A long time ago, in a land far far away, I used to read the music press. Yes, there actually was one once, and some people thought it was vaguely important. Most of those people wrote for it.
In time honoured tradition, it all began with Smash Hits (RIP). I had a break for a while, due both to a lack of interest on my part, and the serious dearth in anything remotely interesting happening musically in the early 1990s. Then along came Britpop, and there went my spare cash.
In monthly magazines, there was the somewhat staid and dull Q (still around I believe, but I haven't read it for years - if you've read one Bono/Chris Martin/ insert dull Dad rocker of your choice here interview, you've more than likely read one too many), the "NME in monthly form" Vox, and the far better written Select (featuring the marvellous David Quantick/Andrew Collins/Stuart Macaroni* triumvirate which also livened up Radio One for a brief period in the 1990s), home of all your Britpop needs. Remember it? Ask your granddad...
Then there were the weekly mags. Dating myself terribly here, I can reveal that the first NME I bought had Damon All-bran* on the cover, and came with a flexi-disc preview of Suede's Dog Man Star. The NME, for those who don't know, is a British institution, famed in the past for some of its writers (they launched the god-awful Julie Burchill on the world, the bastards, and her "made for each other" in atrociousness partner in love/hate, Tony Parsons. Thanks for that, NME, thanks a bunch), but as much for their spurious "there's three bands who play similar instruments, let's bundle them together and call it a movement!" tactics.
Rather better, of course, was Melody Maker, triumphing by a cunning ruse called "having better writers". Sneaky, that. Mid-1990s NME was pedestrian, and often a rather dull read. At least the writers at Melody Maker seemed capable of bringing some sort of life to the publication. It all went horribly wrong before petering out in 2000, but for a while, it was actually a pretty good read.
So why did I read these magazines? Well, before the internet was the all-conquering hero it is today, that was often the first chance one had of finding out about new music. The problem, of course, was that this first impression was inevitably filtered through the preferences, and prejudices, of the writers and editors. The trick to working out if you would like something or not often lay in previous knowledge of the tastes of the scribe you were currently reading (thus generally speaking, if, for instance, Everett True hated someone, they probably had some merit).
These days, if you want to know what a new band sounds like, you don't need to rely on negotiating your way through the personal history of the journo talking about them; you just go to their website, or one of the many excellent music blogs, or even, if you must (I'm far too old for such things myself), visit their page on Myspace, and you can hear and make up your mind for yourself. It's no coincidence that most of the music mags still surviving peddle a line in music as nostalgia. Led Zeppelin! Cream! Queen! The Beatles! Read about them all in Mojo while sipping on your Horlicks!
So, imagine my surprise when, post-Decemberists gig I did a little internet searching and found out that there's still at least one music journalist out there who thinks that the old "opinion piece in place of actual concert review" is still a viable career option. Why I almost got all nostalgic - shame the guy can't write for toffee and gets his facts embarrassingly wrong, but let's hear it for the
last cry of the opinionated music journalist!
