BS: NME or Melody Maker

Subject: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: GUEST,Penguin Egg
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 06:56 AM

I didn't watch the programme about the NME last night - I don't have BBC4-, but it did get me thinking to when I was a teenager in the 70s and I use to buy a music paper every week to keep me informed about what was going on in the world of music. I never liked the NME, which I thought was fully of posers - Cokehead Kent, Pretentious Morley, Julie Bitchkill, Tony Pratsons, etc. I much prefered the Melody Maker, which covered Jazz and folk week in and week out and which was to whet my appertite for both forms of music. I have great affection for Richard Williams, Colin Irwin, and Karl Dallas who wrote regularly in the Melody Maker and who compelled me to check out a lot of music - Bob Davenport, Roland Kirk, Gil Evans, Rico - that I might never have come across.

I am curious to know what other Mudcatters in the UK read.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: GUEST, Hamish
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 07:00 AM

Ah. Melody Maker at first, before graduating (if that's the right word. Maybe "degenerating" would be better) to NME.

I met Chris Welch once who turned out to be a realy nice bloke, not at all as I'd expected from the put-downs he could come out with in reviews.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: mooman
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 07:06 AM

I was a MM reader. Never cared for NME for the reasons you mentioned.

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: Micca
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 07:40 AM

MM of course, it had really good Folk club listings throughout the late 80's and early 70's NME was for the Pop Poseurs and as someone once so pithily put it, " People who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read"

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: Leadfingers
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 07:43 AM

MM had it all for me - Used to get myself in the Folk Listings on a regular basis , and got a few good (and BAD) jobs from the adverts !!

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: Torctgyd
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 07:43 AM

NME for me (at least for about 3 years in the late 70's as MM was full of stuff about music I didn't like. After that I stopped reading both of them as they were both became crap.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 08:00 AM

Same here - I LOVED Melody Maker. The sad thing was - it started taking its tempo from NME in the 70's.

During the 60's - guys like Max Jones, the photos of Valery Wilmer, the witty Chris welch, graham Jones, the folk pages, the reviews of the scene - just made it an absolute delight.

Punk fucked everything. The enthusiastic defence of whatever sub literate, sub musical crap the record companies were slinging at us this week. the sheer corrupt nature of the music business became so transparent within a short time that nobody with an IQ above shite could bear to read it any more.

Saddest of all was the letters page -once full of wit and good hummour, became something like - how can your reviewer say the Dogshit Brothers aren't relevant and cutting edge, next you'll be telling us something as old and dated as the Crap Twins are the arbiters of fashion.

before long the music press was just picture books for the pre pubertal classes - the only ones they could sell the crap music to.

the demise of the art form that Britain had led the world in for a while was complete.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 08:20 AM

In the '60s I was a MM man: covered more "trad" jazz (the strapline used to be "For the Best in Jazz" - when they dropped that I dropped them) my friends who preferred modern jazz & pop preferred NME.
Max Jones and his beret! Yeah!

RtS

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 08:25 AM

I read 'Sounds' Burchill and Parsons in the NME only ever seemed to write about themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 10:40 AM

MM was the purchase of choice of older brother, so it was always in the house. I bought Sounds or NME, or both on a flush week.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 10:53 AM

weelittledrummer, I love your "letter to the editor"! Well done.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 11:10 AM

Punk fucked everything.

I take it you didn't buy 'Sniffing Glue' then?

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: Hamish
Date: 01 Jul 05 - 02:46 PM

Ah, yes. Punk did that. I used to read about all these Kursal Fliers and Racing Cars and Kokomo in MM & NME (and Sounds - I'd forgotten that one) and, and...

...and then I moved from Aberdeen to London - within a few hundred yards of The Nashville, and walking distance of The Greyhound, The Red Bull, The Golden Lion, all of whom would have decent bands seven nights a week. Just as punk was starting to wreck it all. Did see some great bands tho' for the first six months or a year or so.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: GUEST,Fullerton
Date: 02 Jul 05 - 03:19 AM

And dont forget Disc.

In facto

The Lone Groover!

groove alors!

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: Matt R
Date: 02 Jul 05 - 02:07 PM

NME

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: woodsie
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 09:53 AM

In the sixties early seventies Melody Maker was the one - NME was full of Hermans Hermits and Val Doonican poppish shit. MM had articles on Miles davis, Floyd, Cream etc also MM had all the ads for The marquee, Speakeasy, Roundhouse and all the college gigs. NME was revamped did take over however by about 1975.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: woodsie
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 09:54 AM

PS Why is this thread in the BS section? wake up mudcat mafia, we are talking about MUSIC papers.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: GUEST,Ghettoblaster
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 06:21 PM

I'll go with Woodsie and WLD on this. However, I did live in London near the Greyhound for a while in the very early 70s, and only ever found the bands there pretty crap. Maybe I went on the wrong nights. The price of beer was outrageous, too. A far cry fron university where I could see the Who or Captain Beefheart for a couple of quid.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 05 Jul 05 - 04:25 AM

when i say punk f---ed everything.

i wasn't referring to the music. everybody who heard the Sex pistols knew they were listening to pretty solid musicianship - those people who could hear past the propaganda expectations of rubbish.

it was another great flowering of what is probably the nearest thing England has to folk music. People singing about their lives. There were bands like The Redskins, The Vibrators, TRB even, X Ray Spex - and Crass meant a lot to a lot of people.

However Punk brought a new sort of entrepreneurial reptile to the music business. those magazine columnists whose work you had loved by that time for ten years or so( and you knew all their limitations and strengths) Bob Dawbarn , Allan Jones, Max Jones, Colin Irwin, karl Dallas....they all almost totally disappeared and were replaced by reviewers whose favour was definitely up for sale, nothing to say about the music, everything about the style, the dress, physical appearance... and boy did they fuck up some careers in music.

The worst sin of all was to have a really bloody good record out that you could perform to an adoring audience none of whom were trying to look as though they had been dressed by Vivienne westwood.

The music they championed always looked good and sounded crap. the charts HAD to be fixed. really heart breaking was your musician friends stories of how their "break" that they had worked years for, had been screwed up by the whole corrupt stinking business. Record shops told they couldn't have ONE copy of their record unless the shop agreed to take 10 or 25 of the latest pile of pooh.

It was in 83 I had my one hit in Germany. the German record company said , oh England - forget it, the record business there is just for gangsters - you'd never get paid from an English company anyway.
Check out the movie Breaking Glass - captures the period very well and the personalities very well indeed. even has oscar winner Jim broadbent in a walk on part

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: Gedpipes
Date: 05 Jul 05 - 11:22 AM

Always preferred Cycling Weekly meself. The Loons were cheepa.
Bluse skies

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 05 Jul 05 - 12:15 PM

Both

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: GUEST,Mapples
Date: 05 Jul 05 - 12:42 PM

MM was my choice (by far). MM an ace publication.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: alanabit
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 05:39 AM

I was very much an NME man. I liked the folk stuff in the MM, but it was the sheer energy of the writing and editing of the NME which made it entertaining for me. It did not take itself too seriously either, which I liked. There were serious writers in there too, like Bob Welch, Charles Shaar Murray and Mick Farren, to name a few. The interviews were more memorable and they were far ruder to the establishment (including the pop establishment).
It is also worth noting that most of the writers there went on to greater things. There was a lot of silliness and there were a lot of irritating traits to it. Having said that, I still have the feeling that the writers were basically honest. I don't think they had much more affection for the music business than WLD.
It was a phase of my life which I enjoyed.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: alanabit
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 05:42 AM

The quote Micca gave on 30/6/05, was, I believe, from Frank Zappa.

Subject: RE: BS: NME or Melody Maker
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 06:08 AM

Which was the one that had song lyrics on the inside back cover? They would come in lurid shades of orange, green, yellow and blue... there may even have been a pink one...?

That was the one my brother got and the only one I had access to.... didn't know such things as NME existed until I was 14... but then I was in Dorset with parents who thought Flannigan and Allen were cool, Deep Purple was a paint shade and Lynnyrd Skynnyrd was the bloke who worked behind the meat counter in Tesco's.

LTS