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    The NME

    Circulation down to 18,124 a week

    Those are gravestone numbers, no matter how many hits the website is getting.

    #2
    The NME

    They're never what I expect, these figures, but perhaps that's cause I'm closer to the "hack looking out" than the "reader looking in" perspective. Like, the idea that 56,000 people still read Uncut every month seems crazy to me - and that can't be age thing, cause I must have been 20 or so when it launched and I doubt it ever sold much above 70,000 - but then I suppose NME (by comparison) relies on the more fickle pound of the young.

    We've spent more then ten years on here watching this slow process, though, so NME's case perhaps shouldn't be surprising.

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      #3
      The NME

      I stuck with Uncut for a while in the late 1990s, when a lot of the old Melody Maker lags were still writing for it. Then I gave up because I was completely sick of reading 12-page features about Neil Young and Shelby Lynne and all Allan Jones' other pet obsessions. God knows what it's like now.

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        #4
        The NME

        About the same, I think. They probably still cover plenty of good stuff, but in that tinycapsule style that pretends there's no internet. They've one mainstay who those formerly involved speak very lowly of (but then, hacks are prone to trash-talk at the best of times).

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          #5
          The NME

          Does anyone else have a particular issue that comes to mind when you think about the NME or other magazine? For me the default NME is this one:



          Stuart Cosgrove goads rockist sensibilities, comparing Mantronix to the Bauhaus if memory serves, while James bide their time at the bottom of the page.

          The first incarnation of Mantronix was great, but less commercially successful than their relaunch as Soul II Soul copyists. In a reversal of the usual direction of armed forces to music business traffic, MC Tee left the band to join the US Air Force.

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            #6
            The NME

            I always thought MC Tee died but can find no evidence to support this. It's just something I believed.

            Got To Have Your Love from that early 90's period was an immense recording.

            I thought they were always hit and miss even in their earlier incarnation. When they hit though, they hit big.

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              #7
              The NME

              This was when the NME was good.

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                #8
                The NME

                Luke R, that is a shame if so. He does seem to have vanished off the radar but I'd like to believe that it is because he is happily operating the radar somewhere.

                When I give them a spin now and then it does tend to be the Best Of... rather than the albums. In Full Effect was an odd one, polished almost to the point of sterility, inviting comparison with Scritti Politti or Steely Dan as much as other hip hop.

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                  #9
                  The NME

                  Gangster Octopus wrote: This was when the NME was good.

                  I agree, of course, but I believe that about five years earlier than that issue - at the height of the Nick Logan tenure as editor - it was even better.

                  Of course, both the NME of the mid-seventies and the punk
                  movement fell into place for me personally. In 1976 I was 18/19 years of age, in a no-hope warehouse job, nothing worth mentioning in the way of qualifications, skint and pissed off.
                  Classically disenfranchised you might say, and NME relieved a fair bit of that gloom, on Thursdays at least, and I will always be thankful to it for that. Perhaps I am guilty of looking back wearing rose coloured glasses; maybe if I looked at a copy of a '76/'77 NME now I might consider it poorly written or cloyingly juvenile. However it was a great fit for me then.

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                    #10
                    The NME

                    This is the rose-tinted view for me and many of my age:



                    I remember reading the review of Heathers that is mentioned on the cover can remember the accompanying still:

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                      #11
                      The NME

                      Probably this one:

                      I would have been 14, and only buying the thing for a few months. I remember it being full of confusing puns based on unfamiliar references, like Iggy Pop. Anyway, music in the UK was kind of sunny back then - baggy, Pet Shop Boys, Electronic, the dance music that charted; even the shit grebo bands were jolly boysy matey - so Nirvana's incursion of darkness made an impression.

                      They were never my favourite band or anything, but they did herald a lot of what made the 90s unique, whether in the dark side (and androgynous glamour, which people forget Nirvana used to play with) of rock to the heady meltdowns that made hip hop so essential by 94/94.

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                        #12
                        The NME

                        That Stone Roses cover is frameable it's so good. I also noticed the Psychedelic Furs named both on that one and the "Riot" one.

                        So Walt, I have to ask, who's that girl, and where is she now? Or have I just failed to recognise someone really famous?

                        I was a Record Mirror boy myself although not for very long, early '79 until switching to Autosport some time in '82. Life stages, y'know.

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                          #13
                          The NME

                          It's Winona Ryder.

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                            #14
                            The NME

                            Blimey.

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                              #15
                              The NME

                              Benjm wrote: Luke R, that is a shame if so. He does seem to have vanished off the radar but I'd like to believe that it is because he is happily operating the radar somewhere.

                              When I give them a spin now and then it does tend to be the Best Of... rather than the albums. In Full Effect was an odd one, polished almost to the point of sterility, inviting comparison with Scritti Politti or Steely Dan as much as other hip hop.
                              I think I'm probably wrong about MC Tee. In reaching back in trying to find out where I heard it, I might have to accept it was anecdotal.

                              In Full Effect is indeed odd, but still has one of my top three favourites recordings of theirs - Get Stupid Pt 3. The first time I heard that Billy Cobham sample later used on Massive Attacks Safe From Harm too. Proper tune.

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                                #16
                                The NME

                                I once had a letter printed in the NME. I was king of fifth-year for about a week. I also find it (irrationally?) annoying when people call it by it's full name. "Did you read Hobbs's piece on Chapterhouse in the New Musical Express? Fuq off.

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                                  #17
                                  The NME

                                  I've been thinking about what a ritual the NME was for me in the late 80's and early 90's. Wednesdays were usually a bit flatter without it.

                                  Their coverage of rap and dance music was great. Lots of cross-pollination going on within it's pages.

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                                    #18
                                    The NME

                                    From an old fart's perspective - the abysmal Stone Roses cover reflects everything that went wrong. It's a stupid, contrived set-up in the name of a mediocre, meaningless pun that bears no scrutiny. Compare it with the 'race riot' cover and there's no argument.

                                    As a left-field political and musical rag it was an essential read up until the mid to late 80s. I keep meaning to buy this - anyone else read it?

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                                      #19
                                      The NME

                                      Most on here will have far more experience of 'golden age' NME than me, but apart from general nostalgia about it being the last of the inkies will it be any great loss when it ceases physical production?

                                      I realise you can't be all things to all men but even before it went to shit it was largely either dismissive (metal, hard rock) or ignorant (huge swaths of Black American music) of entire genres. Sounds and Record Mirror respectively were much better in regard to covering those scenes. They also struggled with Acid House and the explosion in Dance after that( but to be fair most of the traditional music press did) and the political stuff got increasingly mean spirited as the 80's wore on.

                                      This is not so much as to say good riddance but more who cares?

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                                        #20
                                        The NME

                                        imp wrote: From an old fart's perspective - the abysmal Stone Roses cover reflects everything that went wrong. It's a stupid, contrived set-up in the name of a mediocre, meaningless pun that bears no scrutiny.
                                        It was based in the Pollock-style paintings John Squire was known for doing that featured on their artwork and his equipment, no?

                                        I can't say it's a classic and I wasn't a fan of the band or paper but "contrived...meaningless...bears no scrutiny" seems way off.

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                                          #21
                                          The NME

                                          Slightly Brown wrote: I once had a letter printed in the NME. I was king of fifth-year for about a week. I also find it (irrationally?) annoying when people call it by it's full name. "Did you read Hobbs's piece on Chapterhouse in the New Musical Express? Fuq off.
                                          I had genuinely forgotten that I also had a letter printed, and co-incidentally it was about Chapterhouse. On a long holiday in Los Angeles I went to see them at a free lunchtime show and then to a nearby record signing. A few weeks later there was the usual 'huge in America' article that every British indie band used to be allowed by right, in which they claimed that they'd walked into the record store and hundreds of girls were screaming and that they had responded by pointing to their cocks and saying 'suck these' - I wrote in with my own more accurate account of the scene in which two women screamed in a sarcastic way when the band walked into the shop and they responded by blushing and giggling. One of the other 50 or so people in attendance wrote in saying something similar so they printed both.

                                          In those days, the NME crossword was one of the highlights of my week, and completing it was a big deal.

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                                            #22
                                            The NME

                                            imp wrote: I keep meaning to buy this - anyone else read it?
                                            Yep, someone bought me that for Christmas and I whizzed through it in a day. It's no kind of masterpiece, and the author's clearly a bit of a dullard, but the history covered is interesting to the handful of people into such matters. I hadn't realised how under the cosh the underground magazines were in the sixties, for one thing (constantly getting shut down by the police, they were).

                                            It pretty much says the beginning of the end came when the schism between schmindie people and people with records by black people grew in the 80s. But I don't know, I reckon Melody Maker picked up the slack on the writing front while they were fannying about, so it's all to the good really.

                                            One thing I know is a canard, cause I bought a little bundle of the things off eBay a few years ago, is the convenient idea that NME became some kind of abstruse French theory pamphlet in the early 80s. Did it fuck - read any of those issues and you'll find nought but raw excitement about new musical ideas, heroic pisstaking and celebration of getting pissed on press trips. Even the one notable excursion into "theory" I spotted wasn't what people would expect (though it was quite bad, even for a 21-year-old).

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                                              #23
                                              The NME

                                              In those days, the NME crossword was one of the highlights of my week, and completing it was a big deal.
                                              Ahh, the NME crossword.

                                              I managed to win this about 15 times in the pre and early internet age. Those £35 of HMV vouchers funded a large amount of my music purchases throughout the 1990's.

                                              The method was simple - the first clues were always something current that you could find in the paper itself and there was always a whole bunch of easily solvable or guessable anagrams. Anything that left me stuck would be my Thursday lunchtime trip into town and 30 minutes browsing the Guiness Book of Hit Singles in Waterstones.

                                              I stopped when the prize became a handful of cd's that even the staff had rejected for being too shit.

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                                                #24
                                                The NME

                                                A few weeks later there was the usual 'huge in America' article that every British indie band used to be allowed by right, in which they claimed that they'd walked into the record store and hundreds of girls were screaming and that they had responded by pointing to their cocks and saying 'suck these'
                                                Hahahaha. Oh man, that's probably my enduring memory of the NME in the 1990s, the 'band on tour in the states' story. Always with a bit about Fifth Avenue being brought to a standstill by excited crowds outside the place where Shed Seven or whatever were doing an acoustic in-store.

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                                                  #25
                                                  The NME

                                                  I used to know a music hack who semi-regularly got brought over to America by record companies for those things.

                                                  One time he was whisked over to New York, along with a load of other journos, because the Cranberries were playing Madison Square Garden or whatever. He was very excited at the prospect, even though we all knew that under ordinary circumstances he would rather eat broken glass than listen to a Cranberries record.

                                                  He quipped good-naturedly: "I wouldn't cross the road to see the Cranberries -- but I'd cross the Atlantic!"

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