Christ, don't these fucking broadsheet hacks give over banging on about 'how it ain't what it used to be in my day' and 'it was all fields round here me lad'?
Much as I might like him personally, I've got to say that John Harris' recent Guardian article on the continued demise of music criticism (wait vicar! the horses have bolted the building! why are you looking at me that way?) to be the biggest piece of yawn-inducing turgid bollocks since whenever the last biggest piece of yawn-inducing turgid bollocks was (probably something written by The Guardian's media 'correspondent' Maggoty Lamb). (For the record, the mention of Plan B Magazine in the previous link was the first ever fucking mention of Plan B Magazine in that paper's column in our four-and-a-half year history. Who knows what we might've done, with a little fucking support?)
Fuck me, but these people are smothering music criticism dead with sheer volume of words alone. CHRIST! Is that it? Is that all you can add to the dialogue? Things were better when I t'were a lad. And, hold up a sec, John - but weren't you something high up at both Select and Q during the 90s? Aren't you still in a position of power? WHY THE FUCK DON'T YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT? Or is it just too damn profitable turning into 3,000-word articles on how crap it all is now that 30 is a long and distant memory, and how t'youth will never match up to your heady standards? What fucking heady standards?
YOU USED TO EDIT Q AND SELECT for fuck's sake!!!
And the same goes for anyone who doesn't read Kieron Gillen, triple.
Harris's article was essentially lamenting the demise of the NME. I agree that it's been dumbed down but I didn't think Harris's article made the point well enough. I read the NME and MM in the 90s when I thought both were superb publications but it's said by some that the 70s or the 80s were the peak - it seems to depend on when you come of age.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how well the NME sells these days but, in an online world, who will continue to pay for such glossy mediocrity?
Thanks for sticking to the end of it for us, Kev. Um, couldn't he have made that point, a lot more attractively, in 500 words or less? Or is that the downside of being paid by the word?
ReplyDelete"Who knows what we might’ve done, with a little fucking support?"
ReplyDeleteSupport from who? Plan B went off on its own furrow, did some great stuff, who do want support from in this industry of back scratching?
Right enough. Consider me ticked off. Won't happen again. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteI think Plan B was pretty much the only UK publication that Maggoty Lamb was exclusively nice about, ET. For what it's worth I thought the collected Maggoty Lamb columns in Loops made for pretty entertaining reading, and not too different in tone to your complaints about the Brisbane street press...
ReplyDelete(of course, I think if we'd got it in the neck I'd be complaining just like everyone else, but that's the way with this stuff isn't it?)
[...] I know I shouldn’t be giving these people the flame of publicity but I can’t help it. Someone needs to speak up for brevity and incision (and I ain’t talking wankers using Twitter as some sort of post-structuralist joke). WHY DOES IT ALWAYS TAKE A professional CRITIC 1,000 words TO SAY WHAT COULD BE SAID IN 1o0? [...]
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