Who do the British seemingly hate Q Magazine?

also - who the flippin 'eck is Johnny Borrell?

The git out of Razorlight, prone to pronouncing his own genius at every given opportunity.

Yo, I don't fit into any of those categories and I read Q.

Although I am vaguely thinking of giving it up in light of the fact that they're going to dump their free CDs and their movie, DVD and game reviews. Of course, if the dumping of the above reviews means longer write-ups per CD, then I might stay.

Another thing is - why the heck do they kiss ass to Johnny Borrell all the ****ing time? His band's 'music' isn't even that good. I bought the first CD, and it was mostly crap, with only one half-decent song. I don't want to even touch CD#2 with a 10-foot pole, thank you very much. And yet they're claiming JB to be the greatest genius of the C21, or something like that. WHYYY?!

http://www.q4music.com/nav?page=q4music.about.currentissue

wonder which one my outer sticks newsagent will have stocked.

odds on for the britney spears cover ? doubtful.

while the choice of folks is obvious on the whole (no hip hop??), the dido one is rather baffling.

should mojo be getting concerned over this new direction i wonder, a direct assualt on the £50 man, or whatever tag they give the poor bugger these days.

though i do like the revised focus back onto music - i may just give it one last go (the dreadful naked courtney love issue was the previous last straw for me)

Loaded mag did this, years ago. Tons of alternate covers, all were spectacularly good.

After that, they'd jumped the shark. But what a shark!

apparently the dido one was a last minute change. it was going to be pj harvey - except she answered the question "what does q mean to you now?" with "er, not much, i don't really consider it a music magazine any more" and was immediately pulled.

The London Review of Books doesn't just review books, though - it also carries long, stand-alone articles about politics, current affairs etc. I like the idea of the London Review of Music, I must say.

I've often thought about this. The LRB did review a Herbert CD though!

"presumably an LRM would be done for love not profit. therefore I'M OUT"

I'm not sure I would seek assistance from the ex-bassist of Rhythm System, however.

But, luckily, that is not the case. As evident on Q covers and elsewhere.

Btw. Q does write about hip-hop. All major hip-hop releases are reviewed and the biggest names are also featured in articles. Plus there are usually a couple of hip-hop albums in their year-end list, which is a fitting number considering hip-hop is just one out of hundreds of music genres.

But, luckily, that is not the case.

It has also managed to start its own magazines, writing exclusively about hip-hop, and I guess hip-hop-fans are more likely to read those.

Besides, even though hip-hop may seem dominant in the singles list doesn't mean it is dominant within the entire population. Among kids, maybe (although not as dominant as it was a few years ago), but not among most people out of all ages.

I gave it a flick through at a petrol station. Umm, fine but that's the relaunch version?

It does cover all kinds of popular music. Including hip-hop/R&B/techno/metal, just not to the same extent that more specialized genre magazines too.

I promise not to assume knowledge or ask the obvious question.

I appear therefore to be Q's perfect target demographic. Unfortunately, I haven't bought it since 1996.

totally wrong ! have you seen this dreadful magazine this decade ?

Q is now aimed at casual 20somethings as it downshifted demographics as mojo now operates in the 30s/ 40s market. Q is aimed at mainstreamers who listen to virgin / radio 1 etc

q magazine
http://www.emapadvertising.com/interactive/portfolio.asp?ID=12
Audience profile:

18-34 year olds

I loved this mag and bout every issue from 1989 to 2002. I really thought it was funny as a motherfucker, and printed stuff like a story on the narcorrido subset of tejano music, among hundreds of other cool shit. I often thought "man, I'd love to work for an American version of Q."

then Dennis Publishing comes along with an American version, called Blender, run by a Q alum (who incidentally, was editor of Q for almost as short a time as he was for Spin earlier this year). I got a job with Blender about a year after it launched.

the englishman referenced above cited those rules often— these amounted to the correct way to review music, and the fact that American pubs did not adhere to those rules was why American music pubs (and implicitly Americans) were, to use his terminology, "shit."

Of course, those rules were often ignored in his writing and in that of his english cronies, whom he invariably would let get away with bloody ax murder. In retrospect, I don't see that those rules affected the reviews that I read in Q.

As my hatred for this man intensified, I was no longer able to enjoy Q. But I gotta say that I think that for a long time, they've been stuck in Oasis/Blur/ this year's guitar band fronted by a pouty dude k-hole. perhaps its because 1995/Cool Britannia was the last time English people could feel as if they were on the vanguard of culture that the world was intrigued by. You could that Spice Girls were like that, but they, like a lot of subsequent phenoms, are not exactly the kinda stuff that I think Q feels they can fully endorse.

they do get very excited by hip-hop customized for their own culture, cf the Streets, Lady Sov and so on. but I can tell you as someone who has edited copy from a lot of Q contributors, those guys DO NOT GET, or are at least uncomfortable, with American hip-hop. those guys get guitar bands, dance msuic and goofy pop music that is part of their heritage.

is this defensive nativistism? I don't know.

what I said is that when they try, it seems that english writers (again, this is both on based on raw copy and the finished product) don't seem to be able to adequately address hip-hop. many Americans wouldn't be able to address chanson or gamelan, but there isn't a huge effort to do so anyway.

I'm curious: are you from the UK or US? you express yourself in a way that is very hard for me to place.

(uh huh uh huh)

-- Geir Hongro (geirhon...), March 18th, 2005.