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    #51
    The NME

    WOM wrote: Of course they do.

    It just seems that nobody remembers exactly when it was at its best, which it appears that it was right around when they started reading it (aged 14 or 15), and then it declined in lockstep with pop music becoming a less important part of your teenage years (as it would).

    I'm not saying that writing doesn't vary in quality. But to ignore the age / time of life bias seems willful.
    I dunno, the 1998-2000 cut off that's been bandied about seems fair, at least in my experience. I read it a few times then, when I was in my early teens, and it was crap from the get go, so I never got to read a 'good' NME. Generally amongst friends it was known as being pretty poor. I don't know how good it was during the early '90s, but it was definitely cack by the late '90s.

    Of course it helped that even that early on we had the internet for band/gig news, which was much more preferable.

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      #52
      The NME

      Have to say I'm troubled by the Wagon Wheel in that photo describing itself as 'original'. Surely the earlier incarnation of said biscuit (not cake, not cookie) was made with real chocolate and also contained some kind of jam/sauce centre?

      I don't know how good it was during the early '90s, but it was definitely cack by the late '90s.
      The NME was still readable in the early nineties (despite the interviews being about a third of the length they'd have been ten years previously). I stopped buying it around 1998: we had an office copy delivered at TalkBack, but I barely picked it up.

      I'm not saying that writing doesn't vary in quality. But to ignore the age / time of life bias seems willful.
      I think we did this one recently?

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        #53
        The NME

        I started reading it in 1993, and even then it was a very distant second best to Melody Maker. There were some decent writers but a lot of incredibly workaday hacks too. (I stopped around 1997 and it had completely gone to hell by then.)

        Around that time, they also did a special on black music where the entire intro was along the lines of "Feeling crap? Get a bit of this sunshine music into your life", as if black music could be reduced to the aural equivalent of a can of Lilt or something.

        I also remember them giving Only Heaven by The Young Gods, which is a terrific record, to some cauliflower-eared imbecile to review. He gave it 3 out of 10 and it was obvious he hadn't bothered listening to it properly -- the review was, shall we say, a bit short on specifics.

        Here's a proper review of Only Heaven by a proper music writer (scroll down slightly).

        http://reynoldsretro.blogspot.ie/2008/03/young-gods-young-gods-product-inc.html

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          #54
          The NME

          Jah Womble wrote: Have to say I'm troubled by the Wagon Wheel in that photo describing itself as 'original'. Surely the earlier incarnation of said biscuit (not cake, not cookie) was made with real chocolate and also contained some kind of jam/sauce centre?
          Jah, you seem to be thinking of the Jammy wagon wheel, which did not claim to be original.

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            #55
            The NME

            Once, in the dark days before the internet, I rang up the makers of Wagon Wheel to ask them something or other, for the purposes of settling a tiresome office argument that I was sick of listening to. The lady on the other end said in a talking-to-little-girls voice "are you doing a school project?" and I was too embarrassed to say er, no, I'm 23 or whatever, I just sound 12, so I said yes. She took my details and sent me a load of info about the manufacture of Wagon Wheels. It settled the argument but they moved onto something equally boring.

            Lou Reed, Wagon Wheel, now that's cool.

            You gotta live your life as though you're number one, you gotta live, yeh your life, and make a point of having some fun.

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              #56
              The NME

              I think the power of magazine in its prime was that it was the only media outlet available when I was 17 that spoke to me as an adult and allowed me to discover that there was more to the world than I was getting through sixth form and the telly. The cover I always recall is this:

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                #57
                The NME

                Love that cover - don't recall seeing it at the time, but it looks very Face-influenced.

                I started buying it around 1971/72, when there would be the odd Bowie review buried somewhere. He didn't make it onto the front pages until 1973, and then he'd be overshadowed by a band like Focus or Wishbone Ash.

                I cherish Charles Shaar Murray's writings from those days, especially about Bowie.

                Punk - well, I was living it, but still bought the NME to see if there were gigs we didn't know about.  The writing was TMR sloppy or dull in those days. The old guard were writing about old bands I wasn't interested in, and the writers interested in punk either didn't like it, were biased by their silly crushes or petty dislikes and jealousies, (Burchill on Siouxsie, I reckon) or couldn't be arsed (probably monged out on speed comedowns).

                Then it got great when Paul Morley joined, for a while, as the post-punk period was a great burst of energy and diversity. He's a great writer, when he bothers. Penman and other star writers I personally found too much like hard work, and too little about the actual music.

                The Face took over for me, and many other pop fans, in the 80s as it looked fantastic, had great writing and gave due respect to visual imagery.  They were also far less snide, less negative, in their approach to artists, while not usually being up their arses. The NME had to adapt to their lead.

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                  #58
                  The NME

                  Music photography was definitely booming around 1984, probably as a partner to the indie pop movement, which is why you have those iconic Smiths, Cure, etc photos. Perhaps the colorfulness and light of this era's images is a reaction against the monochrome of punk and post-punk? Perhaps it was the last gasp of the time when you could become an artist on a public grant?

                  The Bronski Beat photo credit is this guy, who seems to have gone to the NME straight from a postgrad course:

                  http://jpgmag.com/stories/17397

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                    #59
                    The NME

                    Hey, punk was very colourful, it was the photos that were monochrome!

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                      #60
                      The NME

                      Discussing the NME specifically*, the peak period for me was 1990-1993. It was a good group of journos who knew how to connect: Quantick, Wells, Maconie, Collins. There would be random articles about Cows In Pop and similar bullshit. It was engaging, and amusing. (At university, Wednesday afternoons had no lectures to allow for sport to happen: hungover and useless, I retreated to my room to read the music papers and eat custard creams.)

                      I started buying in about 1988, I think FYC were on the cover that week. I stopped in the early 2000s, the rise of the Libertines and attendant frothing over the Datsuns et al was the final straw. Plus I was almost 30 by this point.

                      * qualifier: I know MM is more revered around here, but I'd buy both and always read NME first.

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                        #61
                        The NME

                        Add to that early nineties period Dele Fadele and Ian McCann. Mainly for their work with Dance/Rap stuff.

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                          #62
                          The NME

                          Auntie Beryl wrote: * qualifier: I know MM is more revered around here, but I'd buy both and always read NME first.
                          Don't worry, I bought Melody Maker, NME, Smash Hits, Kerrang!, Metal Hammer and Sounds every week during the 80s and regard the latter as the best of all, by far. Not only that but I am right.

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                            #63
                            The NME

                            The brilliant thing on this thread was the link to Simon Reynolds' blog. Given me lots of pleasure already. (Although I admit to being surprised that he was quite such an Arctic Monkeys fan.)

                            The interview with Steven Merritt is gold: http://reynoldsretro.blogspot.ie/2007/10/6ths-wasps-nests-melody-maker-summer.html

                            A great quote from Merritt: "... with classic pop, you instantly forget who did the song, it assumes its own life. Which is as it should be, and as it will be again, when I have my way."

                            It's the kind of interview that actually gets you thinking about music. Despite my fairly anti-rockist tendencies, I do still tend to worship a little at the cult of *the band* (or singer) instead of *the song*, it has to be said.

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                              #64
                              The NME

                              I was ridiculously loyal to the bands I liked around the early eighties - for example, being a Joy Division disciple, I bought all New Order's singles/albums, despite the fact that they put out a lot of filler.

                              Over the past 25 years, however, it's been all about the music for me. Bands/artists let you down.

                              Viz Sounds being the 'best', I stopped reading it around 1981, when its journos seemed to eschew anything that wasn't tiresome NWOBHM or second-wave (and second-rate) 'punk'.

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                                #65
                                The NME

                                Yes, Sounds was a niche publication catering for somebody who wasn't me. You can have too many Tad front covers.

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                                  #66
                                  The NME

                                  I always found the MM dull, but then I only bought it when it had a band or artist I liked on the cover or a mate was being reviewed. The NME seemed more spikey and relevant, but that could have been an image thing, so possibly I missed some good writing, but I'm not about to go back and check.

                                  Carol Clerk's name has come up a lot here recently. One of my best girlfriends worked at MM under her, also, CC wrote a book on the Pogues, (who feature in my other best gf's book heavily, and more first-hand) and she's talked about in another friend's film from last year. I was only dimly aware of her, and was put off because she seemed like a man's woman but my ex-MM friend says "you would have loved her, she was a great laugh, really intelligent".

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                                    #67
                                    The NME

                                    I never really bought either the NME or MM all that much. I did a Smash Hits to Select trajectory, with some Record Mirror thrown in mainly because it satisfied a chart obsessive like myself.

                                    I did buy one of the inkies every now and then, but not regularly enough ever to really feel I'd broken into their world, which can seem quite intimidating to the initiate. It was mainly the issues that gave away free cassette tapes.

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                                      #68
                                      The NME

                                      I was an avid NME reader between 76-82. It seemed both culturally crucial and well-written to me. But then I just stopped, at about the same time I quit buying so many records or going to gigs, and switched to City Limits - because of the wider interests they covered.

                                      I guess it was just an age thing.

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                                        #69
                                        The NME

                                        Jah Womble wrote: Viz Sounds being the 'best', I stopped reading it around 1981, when its journos seemed to eschew anything that wasn't tiresome NWOBHM or second-wave (and second-rate) 'punk'.
                                        Ha, I don't know why I tried to prove you wrong. Upon googling "Sounds front covers", aside from a lone Madonna cover, the furthest extremes they got away from punk/NWOBHM was Springsteen, U2, Zappa and The Birthday Party.

                                        You can have too many Tad front covers.
                                        I wouldn't be surprised if MM had more actually.

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                                          #70
                                          The NME

                                          Sales down to 14,312 for the first half of 2014. That's a drop of 28.5 per cent year on year.

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                                            #71
                                            The NME

                                            Re-reading this thread, it seems even more surreal now to remember that there were three serious music weeklies thriving in the 1970s. (Four, if one includes the somewhat-less-serious Record Mirror, which I took for its exclusive official Top 50/75. And, for a short while, five - if one counts Disc...)

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                                              #72
                                              The NME

                                              Mark Ellen seems to have started a Tumblr made up of of clippings, photos and other odds and sods from his "50-year love affair with rock and roll". Rock Stars Stole My Life is here.

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                                                #73
                                                The NME

                                                He's written a book too. It's entertaining, if a bit slight. Some good stuff in there about the glory days of Smash Hits 30-odd years ago.

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                                                  #74
                                                  The NME

                                                  What's that David Bowie says about the Serious Moonlight Tour ...? I can't quite make it out. :-)

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                                                    #75
                                                    The NME

                                                    I listened to this podcast a few weeks ago. Nick Kent, one of the NME journos during its glory years, was at the Hay festival in 2010 to plug his book.

                                                    He recounts his time at the NME and what it was like to be on the road with the bands of the era. You can download it here.

                                                    https://www.hayfestival.com/p-2305-n...aspx?skinid=16

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