Plan B magazine

...on a blog! zoom in and read! (no ET as yet, but am sure he'll pop up presently).

weeheee! this'll keep me nicely amused for the rest of the workday if it remains as quiet as it is now..

Yes indeed. Simon Price's Bowie live review is great. I don't necessarily share this dude's taste, but he's a terrific writer, pretty much the only reason to read the Independent on Sunday!

John Wilde interviews the Pixies. Mmmm.

I hope he posts up ET and Taylor Parkes' immolation of the Cranberries and Neil Kulkarni's evisceration of Kula Shaker at some point.

I'm in the May archives dude!

outside of the site's time period, i admit, but I've just been reminded me of the Kulkarni vs Marilyn Manson MM interview which I'd love to read again too...

Hey, that's a fun Babes In Toyland interview. Been listening to Spanking Machine lately, it fucking rules. There's a band surely worth reappraisal.

:drool:

Shocked to see from looking at the advert for Glastonbury '89 that I saw Fela Kuti. Shamed to say I can't remember anything about it.

Articles from 89... what was I listening to, age 7?

Certainly wasn't reading the MM or the NME, for shame.

I remember reading that and jumping up and down. It really wasn't that long ago that the popular music papers would happily talk about Nietzsche and hyperreality. It's so upsetting reading today's NME by comparison.

Kulkarni - you were there when it all went down. What's your take on why the mainstream music press abandoned meaningful critique? I remember it all happening at once. One month there was good stuff in the Maker, the next there was nothing I related to. And all this distress bleeding out around the words.

I like the Marilyn Manson article. What an interesting yet infuriating man.

Fantastic Manson interview that. It's rare enough to see such an intelligent appraisal of his schtick, rarer still to see someone personally confront him with it.

Wow! Missed that Manson piece before. Magnificent! I agree with WH. Care to give us a quick Director's Commentary/Retrospective, Mr. Kulkarni?

Umm - all I recall (it was 11 years ago fer chrissakes!) was that he was probably the smartest rock 'musician' I ever met, and I twigged about 10 seconds into the interview that I could ask him anything. The trip was with the photographer (and all-round goddess) Lili Wilde, who's assortment of shoot-props (handcuffs, whips etc) raised eyebrows at customs. After I submitted the piece I was told to tone down the Nietzche-stuff (as I recall this was well into Mark Shitterland & cronies' plan to destroy-the-Maker) which I did (never keeping the original hohum). I recall it being well-received by the few staff left who gave a fuck. But WH - I really can't even begin to talk about what happened back then without foaming at the mouth and ranting for thousands of words. At the time I was just a kind of bemused observer but in retrospect what was happening at the Maker back then was nothing short of a cultural crime against pop that I'll never be able to forgive or forget. So like, don't get me started. All I'd say is that the moment ET was passed over for editor was the start of a crucial power-shift in British music that still hasn't let up. It was the moment that PR & the consensus of kids 'taste' took over. More anon (either here or to yr e-mail) when I can calm down enough.

Sorry xxx

It's just that I think we're at one of those times again. The way that blogging is producing consensus critique, there's such an increasing weight of what's not said - it feels like a black hole to me. Such a sucking sense of necessity.

Yeah, sorry for opening old wounds there. Looking back on those old magazines, plus reading such an explosive piece, does make you ponder these things in relation to the current spread of mainstream music papers on the shelves.

Fuck, I'm sorry if I came off kinda moody there. I just ain't got the time at this precise moment to get into it! But I will. At length. Later. Probably when drunk.

Absolutely. The supplanting of one orthodoxy with another and we're all still stood in the same place: at the wrong end of an oligopoly! That's why the rhetoric around digital media is bullshit, why In Rainbows is bullshit, why interactivity is bullshit.

Loved the MM piece. I can only imagine the feigned, anti-intellectual yawns that would receive if submitted now.

The stuff on that blog is great and completely shocking to me, having gone through my "buying NME / MM" every week phase in 99-01.

I dismissed the 'it's not like the glory years' rhetoric re: the weekly music papers as bitter whingeing from a generation who could feel their grip slipping, but even relatively recently MM/NME was putting out incredible writing. How did it change so quickly?

I wish I had the time to read all this stuff! My parents' (otherwise unused) garage has every MM/NME from approx 1992-2000, when I left for uni... I bet they're all rotten now. I remember having many of these front covers on my bedroom ceiling, so now I'm experiencing frightening nostalgia for the Boo Radleys and the Manics.

The only old mags that remain with me are two copies of Melody Maker from summer 94. I'll have to dig them out and read them again. Something I recall vividly from those editions is ET's militant anti-Billy Corgan Lollapalooza diaries. So much fun!

My proudest moment may still remain getting a pasting from Mr Agreeable.

THOROUGHLY enjoyed that manson piece. Music journalism has got the potential to be so much. There is a role for all types of journalism, but articles like that emphasize the relative pointlessness of an adjective-filled piece of flowery prose in praise of mediocre musicians.

At its best kids read about their favourite band and a whole world of philosophy and politics opens up to them.

Brilliant fun looking at this reminder of how the weeklies used to be a great read. I used to get them every week between 96 - 99, picked up loads of early 90s ones during that time in 2nd hand shops etc.

NME is like Heat Magazine ow. Perhaps it's what they had to do to keep selling. I remember when Melody Maker suddenly tried ot go Nu Metal about 2000 (free copies used ot be sent to the student newspaper I worke don), It was totally bemusing, but agian maybe that's wheer the only sales were.

Yes, I have been to the Good Mixer - several times!!

D.

My ex-bf and old friend Stew has an entire roomful of our old MMs and NME's from the mid-80's onwards, plus Vox's, Selects, Lime Lizards, and a ton of fanzines. It would have killed him to split the collection when we stopped living together so he remains custodian of them. He's a far better archivist than I am anyway.

They're really good for research purposes though. Release date/tour date + phone call to Stew = archive gold!

Someone was looking for this? (Read to halfway down...)

http://www.wsc.co.uk/component/option,com_fireboard/Itemid,35/func,view/id,58466/catid,29/

Incidentally, if anyone has a copy of the interview Simon Reynolds did with me for Melody Maker (before I joined)...I would love to see that again. I remember being quite shocked that he seemed to have a very strong opinion on the way the interview should go before we'd even started speaking.

Ah, the Cranberries review.

8) Dolores O’Riordan. Her voice. The way she turned what was a dazzling, intoxicating gift into an atonal corncrake skree by infusing it with her personality.



To quote Bania in Seinfeld: "That's gold Jerry, GOLD!"

Yeah, I have it. I'll phone Stew and get him to scan it. It may be a bit cat-damaged - they love to sleep on stacks of old MM's.

I noticed that, further down in the forum post, Taylor claimed the review had been hacked out down the Stamford over a couple of beers...well, he would say that, wouldn't he? But yeah, he's right. It wasn't exactly a well-considered job. I believe Jonesy might've been away that week, leaving me in charge, so...in it went!

(Ah yes! I remember. It was a Melody Maker 50-year anniversary special and I hadn't been asked to write a single article. Maybe me and Allan had had a brief falling-out or something. So I thought, "Fuck 'em" and got together with Taylor to write the Cranberries review and completely spoil the mood of geniality. I believe a couple of my singles reviews same issue were also gratuitously nasty. I didn't like being ignored back then.)

Thanks WH. Would be much appreciated if you could. Cat damaged is just fine round these parts.

I would love to re-read the article that opened my mind to the genius of ET and stopped me hating him!

An article where he slept the night on the streets of London with a pop star(?!?!) raising awareness of / money for homelessness.

1988-89?

It was Billy Bragg, we talked an awful lot about masturbation and an inset pic of me and Billy even ended up on the cover...which is pretty damn rare for a journo, even over at old school Melody Maker. I think it took place around 1990? Might even been as late as '92. The record company later informed me they never expected me to take them at their word and stay the whole night...

The real star of the night, however, was photographer Stephen Sweet - who came down at the 11th hour in answer to my call, straight from a GWAR concert where he'd been splattered all over in fake blood - and who ended up camping the night out in a genuine article cardboard box, no blankets...

"Safe sex doesn't mean no sex, it just means [insert crowd bellow of 'MUTUAL MASTURBATION!!!']"

Was that the night A Lyric Was Born, ET?

There's a Simon Reynolds article where he reviews Brian Eno's 1995 diary - he notes that the closest thing to bitchiness that Eno writes is about The Cranberries, whose album he was producing:

I might have guessed it was billy bragg.

Superb article!

Yeah I've got that - it was with Billy Bragg. It might take me a while to find it again but I'll put that up in the next week or so.

Wot, no Sounds?

Hi - Sorry all, but I'm very sure I haven't got this feature anywhere, as I don't remember ever reading it (I think all the Makers I've got date from after ET joined - some '87/'88, then 90's onwards). I will double check when I'm next visiting my parents' house though (incidentally, I've been asked by them recently to get all those old magazines etc out of my old room and into my flat sometime asap, so this sort of research should soon be a lot easier).
Anyway, Hi all. I've not posted here before, and have only visited occasionally in the past, but I saw this thread (after skimming through the mag in WHSmiths today) and thought I might as well register & reply. If I can help with old music press scans for anyone, it's no problem: I'll try and indicate exactly what stuff I've got piled-up in various houses sometime...