THE WORST NME COVER OF ALL TIME

What makes them 'unholy'? Do they sing about satan?

haha that Neil Kulkarni review of Lily Allen is magnificent me-bait :D I think I might have to listen to all the music he angrily links to

wah-they've-run-me-out-of-the-industry

This is the worst thing about these screeds really, like I have sympathy for him to an extent, but at the same time not that much because this is something that every generation of young music journalists have done, including/especially his own.

"This is a significant moment"
HARRY

Well, I've read it all and I agree with it. I don't think it comes off as particularly bitter about his own career, but I speak as a fellow ex-private-school pupil who (bitterly) rejects the bland & baseless elitism of accepted cultural hierarchies, so perhaps I'm overly disposed in its favour to begin with.

Plus, this Bolzer EP is fucken immense :D

it is!

can't really hate on john cooper clarke getting on the cover of a mag in 2014

JCC does voiceovers for oven chip ads in 2014.

Yeah there's less of that in the (completely OTM) Lily Allen piece and he used to be a great writer but like the much more clownish Everett True it's an approach to writing that becomes less and less edifying as the writer gets older. Also as with all these guys the prose just isn't anywhere near as exciting as the writer seems to think.

Don't get me wrong I'd take Kulkarni over any modern day IPC hacks any day of the week but this is a fight that would be better left to some actual young people, except none of them give a shit about the NME or most of the music it covers.

Timely reminder that more people now buy Horse & Hound every week than the NME.

http://nme.assets.ipccdn.co.uk/images/NMECoverKurt_CMA3_010414.jpg

It's like they are now pandering to this thread as it's the last remaining evidence of interest

oh ffs

"Kurt the musical is very likely to happen..."

isnt that a drawing of Macaulay Culkin?

The cost of stock Cobain photos must have gone through the roof this year.

♩_♩

Forget the drugs and the shotgun
Forget the drugs and the shotgun
Forget the drugs and the shotgun
Forget the drugs and the shotgun
Forget the drugs and the shotgun
Forget the drugs and the shotgun
Forget the drugs and the shotgun
Forget the drugs and the shotgun

http://www.nme.com/images/NMECoverStoneRoses_CMA3_220414.jpg

actually made me want to punch someone -anyone- in the face

Just to remind everybody what the NME said about the record at the time.

That was acid house stormtrooper Jack Barron though. He liked it but was annoyed it wasn't ravier.

I’m thinking of all those baffled 15-24 year-olds who the NME would like to be reading them (rather than the 35-54 year-olds who actually do) scratching their heads about an album released before they were born, the original review of which contained references to Rain Parade and Dream Syndicate (“Whit’s that? Ye whit?”).

If you're young and you like indie-rock I don't think the first Stone Roses album is likely to cause much head-scratching. The Beatles split up before I was born but I wasn't puzzled by people talking about them when I was a teenager.

I naively imagine they'd prefer the NME to be on the case about stuff that's happening now. However, the eighth best album in their 1989 critics' poll was Hup by the Wonder Stuff, so no change there really.

I like that record, and loved it to bits when I was 15, but I am fucking fed up of it now.

Not Hup, btw.

Obviously. It's impossible to be fed up with Hup.

I've only ever owned the singles collection, but The Wonderstuff were a bloody marvelous singles band.

Calling The Stone Roses "the most important debut album in history" seems to me to be servicing a pifflingly small and parochial demographic to the exclusion of all others, but whatevs. Would be interested to see how they could argue that an album that was only ever followed by disappointment (a shit second album, that most inglorious Reading 1995 show, 'We're Only In It For The Money' reunions, etc) was "the most important in history" but, eh, actually I'm not interested after all.

Like, did any of them do anything of any real merit at all after The Stone Roses, really? I mean, I hate Oasis like I hate porridge and the colour beige and willing stupidity, but I could imagine a world where a coherent argument could be made for Definitely Maybe being "important".

All in all, I guess I don't really give much of a shit about whether or not an album's "important" really, and certainly the metrics of "important"-ness that prevail at the NME are a pretty deadening measure far removed from the realities of why I love music and love writing and reading about it.

hey if we shift to the Eight-legged groove machine we can unify the wonderstuff and 'most important debut album in history' conversations.

Like, did any of them do anything of any real merit at all after The Stone Roses, really?

Kowalski, XTRMNTR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psyCm1vUmbE

http://imgs.zinio.com/magimages/67156525/2014/416302117_370.jpg

I'm sure they've used that exact same cover and headline many times now.

setting aside that i hate the libs, that's a pretty good cover, with an excellent photograph.

a shame they've dribbled all that type over it.

I hate the overdose of type on most magazine covers. So needy. Was talking to someone the other day about the confidence of this Select cover which doesn't even mention the band's name.

http://selectmagazinescans.monkeon.co.uk/showpage.php?file=wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cover.jpg

http://selectmagazinescans.monkeon.co.uk/showpage.php?file=wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cover.jpg

the issue, i guess, is the fractured music culture - they're not chasing one middling market but a number of smaller ones. if the NME itself had strength as a brand then that wd matter less but i guess this kind of touting for business is evidence that it doesn't

i.e. the notional "sad cases in their 30s still chasing their indie youth" market that meanies like me might point to as the audience clearly isn't much of an audience else they wdn't need the come-ons

I don't mean the names of other bands, which are lined up neatly, but all the clashing Libertines text. It's ugly and it achieves nothing because people who want a Libertines interview don't need six different bits of text.

The Select cover I was trying and failing to post was the one from Feb 95 which is just a picture of the Stone Roses and the single line "So what kept you?"

ach, god knows what that is, it's all effing ugly anyway

(the Libs cover i mean - clearly the Select is better but i think it comes from a more monolithic culture)

Does the world really need a print article about "LIAM'S TWEETS." Really.

not gonna start on my jaded old person's lack of wide-eyed wonder re: what music journalism needs

It's not even "what music journalism needs" - it's more like, what is the conceivable audience for a print piece about Liam's tweets? Someone who doesn't have the internet or twitter and cannot go and look them up for themselves? Is this 80 year old grandfather really in the NME's desired demographic? I guess maybe!

I guess Oasis fans might not know what the Internet is? They must know their demographic better than I do, so who am I to say.

MAN TWEETS!

Front page news.

everybody loves goss in the social media age