quote from: "23 Daves"Also, scenes don't necessarily have to consist of bands who 'all sound the same'.  The Liverpool scene the press regularly rambled on about in the early 80s consisted of bizarre anomalies such as The Xpelaires and Those Naughty Lumps as well as Teardrop Explodes, Echo and The Bunnymen and Wah!
Strangely, mentioning the Liverpool scene has got me looking through the current one since there's some good and varying bands around like (obviously) The Coral, The Zutons with their blues stuff, The Hokum Clones with their acoustic stuff, (Sadly they're not much cop) and The Dead '60s ska / reggae.  I suppose it would add a camaraderie to bands' attitudes to be involved in a scene, but I prefer bands to stand out on their own.

Concerning The Vines.  I always thought the first album was half-decent and nothing more, and the same can be said of the current album.  There's been no covereage of them this time since everyone has moved on to the next 'it' band.
The one thing I will say of the media is that it seems to be filling up with fashionistas - recommending stuff cause it's cool above all else.  They're becoming a bigger group at gigs as well.  It's a worrying trend because bands are getting hyped and then, when the media move on to their next victims, they get discarded.  The main example is The Datsuns, who (when they first came to the UK) said that they found all the press coverage ridiculous. As it happens, I thought their album was a damn fine old fashoned rock record.  2 years on, they released their second album, which was instantly dismissed by the same press  because they weren't cool anymore, even though it's just as good as the first LP.  It turns out OK for me because I get to see them at The Astoria instead of Brixton, but above all, it makes the press look like fools for being so fashion-based in their opinions.

king mob

Quote from: "dan dirty ape"I saw the Vines in the days when the NME fawnometer was locked on 'full', and it was the worst gig I've ever been to. An hour and a bit of Craig Nicholls rolling around on stage and making mewling noises. Written up the following week in the NME as a 'in years to come more people will claim to have been at this gig than can be held in three venues' type affair. They piss off for five minutes, come back with a new album that sounds more or less the same as their previous alleged meisterwerk and find that someone somewhere with editorial control had phoned round and said 'Chaps, what say we don't like the Vines anymore?'  Gotta laugh.


I vividly remember the Vines playing Glastonbury in 2002 & going to see them there, it was possibly one of the poorest gigs by a band i've seen at a festival.The crowds started leaving after the first few songs & people left wondering what the fuss was all about.

Of course the festival review issue was best performance of the weekend, blew everyone away type bollocks the NME does when it loves a band.

They did the same a year before when the Strokes played Reading, building them up to be the leaders of a new scene type nonsense we've become bored of, even making Mean Fiddler move them to the main stage from the Radio One tent because of NME's hype.
Of course they were poor & were unable to hold a large audience or have any charisma on such a large stage & of course the NME said they were the best band of the weekend, etc...

Its the way of the NME to build them up and knock them down as they did with the Vines, as yet they've not  done it with the Strokes (who were the emperors new clothes anyhow) but give them time.


As for waiting for a new scene or movement, there's no point , peoples tastes are now varied and there's little of the blind following of a scene because of a few good bands that used to be the case.

A few youth cults will remain, the miserable goth, the moaning indie boy, etc but on the whole scenes were about cliques & who was cool enough to be in that clique.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

The NME always used to annoy me, but at least it did that. So many of its writers these days seem to have no real opinions on anything. Hack wise, I used to like the class of '91 but they soon got usurped by careerists like Johnny Cigarettes, people would do an ersatz version of Steven Wells et al while pushing all the right media buttons. The deadpan, embarraseed NME I used to love was replaced by an 'It's YOUR music' breathlessness which I found a bit queasy.

But it did have a real authority back then - I trusted what people wrote. And 23 Daves is right, it often attacked a band mid-interview or took a 'Who the fuck would fall for this hype?' stance.

Re Londoncentric. Does anyone notice where bands come from any more? These days, I'm hard-pressed to remember which bands are British and which are American, let alone what their postcode is.

But anyway, image...yes. I miss very ugly people being in bands. I'm always staggered by how ugly The Who were, but it didn't matter back then. Aren't a lot of band frontmen ironically ugly though? They might have a bit of a lazy eye, like Thom Yorke, but they're clearly not short of offers.

Some people on this thread are using the slightly condescending 'I think you'll find the music industry is out to make money, pure and simple' approach in their arguments, like this is a concept we're unaware of. I mean, they were obsessed with making money in the 60s/70s/80s too, but you still had brilliant music moments occasionally like Elvis Costello singing 'Oliver's Army' on Top of the Pops. Duran Duran were silly fashion victims, but a lot of their songs were brilliant. I still fear something's happened for the worse over the past 15 years or so.

Wow-wee.  What a lot in such a short 3 pages... (I'll go back and read it when I have more time...)

I agree with everything Chand has said, especially about the NME.  It hollers and shouts about being this alternative view-point - but it isn't.
As far as I can tell, the true credible "alternative" journalism came/comes from the (now defunct) Careless Talk Cost Lives and maybe the free "Fly" magazine, and a few others.

It seems the only way you can hear new innovative music nowadays is through word of mouth and subsequent web sites.  The mainstream press really isn't addressing new or innovative music, despite the lengths it promotes itself as doing so.

To be honest, the whole thing about image depresses me.  The whole manufactured pop mainstream and "nu" genres is so saturated with image, even if this image is a direct rehash of previous styles of the past.  But image and pop/rock music has always gone hand in hand.  It just has taken the extreme turn in the last few years, with pop/fame idols - where the predefined superficial image is more vital than the creativity, talent and songwriting.

sorry, it's probably pointless posting on here, as it's all been said before.

I often dream something as fresh and ground-breaking as the punk movement would happen again - but the climate is so stagnant nowadays.

tip for the day: southern records

Quote from: "king mob"As for waiting for a new scene or movement, there's no point , peoples tastes are now varied and there's little of the blind following of a scene because of a few good bands that used to be the case.

Yes! I agree with that sentiment.  I guess the key is diversity and trying not to following a paint-by-numbers scene if possible.  It's probably easier said that done, and people will always *tend* to dress as the bands they follow...

youth/image/music usually are interlinked.  as much criticism of kids "dressed like the strokes", music always inspires every generation.  the human race is fickle and highly impressionable, especially when in youth.
the marketing people see this very basic concept and regurgitate trends time after time.  I think it's genius to repackage and recycle superficiality.  The kids are easy to con.

another thought is this:

all this talk of "alternative" - to dress a certain way so as to not fit into a predefined "popular" category... is ironic.  People dress "alternatively" by mimicking their favourite band(s) - it comes around full-circle: if you follow a trend (no matter how alternative you think it is at first) - you yourself become part of the new trend.  part of the cliché you attempt to break in the first place.

we become clichés of ourselves.

Fuckwittio

Quote from: "The Man With Brass Eyes"another thought is this:

all this talk of "alternative" - to dress a certain way so as to not fit into a predefined "popular" category... is ironic.  People dress "alternatively" by mimicking their favourite band(s) - it comes around full-circle: if you follow a trend (no matter how alternative you think it is at first) - you yourself become part of the new trend.  part of the cliché you attempt to break in the first place.

we become clichés of ourselves.

See the hippy movement, punk, that whole Britpop sadness & pretty much any musical 'scene', good or bad, since the dawn of rock n' roll. Well put, TMWBE.

chand

Quote from: "The Man With Brass Eyes"youth/image/music usually are interlinked.  

Of course, they don't have to be. I like the fact that when people see me they aren't able to guess what music I listen to. I found when I was listening to certain types of music you'd get daft idiots claiming they really like, totally fucking exist outside the mainstream, man, when in fact they just slot neatly into a slightly less-populated mainstream which encouraged the same if not more conformity than the mainstream itself.

Regards alternative journalism, there are quite a lot of mags out there, but many of them are expensive and/or obscure. Personally the only one I read every issue is The Wire, which is great as long as you don't follow everything it says in the way some people do with the NME, The Wire can sometimes become a parody of itself too.

king mob

Quote from: "The Man With Brass Eyes"another thought is this:

all this talk of "alternative" - to dress a certain way so as to not fit into a predefined "popular" category... is ironic.  People dress "alternatively" by mimicking their favourite band(s) - it comes around full-circle: if you follow a trend (no matter how alternative you think it is at first) - you yourself become part of the new trend.  part of the cliché you attempt to break in the first place.

we become clichés of ourselves.

Very much so, how many 30 something goth's , indie kids, ravers, etc still cling on to that image from their youth in an attempt to retain that memory of youth do you know?

If it's as many as me then its 9 people.