Old Music Magazines

[blake]

Anyone else collect them? It mainly tends to be Qs you find (and Mojos which good magazine or not I'm not very interested in collecting because its focused on classic acts its less a snap shot of its time) in charity/second hand music shops, but when I find an old Select I am truly joyful. I think you can gage musical history so much better by reading source materials from the time rather than the present day revised version but yes.. I was in a little second hand music shop in Bradford the other day and I was over joyed to find a big pile of NME's from the late seventies/Early eighties. How cool is that? The photography and the cover design was so epically cool back then. One of them has the Birthday Party on the cover and Kurt Vonnegut, thats so cool.

Old music papers are hard to find bar E-bay. I'd love to have loads from the Nineties: my own nostalgia period.

[Deleted]

Melody Maaaaaaaaaakeeeeeeer

[blake]

Its funny how everyone says they miss Melody Maker and then slag off the current NME cos Melody Maker use to be basically when the NME is now.. i.e Smash Hits for students. It always had the best colour posters of Hilary from JJ72 though.

[sarah]

i don't collect them, but my sister used to have a subscription to NME, so we have loads from the 90s, and she has old Select, Kerrang (big laughs and hijinks) magazines and stuff too from then

i might go and check them out some time soonish actually
O:

[Deleted]

blake said:

Its funny how everyone says they miss Melody Maker and then slag off the current NME cos Melody Maker use to be basically when the NME is now.. i.e Smash Hits for students. It always had the best colour posters of Hilary from JJ72 though.

Thing with the NME is, they actually think they are the most important influence in modern British music. They take the credit for every trend, every band's success; they revel in ripping apart another band's album and then smugly jig atop the flames of any cred that band once had as their career (in the eyes of the NME) crashes and burns. They're misery merchants. They think they're geniuses and they bum a couple of different acts quite frequently - Smash Hits just took the piss out of EVERYBODY but you could tell they had a genuine affection (a sort 'ruffle kids' hair' affection) for pop music. Smash Hits was the Shaun Of The Dead of the music magazine world.

[blake]

Hmm its just when I was young and buying music papers Melody Maker was forever bigging up the Stereophonics and Catatonia (then in desperation trying to jump on the Nu-metal bandwagon and becoming a second Kerrang) while NME was bigging up Belle and Sebastian and Arab Strap and putting Godspeed Your Black Emperor on the cover. Breaks my heart the way NME has gone.

[Deleted]

Oh the NME was good before it was Heat magazine. Now when I flick to the back and see a page on where to buy jumpers worn by Klaxons, and The Enemy's latest pile of vomit named track of the week, I shed a single tear for humanity.

[binglybongly]

Melody Maker was shit by the time it had posters and turned into a glossy mag. And then it died within a year. NME take note. They were both better when they were big fuck off newspapers in mostly black and white that made your hands filthy to read them, and they were both already rubbish by the mid-'90s. I know, because we have every NME from 1994-2001 here in our house. The old copies I used to buy from second hand shops from the late '80s and earlier actually had decent writing and a variety of stuff and in-depth features. To say NME is like Smash Hits now is to cast aspersions on Smash Hits' humour and love for its subject. It's more like TV Hits.

[birdwhistle]

I was actually perusing a Smash Hits from 1988 or somesuch the other day and... I won't say it was good, but it's incomparable to the current incarnation. The demographic has definitely plummeted downwards for the tweens, right? It's not just me imagining that? I mean, they used complex sentences! With conjunctions! And there wasn't a single instance of the word "fave".

I wish I had been around to really take notice of NME and others' evolution. I'll get out of this thread now. Erm. And go play with a yo-yo or whatever us yoof are doing to pass the time nowadays.

[oldgregg]

I threw out about 3 years worth of back NME's a month ago and my room feels like a sunnier place. But I still collect movie magazines and old Vogues.

Vinmag's basement in Soho has probably got every Q from the past ten years in it, so if anyone's a serious collector I'd recommend going there. In fact also if you're a serious collector of any magazine, since it's like a publishing Mecca.

[Deleted]

Film magazines are better, although I stopped collecting them quite some time ago. Of the more mainstream ones, Empire is far too worthy and spends too much time making lists and special issues on Star Wars or Lord Of The Rings. It will never give a bad review to a Stephen Spielberg or Martin Scorsese movie. Total Film is quite fun, but I haven't glanced at one of those for a while. Hot Dog was more like your drunk mate down the pub; I always liked its reviews, it gave good write-ups on films that were technically rubbish but damned entertaining.

I also collected a few old Cahier du Cinemas until I realised I was being a pretentious berk.

[youwantthis]

Film magazines, now we are typing.

I buy two film ones a month. Empire for more mainstream stuff and that shiz.
The main one i cant live without is ''Sight and Sound International Film Magazine'' My bible. My everything.
The last time i bought NME was when The Smiths was on the front.. but that was TIME ago.

[mimicry]

You see? This is why I never want to throw anything away.

[oldgregg]

sahara said:

Film magazines are better, although I stopped collecting them quite some time ago. Of the more mainstream ones, Empire is far too worthy and spends too much time making lists and special issues on Star Wars or Lord Of The Rings. It will never give a bad review to a Stephen Spielberg or Martin Scorsese movie. Total Film is quite fun, but I haven't glanced at one of those for a while. Hot Dog was more like your drunk mate down the pub; I always liked its reviews, it gave good write-ups on films that were technically rubbish but damned entertaining.

I find Total Film the best, not for reviews or anything but because it is so so funny and does brilliant lists. I found a load hiding behind a shelf in a junk shop last week, priced at about 50p each and spent all my food money reading about shocking moments in cinema.

But if anyone can recommend me a slightly less mainstream one, I'd be happy.''Sight and Sound International Film Magazine'' sounds interesting.

[youwantthis]

I do suggest Sight and Sound. You can get it from WH Smith.
Aslong as you're a foreign film fan you won't be disappointed.

[veggierockchick]

I have lots of back issues that I have no room for any more,
and was thinking of selling them on Ebay or something.
Only holdback is that most of the time no-one bids for them.

I have a good five years-ish of Kerrang, a few years of Rock Sound
and the same of Metal Hammers.
Yes, I went through phases of buying lots of magazines for the free CDs.
Who doesn't?!

Anyone know a good place I can ditch them for some money [i.e. sell them, hopefully]?

x:]

[admin]

birdwhistle said:

I was actually perusing a Smash Hits from 1988 or somesuch the other day and... I won't say it was good, but it's incomparable to the current incarnation. The demographic has definitely plummeted downwards for the tweens, right? It's not just me imagining that? I mean, they used complex sentences! With conjunctions! And there wasn't a single instance of the word "fave".

Well, it would be incomparable to the 'current incarnation', considering Smash Hits has been defunct for some time now.

Sorry, but I'll not have anyone slagging Ver Hits. Exactly what music journalism should be; unpretentious, deliciously witty, and ahead of the pack in a way that NME could only ever dream of being.

Cheerio, Michael. xxx

[BoyHeroine]

Anyone remeber those smash hits songwords cards. I had millions of them. Whenever i sort through old boxes of stuff thousands come tumbling out of everywhere.

[blake]

I've never read a copy of Smash Hits in my life shamefully (never been though a "pop" phase), so the NME analogy was pretty much based on a perception of mainstream-centric coverage, teeny bop readers and glossy pictures than I imagined when thinking of said publication. It was probably the wrong analogy. Modern NME is more a collection of glorified press releases.

[admin]

blake said:

I've never read a copy of Smash Hits in my life shamefully (never been though a "pop" phase), so the NME analogy was pretty much based on a perception of mainstream-centric coverage, teeny bop readers and glossy pictures than I imagined when thinking of said publication. It was probably the wrong analogy. Modern NME is more a collection of glorified press releases.

There was a Smash Hits anthology released a couple of years ago that usually crops up in cut-price book shops for under a fiver these days. I'll show you mine, if you come to the Glasgow meet up (someone feel free to 'quote' that for out-of-context hilarity). There's a Morrissey interview which sticks him for the whingebag, rebel-without-a-clue that he was during much of The Smiths' heyday...

And there's an interview with Margaret Thatcher. Yes, way!

Cheerio, Michael. xxx