Who do the British seemingly hate Q Magazine?

I disagree - there are more than enough people that are not being catered for by the teenager oriented rock tedium of the weekly NME and also don't want to wait a month for something to read [The Wire, Terrorizer, Jazzwise, Jockey Slut, Knowlege, Uncut etc]

If a publisher - launched a new diverse agenda setting fortnightly music magazine - in the UK - then i reckon sales of 50,000 - 75,000 - could be achieved within a year.

Hmmm, perhaps that's another thread, in fact.

Also ILM does like some magazines, Muzik was very popular until it went bust! (as I always say in these cases)

Martian (and anyone else), what d'you know about Bullit? I know it used to be North-East only, and it's music and film-oriented (perhaps going for the Uncut market) but possibly a younger audience, and a fairly modest initial print run, but more details are extremely scant.

i will save my venom for the "Why does everyone in the world hate all those awful american music magazines".

This is prob something suzy knows about better -- but the money in publishing (and obv it's not a fanzine and breaking even -- it has shareholders to please) comes from advertising. You might be right, though I gotta tell ya, I'm 23 and lame as fuck about new music -- and I'm more clued-up than most ppl I know, being ex-NME reader and all.

no mercy for the pop music thingy ;)

if Q mag was so terrible it would have gone bust already.

Well, the case I was resting was my assertion that people seem to hate it, and point that has been handily proved herein. I'm still waiting for a reasonable answer, though.

It never was about 'breaking' new bands. I was told this categorically by the Q editor once while raving about Belle & Sebastian. He said that I was too much of a 'championer' to ever write for Q, which prefers to wait a while before writing about bands. Of course, this was before they missed the boat woefully on The Strokes - they're now only two months or so behind NME when it comnes to new music.

In recent months, however, Q has nosedived pitifully. Last month there were three advertorials for stuff like cars and razors. One even appeared smack in the middle of a feature about Muse (I know, it was probably a beter read). Together with its irrelevant awards show (how contrived was that?), and the blurbs for the TV channel, Q has lost the few shards of credibility it ever had.

It was for this reason that many editorial staff left to set up 'Word magazine which is an infinitely better read, albeit something of a 40-somethings fanzine. 'Mojo' also cnotinues to be a good read for those of us who like to metaphorically kick off their tight shoes and luxuriate in a 10-page Mitch Ryder retrospective (ie, me).

As far as breaking new bands is concerned: for coroporate, XFM-playlisted skinny indie types it's still NME all the way. For corpse-painted metal loons and hapless British emo chancers, there's always Kerrang! As ever, the truly interesting stuff exists on the margins and one can do worse than listening to John Peel to find it.

When you're listening to it, how do you know it's timeless? The only sensible definition of 'timeless' I can think of is that people have always enjoyed it and you think they always will. How do you know?

Jesus! ALRIGHT, PEDANTS! Of course I don't know that it's definitively timeless, but the mere fact that people are still listening to stuff by Bach, Beethoven and the rest of those fat, long-haired Western Europeans centuries after they first scribbled down their tunes certainly lends creedence to the notion of the high quality of the music in question. It has legs. Its appeal has real longevity. Will people still be listening to, say, Wilco in two hundred years? I sort've doubt it, but ya never know.

My thoughts exactly. I wonder how Bullit'll differentiate itself? I'm hoping it'll be adventurous with its cover features at least; I mean, even Hot Hot Heat or The Rapture on the cover would be preferable to yet another Stripes/Strokes/Eminem/a n other already overexposed band.

I hope they won't be listening to them in two hundred minutes.

Cross-post: unlike Alex, it seems. Calm down.

Also remember that Geir's post which Alex said was 'spot-on' (and with which I initially disagreed) wasn't referencing music from centuries ago, it was very specifically talking about 10-20 years ago.

The only reason anything is percieved as "timeless" is because it got more attention than something else. To say otherwise is to invest too much faith in the scribes of past generations and basically throw caution to the wind.

That said, just because you don't like something, that doesn't mean its not timeless. For example, I happen to think that "The Mona Lisa" is no great shakes, but that doesn't mean the Louvre is going to chuck it in the trash.

You seem to be arguing that 'timeless' means 'enduringly popular' which I suppose is fair enough, but in the context of a magazine covering pop-rock that's not really a very useful concept. As Tom has pointed out before, the history of pop is littered with people second-guessing what would be considered to have lasting value and getting it very wrong.

because it's for old farts. semi-bald, somewhat overweight high school teachers in their late thirties who worship jimi hendrix' ghost and wish for the second coming of grunge. or U2. or both.

..implies as much.

Yes, but this syndrome is hardly limited to Q. At the end of the day, a near-naked Britney is sadly going to move more issues than, say, a profile of, say, Hamell on Trial or Elbow or ______ (your favorite artist here).

Are old, balding, pudgy educators in their late 30's not allowed to enjoy music?

Is defending Q Magazine in some way parallel to a Brit championing Coldplay (or, for that matter, a Yank championing Matchbox Twenty)?

Pretty close, Alex, pretty close.

Side question - does anyone dislike the magazine/publication, to which they contribute? Better to be on the inside, pissing out, sez I!

It's the equivalent of wearing an 'I am a complete c-nt' t-shirt, Alex.

rip big man, heaven needed a magazine i assumed had stopped production at least a decade ago

― a denim head and an aficionado of Japanese craftsmanship (bizarro gazzara), Monday, 18 May 2020 20:31 (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

It was often great the last few years. Fascinating behind the scenes stuff here from Ted Kessler

https://www.qthemusic.com/articles/almost-famous-ted-kessler

Who do the ilxors seemingly hate Q Magazine?

thank fuck for phones, Kindles, staring absently into the void

― À la recherche du scamps perdu (Noodle Vague)

being stared into absently by the void

lol yeah that too

I'd agree with Ted Kessler that Andrew Harrison's appointment marked a significant uptick, after the grim listicle days. I settled into buying Q about 3 or 4 times a year to read on long train journeys, and the innards were always better than the covers suggested. Sylvia Patterson's stuff stood out, and having invented the "stars answer readers' questions" concept, they continued to execute it well. The reviews section was always the weakest section, though. Way too cautious. There's no accolade thinner than a four-star album review in Q.

They used to give pretty much every album three stars iirc

I have every q mag from sept 1989 to mid 2003 in a bookshelf; they are alongside every mojo from 1994 to the same end point. From an american viewpoint, or at least my own, from 1989 to 1995, the dad-rock-orientation seemed a million times better than that of Rolling Stone, and I aspired to write in that manner, although a lot less PG Wodehouse-ish. to me, it was a magazine that was simply concerned with the width and breadth of anglo and american popular music. Ear Xtacy in louisville Ky did not carry NME or the Melody Maker, and I probly would have not wanted to read it if it did. I have no doubt that this sounds clueless to english ILXors.

And so in 1995, around the time that Q (and every other english music magazine or newspaper) got in the tank for brit-pop, I worked for TimeOut NY for the first four years of its existence (Tony Elliott, TimeOut's founder/publisher, died this week; he was a great guy) and the tone that i had cultivated worked well there. And then in 2000-2001, after I was fired from TONY, my fondest hope would have been to work for an american version of Q. I got my wish: I worked for Blender, which was easily the worst experience of my life. Shortly after beginning to work there, I did not want to read Q any longer, seeing as the Blender EiC was a former Q editor, and having an entirely unpleasant working relationship with an individual who strongly disdained americans and touted the Q formula (and english writers in general) as an unassailable ideal utterly extinguished my former enthusiasm.

For a long time afterwards, during my time at that mag and after I was fired, I strongly disliked english people, as well as the Q formulas and the accompanying editorial tone. Once I got over that, I still was not going to start buying it again, particularly as they would go back to the well over and over again for Oasis, Blur and Radiohead, and could only muster a head of steam for the Strokes and other G/B/D acts that they felt their readership would understand… I guess that Kasabian cover above speaks to that… was Q all about landfill indie in the late 00s?