Mojo Magazine: Classic Or Dud

(I speak from the perspective of someone who for two years unsuccessfully lobbied U***t to give Todd Rundgren the front cover and 30 pages inside)

4-5 Public Enemy
Evens Beastie Boys
7-4 Outkast
2-1 Eminem
4-1 Wu Tang Clan (Up from 5-1)
8-1 Jay Z
12-1 50 Cent (down from 8-1)
15-1 Run DMC/LL Cool J
40-1 Dizzee Rascal
50-1 bar

Odds to appear on the front cover

Wire 20-1
Throwing Muses 40-1
The Stranglers 75-1
Underworld 100-1
King Crimson 200-1
Killing Joke 250-1
The Associates 400-1
The Chameleons 500-1
Rush 1000-1
Porcupine Tree 10,000-1

Nick Hornby - evens

Again that's the problem about funk/hip-hop fans. Your extreme intolerance towards anything that is not funk/hip-hop/R&B related.

Mojo have never devoted their entire magazine to one single genre, and never will. They have done funk specials, and they will again. They have also done hip-hop specials, and the likelyness of Mojo putting Public Enemy on their front page is way bigger than the likeliness of Mixmag or Kingsize putting Coldplay on their front page. Who who is the most intolerant here?

Daddy you're a fool to cry....

weirdly, i wouldn't have thought that would be a tough pitch there - isn't paul lester a huge Todd fan?

As for Todd Rundgren, you would have been more likely to succeed with Mojo. Select usually prefer "safe" cover stories.

weirdly, i wouldn't have thought that would be a tough pitch there - isn't paul lester a huge Todd fan?

You couldn't get a huger Todd fan than PL. But neither of us was able to get past Jonesey Customs...

And, btw. they have yet to make a "Mind Games" special, a "Tug Of War" special, a "Flowers In The Dirt" special or a "Cloud Nine" special. All of those were way better albums than "Plastic Ono Band".

You couldn't get a huger Todd fan than PL. But neither of us was able to get past Jonesey Customs...

There is an inhouse rule in Select that if they are ever to do a cover story of a more obscure act, it will always have to be some Americana act. :)

Where is Duke Ellingham Swing Band band?

But I guess they are sort of too narrow for the Mojo readership. Whenever they do keyboard based 80s music they do something a bit broader and more commercial.

The quality of an album has no bearing on whether the story behind it is interesting or not.

I guess it's unlikely Duran*2 will ever aquiesce to do a 'making of' "Thank You" special, but hey it must have been interesting making a totally rub* album.

*received wisdom, haven't heared any of it.

Yes, Les Harvey.

Again that's the problem about funk/hip-hop fans. Your extreme intolerance towards anything that is not funk/hip-hop/R&B related.

Geir's reply is the funniest thing I've ever read on here by him.

Sometime in the future a hip-hop band will sample that piano riff on clocks.

x-post

But didnt some hip-hop/RnB bands do a phil collins tribute?

In a hip-hop style. Doing it in Collins' original style would have been very unlikely.

That just doesn't count. When will a hip-hop band do a cover of "Clocks" that contain every single verse sung from the beginning to the end, containing absolutely no rap parts, and with a backing track containing all the chords of the original, over a straight 4/4-beat?

Then the brilliant "A Trick Of The Tail" and "Wind And Wuthering" albums would never have happened.
(And as for his 80s solo work, it cannot compare to the brilliance of the 70s Genesis stuff, but it is at least a lot better than anything ever released in the hip-hop genre)

Mojo is absolutely killing it as of late. I know rock is dead and all but it's kind of wild that there's no American magazine left that's going to put Pearl Jam on a cover in 2024

xp I think you just need to get some solid lawyers to confront SST and Ginn rolls over. A couple of catches: doesn't work if the band members can't agree to terms and clear the way for lawyers to move forward (see Hüsker Dü) and even if Ginn concedes, he hasn't done shit to properly maintain or store the masters, so even though you get back the rights, the physical masters may be lose (see Meat Puppets)

*lost

I know it's the wrong mag, but Select has a cover mount of Can Live tracks this month..

I think that's Uncut, didn't Select go away a long time ago?

Oh yeah. Uncut. Opps.

xp I think you just need to get some solid lawyers to confront SST and Ginn rolls over. A couple of catches: doesn't work if the band members can't agree to terms and clear the way for lawyers to move forward (see Hüsker Dü) and even if Ginn concedes, he hasn't done shit to properly maintain or store the masters, so even though you get back the rights, the physical masters may be lose (see Meat Puppets)

― birdistheword, Tuesday, April 30, 2024 3:29 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i spoke with this directly with terry katzman about the husker du stuff (terry ran reflex records for the huskers) before he died, they did have lawyers - the same lawyers that dino jr. and meat puppets used i think he said -- but the husker contract was different and had some more onerous language in it that they could not overcome. the band was actually all fairly united (at least as united as huskers get) and behind the project. ginn does not just roll over by any means.

so they could do the savage young du boxset, because that was largely based on terry's tapes and pre-sst. the original plan was to work with numero on a reissue series of the entire catalog - i think he said the idea was to have sets where it would be a remastered album then another disc of outtakes and/or live performances of that era.

^^^ oh maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan

yeah it's a tragedy that it never happened and now that Terry is gone it never will, he had so much energy to make it happen he cared way more about that band than the members did

Yeah, the impression Bob gave me last time I interviewed him is that they had lawyers, they'd approached Ginn, but that it was just too hard, and in the end he's just written it all off as a lost cause. It's such a shame.

SST seem to have bumped up their vinyl represses over the last couple of years, but I don't see them doing any deluxe reissues with outtakes, etc, and that's a shame. I remember telling Carducci when I was researching my Flag book that it was a tragedy they weren't celebrating the back catalog that way, and that the CDs didn't sound great and could do with a remaster at the very least, but he argued that they sound fine. Still...

Interesting and very sad. I was going by that interview Grant did where he claimed Bob was asking for too much control and too big of a share of the catalog in order to get it away from SST, but I guess a lot happened after that bump in the road.