Melody Maker to close? Dadrock mags to reign supreme?

i only bought around 50 or so NMEs between '94 and '01 probably. MM just never seemed as visible and i had got it into my head that it was not as good for some reason (if by chance i'd bought MM first i probably would've ended up feeling that way about NME).

probably. But MM was really really bad the last few years.

I know late 80s/early 90s MM seems to have the better reputation these days but if the album lists are anything to go by the NME was covering way more interesting music.

Matt you're gonna be unpopular with steve, you've just given me an idea for a poll!

Melody Maker EOY List 1987 vs NME EOY List 1987?

IPC Media plans online revival of Melody Maker - Press Gazette
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44920&c=1
IPC plans to revive the Melody Maker name with a comprehensive online archive of the magazine - which ran from 1926 until it merged with the New Musical Express in 2000.

Found some old issues when packing up my mum's house at the weekend. Priceless commentary on world events from TFC and Jesus Jones in the Xmas '91 issue:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2781/4285889815_256772f614.jpg

That's a pretty great picture. The bloke in behind could be crooning.

Bobby Robson on the right?

Melody Maker started in NINETEEN TWENTY-SIX?!?!?!?!?!??

http://www.r2ok.co.uk/mmaker1.jpg http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/journals/modernmusic/melodysm.jpg

My grandad used to buy it in the 40's to read about dance bands.

i interviewed a very elderly and quite senile spike milligan for the melody maker back in 1998, just when i started, and he said "i used to read the melody maker when it was a jazz magazine, but now its just full of monkey music"

pretty sure "jazz magazine" is a euphemism for something else

(... "50-year old fart form" ...)

(xxxxxx-post)

Those two covers are lovely. The first reminds me of the animation in Fantasia, or something 1920s anyway. I like that it's The Melody Maker too, that feels important.

"A bungalow, a piccolo and you"

They don't write them like that anymore!

Once, when I was living back at home post-degree, I was laid up in bed ill with something or other and I asked my mum to pick up MM from the newsagents. "Oh, I used to buy that when I was your age!" (She was 63 and I was about 22 at the time). She came back looking thoroughly unimpressed with a magazine that had MEGA CITY FOUR CUT THE CRAP on the front cover and some guy in dreads sticking his tongue piercing out at the camera. Joe Loss it wasn't.

If they did an online archive of issues from the twenties and thirties, that would be awesome!!

Would love that. It's pretty sad that they ended up having weeks where a Mega City Four feature was the big selling point.

They'd have represented a Hot New Thing at that point though surely?

I guess that grunge was taking off and they were probably scrambling for suitably scruffy UK oiks? Would probably find them totally unlistenable now, but the MC4 were good fun at the time.

I seem to remember it being a fairly confrontational feature - rather like the Levellers cover story around the same time. MC4, Senseless Things, etc were definitely not part of the prevailing early '90s MM aesthetic (they got +ve coverage in NME though and possibly Sounds before it folded) but this was a sort of state-your-case sop to a popular band. A sort of "we admire yr politics, why do you have make such a turgid racket"?

i interviewed a very elderly and quite senile spike milligan for the melody maker back in 1998, just when i started, and he said "i used to read the melody maker when it was a jazz magazine, but now its just full of monkey music"

Reminds me a little of when MM interviewed Bernard Manning sometime during the nineties. His opening gambit: "what do a jazz paper want to talk to me for?"

I think I remember that MC4 piece, they basically let the guy make a cock out of himself and gave him the cover for his trouble.
Here it is, and yeah I remember that sub-heading too:

http://www.rockofages.uk.com/stock/19987.jpg

Don't recall the girls on sex article tho.

http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/342881741/1993

Funny thing about that issue and cover -- when Melody Maker sponsored the Rollercoaster USA tour in late 1992 (Jesus and Mary Chain/Curve/Spiritualized) they sent over a huge batch of copies of a particular issue for distribution at each venue. Guess which issue.

what date was that issue of MM?

31/10/92. A bit later than I thought.

18 years ago this month
http://www.prweek.com/article/94726/media-brief---sutherland-goes-melody-maker

Who knew what fresh mayhem lay ahead - be it regional Idlewild fans swarming letters pages or over euthusiastic coverage to Paisley Underground veterans and Sam Peckinpah

A Simon Price Melody Maker Spotify playlist here:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5pQG5E8BNE3CwTREjEJY3h?fbclid=IwAR0PVnYKFstrr9lSgwBwOwRVgmsk1w7oC_fwnwBj_NKro3ecvBx5gOB471U

Inspired me to compile my own ...

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0WNCUK2moLElB1CeOkMxVm

Some people need to get away from the idea that guitar based melodic music is only supposed to appeal to "boring old farts". It's timeless. It will always be here, and it will surive everything.

― Geir Hongro, Thursday, April 16, 2009 12:16 PM (eleven years ago)

Free access to music and gigs is a wonderful privilege that bestowed self defined good taste on you. I had to spend 14 pounds to find out that Campag Velocet were shit and journalists lied for the fun of it.

— DefensiveJeans (@EmbarrassedBelt) November 25, 2020

Thought of MM the other day re: the 'Prolific bands/artists with one super special album' thread.

I used to visit relatives in the UK a lot in the mid-late 90's, like for months at a time sometimes, and really looked forward to the opportunity to read MM and NME on those trips. My main takeaway was a sense that a short run 7" by an unsigned band could be more valuable and important than entire discographies of 'legendary' artists who sold hundreds of thousands of records.

For better and worse, MM encouraged me to build up a record collection along these lines, searching out the most unique, priceless artifacts without bothering to fill in the cornerstones. Even though I could only afford a handful of albums a year at that age, I could buy several times as many singles.

It's true that the music they championed wasn't always the greatest and I outgrew some of those styles pretty quickly, but I probably attribute my whole aporoach to collecting music to MM.

tbf, one of the cover mount cds had Campag Velocet's title track from their album, so I shrugged and spent no money..

Xpost yeah, the 'cornerstones' you'd always be able to find later, but those 7" gems would often disappear and you'd as likely as not, never hear anywhere but in your own place.

Exactly!!