Plan B Magazine...

I'm gonna get it.

And Gravy Train!!!! And Ramellzee. I think I shall enjoy this

The whole thing looks fucking stunning.

Thee was a good SunO))) interview in terrorizer a few years ago.

Plan B has a new issue coming out in mid-September. It will quite possibly feature - among many other fine names - Kelis, The 5678s, Detroit Cobras, Shystie, Comets On Fire, Jack Rose, Marine Girls, Nick Cave, M Ward, Bill Callahan, Ian Svenonius, Dizzee Rascal, The Residents, The Bug, the Trachtenburgs, a spread on fashion, graffiti hip-hop, Marc Baines on comics, caustic US comedian David Cross, GbV, Numbers, Red Krayola, The Faint, Le Tigre, lego bricks, Piney Gir, Susanna And The Magical Orchestra, Joanne Newsom, Devandra Banhart, Har Mar Superstar, Neil Kulkarni on himself, David McNamee on evidence, Miss AMP on computer games, Fiery Furnaces, Jon Spencer, The Thermals, Gravenhurst, Trencher, VHF, LCD Soundsystem, David Thomas, Don Letts, Planet Mu, Est'elle. Doubtless, that list will change and mutate as time passes, but....brrrr. It's exciting.

It looks like I designed it, too.

Mojo (Not as fuddy duddy these days as you'd imagine)
The Wire (Never read most of it, but makes you feel swanky walking around with it)
Kings (On the basis of issue two this has great potential, if only beacause they gave the great Devin The Dude a four page interview)
DJ (For Neil Kulkarni's crackpot reviews page)

Not saying it is beautifully designed, but it is better than many. Actually, on raising the question you remind me of one article I read in it which I couldn't follow because the text was all positioned counter-intuitively.

So - Plan B. it is on nice paper.

A bit of a generalisation surely? Granted, some of it's like that, but at least they're encouraging different approaches to music writing. And that produces some killer stuff that wouldn't be printed elsewhere. There's a Neil Kulkarni rant in there about pop and rock that cuts through all the interminable rockism/popism debates in one fell swoop. He argues that the ephemerality of pop is exactly what makes it immortal, while rock's striving for immortality often renders it obsolete. But he also sticks up for extreme and avant garde music. The villains are those in the middle ground he says, using that wonderful adjective "cunting" twice in one paragraph (in reference to Robbie Williams and U2) The guy is a champ.
Plenty of other great stuff in there - Shane Moritz on Crooked Rain, JD Beauvallet on French rock, Alistair Fitchett on Magnetic Fields, not to mention all the gorgeous photos and illustrations. Gotta shamelessly big up my friend Mark's Park Attack double exposure. One of these happy accidents, it looks cool.

I also have to question whoever said, "it doesn't have anything I didn't know about before". Well, lucky you. Like many mags, they cover established acts (albeit far more obscure and interesting ones that yer average mag), but they feature more new bands than anything else out there, Loose Lips excepted.

Devin The Dude is a genius - all magazines should be forced to cover him. By law.

Kate - because we are INSATIABLE and will drink everybody's everything

Stew - Brennifer are Plan B Mag's secret backers!!!

thats not really salient is it

but still cover other music

music that isnt mainstream enough to get covered by kerrang but doesnt limit itself to extreme metal like Terrorizer and Zero Tolerance.

Kinda like Kerrang in about 1993/94 when it was really open minded with what it covered(ie some more indie/alternative acts) but still covered extreme metal bands too

yeah that'll fly off the newstands

cuz i thought plan b was really good at covering this stuff.

yeah that'll fly off the newstands

― mastotmdom (Whiney G. Weingarten),

but lots of ilxors would read it in the shop!

What, coz Terroriser didn't already poach half the Plan B staff?

This is... this is just... weird. I didn't realise how much of my life had been so interthreaded with that magazine and its staff until faced with the prospect of its actually being gone.

Very surprised and sad to hear of Plan B's passing. It will be missed here, nothing else covers quite that niche.

I feel really bad about this. Excluding HHC, who's print version also died recently, this magazine has pretty much been the main force in turning me onto great music and great music writing. Ok it was very hit and miss but I was always excited to read it and although I've been pretty skint in the past year and a half, bought many a record just because of a recommendation.

Really sad news. It will be greatly missed. The staff deserve massive respect for their heroic hard work and righteousness. They might have been able to keep it going, but this would have meant cutting staff, pages, print quality etc. Nobody wants to see something as special as Plan B fall into decline like Melody Maker, so they made the right decision, sad as it is.
Plan B and CTLC been a big part of my life over the past few years, introducing me not only to all kinds of amazing music and art, but also to some wonderful people. I'm also really proud to have contributed, albeit in a minor way, to recent issues.
I'm sure this won't be the last we hear of its staff, however, and I keenly anticipate future writings and projects from them.

its fair to say that when i first heard this news a few weeks back it broke my heart. now its out in the open, still pretty heartbroken. here's hoping the energies behind it find new outlets somewhere and somehow, that this ending can become a series of new beginnings too. i've freelanced for Plan B since day 1, and worked in the office for a few months last summer, and every single person working on that magazine is a glorious and talented MF...

What a bummer to read about this! I bought nearly all of the issues, it was the last regular music monthly I actually read at all. Always worth reading, even when the music they covered wasn't to my taste.

Considering that a pretty big chunk of my social life just would not exist without people who met on that magazine, I should really have bought it more often. As it was I never really had much use for it but I'm sad it's gone.

Plan B, freely downloadable. Every issue.

When I was going through my 2006 receipts I realized I bought every issue at newsstand price that year.

ah, awesome. not of enormous use to me since I'

lost control of my apostrophes

shit, what happened there? what I meant to say was:

ah, awesome. not of enormous use to me since I'm only missing four or five issues (I'm determined to find some way to own them eventually), but there's an awful lot of writing throughout these that deserves to be available.

very insensitive of you to make a joke of my apparent mid-post death, Ned.

Death be not proud. Because I'm not.

I got Vuze to download the torrent and it's not working for me at all. (I'm on a Mac.) Does anyone have any advice they could offer?

I use a program called utorrent that works really well. I would try that one instead.

Just tried d/l'ing that and it doesn't do anything either.

I'm on a Mac and Utorrent is for PCs.

Good Mac client:

http://www.transmissionbt.com/

I can't use that version of Transmission with Mac OS X.

I guess I won't be getting this at all. Bummer.

Dude, Matos, if you don't get the torrent running, I'd be into sending this to you piecemeal in some way.

Merdeyeux, I assume most clients will do this, but BitComet lets you choose which issues you want to download (not that I'm actually getting anywhere with it atm, seemingly no seeds about).

I got Vuze to download the torrent and it's not working for me at all. (I'm on a Mac.) Does anyone have any advice they could offer?

I'm on a Mac and I use Vuze. I haven't tried this yet, will do so when I get home, but what exact problem are you having?

wait plan b folded?

Yeah, right down the middle where the staples were.

How big's the download?

673MB

Yeah, right down the middle where the staples were.

it were perfect bound, actually

my joke is broke :(

he, some of my early writing in these. i have most of them in a cupboard somewhere.

Matos I'm using Vuze and not having any problem. I downloaded Vuze, installed it, and downloaded the torrent to my desktop, double-clicked it and voila it started doing it's thing immediately.

Transmission on a Mac here, just downloaded the whole thing in a matter of minutes, currently seeding to all and sundry.

Matos, what version of Mac OS X are you using? Though I'm not sure that would make a difference - I think blocked ports is the more likely culprit.

Ned's first reply here reminds me, is Loose Lips Sink Ships decisively dead? No new edition for four years now, as far as I can tell...

Stevie Chick to thread!

Thank you Plan B! Looking forward to this enormously but also sadly as it will hammer home just how out of touch I've felt since Plan B folded (plus I'm expecting to read a whole lot about bands I didn't pick up on at the time and only later went "why did nobody tell me?" etc)

ahem. expect some action this year. not sure what form it'll take yet, but rest assured steve and i intend to wreak a little havoc before 2010 is out...

eeexcellent.

and very much thanks for your interest, merdeyeux!

Now about this user name.

New pie recipe for discerning cannibals.

Oh dear.

did plan b cover rap beyond UK stuff with any regularity at all?

i did pieces on quasimoto and stones throw for them, and i'm sure i remember other pieces by other writers too...

thx