What strange goings on? I didn't venture into Minehead but I had some very brief contact with Taunton. Unremarkable is my one word summation but then I only really saw the station, the local Morrisons (similar to other Morrisons and indeed supermarkets in general) and a greasy spoon which was filled with ATP mongs by the time I had mopped up the last of the grease from my plate and washed it down with some weak tea.

It's weird, but it's not as weird as some of the Hedgers (Chedder) or Midsomer Norton or, heaven forbid, Glastonbury (the town, not the festival). I've had a few good nights out in Minehead, it's not as bad as some places (Yatton, Bridgewater, fucking Yeovil).

Hello, let's have parochial chat! Winner.

Thurston Moore is too tall. Lee Ranaldo is too short. I'm just right.

I'm from near Sowerby Bridge/Halalfax (stalk me everyone!).

hm... let's see...

THE WIRE bores me.

i don't like it.

i think that most people who have a subscription do so because it's the cool magazine to have.

i don't doubt that savage cape truly enjoys it, as well as other esoteric beings around here, but i do wonder about the popularity of it.

i cancelled my subscription; it was all about gigs i could never attend (in london). why should i care?

there. sue me now.

Loveless>Isn't Anything is the crappiest opinion. They're uncomparable. And why? Because they're equally briliant.

i'm feeling kind of sick of consuming and buying things. the trouble is is that it's impossible to know in advance which are going to be the handful of records or books or films that'll be the ones that stay with you for years.
also i think buying something twice is frivolous.

i don't think many people would argue against the wire being a tad dull

Given a choice between "MTV Get Off The Air" and "Jello Biafra Get Off The Air", I'd choose Jello. Frankly, he bores me.

The Wire's probably the most happenin' magazine ever. If you want dreary banality, go NME.

I feel like shallow conversation about music is really killing my enjoyment of it. I can't get anywhere without hearing people having an opinion on fucking anything that doesn't even deserve an opinion on. I listen to only what fights for my own attention, not because everyone else is shit, but mainly because at least it stays with me and i don't feel like investigating any further.

more rep then i can give is deserved

especially with recent opinion of SY and their output and plans, amazing how pissy some can get on their very own damn board

your response is based on the fallacy that everything that is not the wire must be like nme. i say however that there should be an alternative to esoteric critical prose and the bullshit marketing of artificial trends. those two do not fill the spectrum of the possible.

i want something of substance that anybody can read and enjoy. i have said earlier that i'm sure the wire is enjoyable for a few initiated souls; but i don't hink it's very accessible. and see-- every time someone like you calls it "the most happenin' magazine", 10 hipsters are going to put it in their "must have" list, and tout its virtues, regardless of their actual enjoyment of it. (a little bit like certain noise bands)

i got a year subscription to the wire because it was hailed in this board as the greatest and best thing ever. i expected it anxiously. but reading it left me more perplexed and jealous (again, all those british shows) than fulfilled. it's almost like an academic journal.

as an example of what i like-- i enjoyed arthur immensely while it lasted, even when they started doing more politics & hippy stuff. still... perfectly accessible prose, zero banal crap.

and that's my unpopular opinion-- eat my shorts, wire.

I like The Wire because it covers music I like and is well written.

Naturally it covers gigs predominantly in the UK because it's a UK magazine.

And it is as often accused of being populist as it is esoteric. Just look at the cover 'stars' each month.

I don't like music mags. Reading about music is about as fun as listening to television or listeninng to a book on tape.

However, I always have the A.V. Club (which is free for SF residents) for bigger reviews and the internet for more obscure bands.

yeah the cover stars are the poppiest, but somehow i couldn't get through the articles cos i was like "wtf are they talking about??". now you know why i posted this on the "upopular opinions" thread.

funny thing-- after ranting about this i went to the website and discoverd i like the unedited transcripts posted there. but paying $100+ a year for a magazine from which i read only a couple of pages per issue (towards the end) was what killed my hopes, i think.

ha ha-- there's that problem too. it's easier to read about things that have a content that is easily referable through language, like movies or book reviews.

i think the reference points in the wire are pretty easy to pick up once you read it for a bit, my problem with it is that it's a bit predictable, they have a core group of artists that you can rely on them coming back to over and over again (sonic youth, the fall, neubauten, fahey, coltrane, minimalism, derek bailey, haino...) plus a smattering of a newish thing or two that they happen to be fixated on (quiet improv, new weird america, dubstep). the mostly humourless writing is a drag, and the way the magazine looks is i think intended to convey seriousness. it's like they forget the reason that they like music in the first place (because it is fun and exciting to listen to).
it's very obviously written by guys who came of age in the early 80s.
having said that the historical pieces are usually pretty good. but when they do a special list issue (best riffs, best gigs etc) it's usually rubbish.

at 10 bucks a pop in america, i have to be picky about the wire...it is very
hit-or-miss, then, by the standard.

also...yoko ono's "fly" is better than any solo album by john lennon.

"sgt. peppers" isn't the beatles best but it's actually still really fucking
good. lots of revisionist thinking with that record.

elton john and bernie taupin...geniuses.

"whole lotta love" is mediocre and just proves that robert plant was the
weak link in led zeppelin.

black dice are considerably better than wolf eyes, live and on record

"Shabooh Shoobah" by INXS is one of the best pop albums of the 80s.

yes, i think the TONE contributes to the feeling that you're reading a Very Important Academic Article, or "Swallow this Knowlege, Ye Ignorant Bastard". the free CDs that i was at first excited about turned out a bit disappointing. they all sounded the same.. how can i explain this... i can't, they didn't really sound EXACTLY the same but there was an underlying homogeneity in the samples that made me say "meh" every time i was unwrapping.

the references, yes, i never got into it enough to actually start getting involved in their world.

i'll just keep my fingers crossed for the return of arthur-- which will happen...


hm, apparently my opinion is not as unpopular as i first thought. maybe we should do a "wire" poll, ha ha.