Has The NME Got Good?

lol metal is shit

I thought metal had lots of gay or bisexual fans. I mean "metal" as opposed to "I just like to rock the fuck out" dinosaur types. Go to a metal show and you see leather and tattoos and piercings, not the kind of people to judge someone else's lifestyle.

Mass market "indie" has, IME, loads of straight people who just don't feel "comfortable" with homosexuality, not that they are prejudiced or anything because that would be illiberal and bad.

Metal has a lot of gay and bisexual fans. Not as much as like, industrial, but... well, I know a lot of metal dudes who like them some cock.

Go to a metal show and you see leather and tattoos and piercings, not the kind of people to judge someone else's lifestyle.

haven't really found that the first thing is that likely to preclude the second thing, tbh, but maybe my experience isn't the norm

In the 90s Kerrang covered a lot of alt-rock and they covered white stripes and the hives etc too in the 00s. So Geir, you're wrong.

Grunge = metal. I am speaking of proper indie, you know, Britpop!

I mean, stuff that doesn't "rock" at all in any possible way.

geir has never heard of indie rock?

Well, yep, indie rock exists. But if seems so important for some of you to open indie pop fans' ears to hip-hop and metal, why wouldn't it be equally important to open hip-hop-fans and metal-fans to highly melodic classic and smooth POP?

My point here. At least NME (although Q are probably better at it) review a lot of metal and hip-hop. Yes, maybe just the biggest acts, but at least they review them.

How many reviews of Crowded House or Blur were there in Kerrang or Source or Mixmag?

Oh, and NME review mainstream chart pop too. Do Kerrang review mainstream chart pop (and I am not speaking of typical albums acts like AC/DC or Iron Maiden here=?

Kerrang in the 80s covered U2, Prince, Kate Bush, Bryan Adams, Michael Bolton. + a whole bunch of crappy glam pop-metal acts. It's always covered pop metal bands.

Anyway Geir, NME, Q are general music magazines, they are supposed to cover all kinds of music. Mixmag, Source,Kerrang are specialist magazines.

Pop metal=metal.

But sure, Kerrang is probably a bit more openminded than specialist mags for harder metal genres, whose fans don't even consider Iron Maiden or Guns'n'Roses to be hard rock, but rather just "rock".

Not to mention magazines like The Source or Mixmag, who would never even dream of covering something that doesn't contain rap/does not work on the dancefloors of the clubs.

NME and Q cover the biggest names from metal, hard rock, hip-hop and techno/dance. Surely, it is probably a waste of space, just like it would be if Mixmag had done a powerpop special. But at least they do, and then I think it's a bit unfair to claim that NME and Q need to be more openminded when actually they are more openminded towards hip-hop, dance and metal than hip-hop, dance or metal mags will ever be towards indie rock/indie pop.

NME and Q's readers are into indie and various kinds of (non metal) "rock". And that is really what they want to read about too.

And if you are speaking of the fans I think they are on an equal level.

Rock/pop fans are not openminded towards anything else than rock and perhaps classic pop
Hip-hip fans are not openminded towards anything else than hip-hop and perhaps R&B
Dance fans are not openminded towards anything else than dance and maybe a bit of R&B or hip-hop as long as they can dance to it
Metal fans are not openminded towards anything else than metal and maybe some of the hardest non-metal rock.

Geir, I know ilx metal fans aren't atypical metal fans, but even outside of ilx i know loads who like many forms of dance music but especially IDM. Neurosis fans especially tend to be Aphex Twin fans. Many love hip hop. Many love indie rock esp 80s & 90s stuff. On metal boards ive discussed pfunk (surprise surprise) ,krautrock,classic pop & rock of the kind you love, avant garde,prog rock, the list is endless.
Possibly if you are talking about the fans of the most mainstream acts in those genres you might be right, but then, a lot of people do like basically anything that gets in the charts, whether its indie pop, pop rap, pop dance, pop rnb,popmetal etc.

Now, ILX posters are mostly openminded towards anything except for traditionally structure melodic songs written and performed by white guys with guitars after 1990.

Well, yep, indie rock exists. But if seems so important for some of you to open indie pop fans' ears to hip-hop and metal, why wouldn't it be equally important to open hip-hop-fans and metal-fans to highly melodic classic and smooth POP?

― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Wednesday, January 5, 2011 7:18 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

For the record, some of my favorite bands include Electric Wizard, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath AND The New Pornographers, Mates of State, Yo La Tengo, and The Eels... so its quite possible to be a fan of both metal and indie pop.

Also, I know a few dudes who listen to only hip-hop, r&b, and stoner rock/metal.

So, this dichotomy of pop vs. metal, I believe, is a false one.

And I love a lot of indie pop too. Plus my favourite album ever is Forever Changes. A lot of the 60s pop geir likes, I do too.

Does Geir like Forever Changes?

Algerian Goalkeeper: I agree with a lot of what you're saying but generally speaking NME is an indie magazine not a general magazine and has been since I've been reading it. (i.e. Since the early 80s.)

How many reviews of Crowded House were there in Kerrang or Source or Mixmag?

― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Thursday, 6 January 2011 02:20 (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Same number as in NME over the past 10.

Algerian Goalkeeper: I agree with a lot of what you're saying but generally speaking NME is an indie magazine not a general magazine and has been since I've been reading it. (i.e. Since the early 80s.)

Yeah but the thing is that the NME pretends to be a generalist music magazine. Kerrang or Mixmag or Classic Rock magazine don't.

I'm not sure that it does really but as I'm not going to start arguing devil's advocate for NME, I'll leave this here.

Yeah but the thing is that the NME pretends to be a generalist music magazine

only in the sense that pitchfork does. this is what's long irked me, it's trying to have your cake and eat it - they lay claim to generalism, but as soon as anyone criticises either for not actually being very generalist at all, it's all "we're an indie publication! we have to cater to our readers!"

I don't think that the NME has ever explicitly laid claim to being either "indie" or "generalist". It's never hemmed itself in with definitions, has it?

Pitchfork is about as generalist as a generalist music magazine can get btw. Stylus and Plan B were maybe better but rip.

When I used to read it btw the Source used to cover indie. It was at the rise of lol pharrell is wearing skinny jeans and holding a skateboard tho.

well yeah that's the having cake/eating it thing isn't it?

"we are ~beyond categorisation~ but it just happens that 90% of what we cover is indie"

xp

i mean no one ever explicitly states that generalism is their raison d'être - it's more implied through, yes, not specifically categorising oneself

The NME certainly laid claim to generalism in the 90s, "we cover what we consider to be good regardless of genre" was its line. And while they did cover most things they were still heavily weighted towards indie.

The NME exists to make money, so it's whatever kind of publications the editors think will do that.

Editors/owners, I mean.

Reinvention as a softcore porn and gadgets weekly coming up in 2 weeks then

Don't be stupid. No one pays for porn any more.

haha ot but I love how geir's example of extreme stereo "separatation" is Ocean Colour Scene. never change, man

Geir discovers audiophilia is sure to be a goldmine in the future.

When I started reading NME in the very early 90s they insisted they were a pop magazine (and in one of those bands review songs things Thom Yorke claimed Radiohead were a pop band).
They definitely liked to give the impression that they were a general music magazine not just indie.

Did NME cover a lot of hip-hop in the late 80s?

Rap makes the front cover, 1988

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3375/3336337928_67f8263f29.jpg

I think the Beasties made the cover a couple of times in the 80s, maybe Public Enemy (I remember them on cover of Melody Maker, not sure about NME). Then not much else until Wu-Tang about 5 years later.

They always had a couple of non indie record reviews and the occasional feature but it was never really a as broad a publication as it professed to be imo (I read MM and NME from around 84-90).

NME May 30 1981.

http://hiphop.sh/files/rundmc_nme86%20cover.jpg

'Hip-hop' covers, 85-90 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NME_covers. Definitely was a change in coverage around 89/90 and by 92 it was pretty much entirely indie.

* 09/03/85 Run-D.M.C.
* 15/03/86 Mantronix
* 19/07/86 Run-D.M.C.
* 13/09/86 The Yo Boys (article about hip hop by Paolo Hewitt)
* 27/09/86 Trouble Funk
* 17/01/87 Beastie Boys
* 04/04/87 Salt-n-Pepa
* 09/05/87 Def Jam
* 27/06/87 Trouble Funk
* 10/10/87 Chuck D and Eric B
* 23/01/88 Sweet Tee
* 07/05/88 Derek B
* 08/10/88 Public Enemy
* 24/06/89 Tone Loc
* 21/10/89 De La Soul
* 03/11/90 Public Enemy

Mid-80s there was plenty of non-indie, because it had a big soul boy contingent - Cosgrove, Simon Witter, Danny Kelly, Don Watson (I think) - who also wanted to get plenty of hip-hop in. There wasn't all that much hip-hop in the actual mag, but there wasn't all that much hip-hop around and accessible in the UK in those days. They went big on acid house, with writers like Jack Barron and Helen Mead, but once that phase passed, the indie supremacy - which had been coming through from the rise of the Smiths, and expanded with C86 - was all but complete.

Certainly, as an indie teenager reading NME in the mid-80s, I used to get up with issues where there were no features, or just small ones, on indie guitar bands (even if they dominated the reviews). Those issues weren't infrequent.

"get fed up" not "get up"

There was also a notable jazz/avant clique at the time (Richard Cook/Biba Kopf/Don Watson/Mr Sinker late of this parish) who mostly decamped to the Wire later, this was ditched even faster than the coverage of hip-hop/r&b.

Mind you, UK indie was largely nonexistant in the late 80s/early 90s. OK, so it existed, but it was very much underground and would only occasionally produce a chart hit. The indie charts, by the late 80s, were dominated by the likes of Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, who were both on the independent PWL label.

Mind you, UK indie was largely nonexistant in the late 80s/early 90s.

lol

Mind you, funk was largely nonexistant in the late 60s/early 70s

Pitchfork is about as generalist as a generalist music magazine can get btw

Pardon me while I laugh till I spit up a lung.