sarramkrop

This interesting Melody Maker obituary written by Simon Reynolds:



OBITUARY: MELODY MAKER R.I.P.
So farewell, then Melody Maker.... For the last few years of your life, you were fuckin' awful---I had to avert my eyes when they chanced upon your downscaled, glossed-up latterday incarnation (Smash Hits for Steve Lamacq-worshipping fifth formers, a tiny, dwindling tribe you'd think and so events have proved it all too true) upon the newsagent's shelf. I shuddered on those rare occasions I gingerly picked and flicked through your dumbed-down pages. When I heard that the music mag industry's longest-running rumour (aired annually ever since I first entered your portals), the "merger" with younger, bigger brother NME, had actually taken place, my first reaction was "about fucking time.... good riddance to sad rubbish". Later, half a tear formed in one eye, as I recollected, dimly, that you had once been.... good. For a couple of years, you were the best music magazine in the world, indisputably, without a shadow; the forum for one of those always-too-brief, too quickly curtailed golden ages of music journalism that have been few and far between, but are the reason anyone with a brain, I'd wager, ever contemplates entering "the profession". Even after the golden age flickered out, you still had your moments, right up until the Britpop rot really set in. So here, as a sort of love letter/fond adieu to MM in particular and the UK music press in general (upon whom the sun has definitively, irrecoverably set), here is a piece I wrote in 1996, at the height of Britpop (the rot had set), for American periodical Request, when they were wanting somebody to explain to their readers the uncanny influence (positive and malign) of the UK weekly rags. Although much of the piece severely critiques the Britpress as partners-in-crime with Britpop, it still should read pretty transparently a conflicted testimonial of devotion from one whose life was set on its present course by hours wasted in W.H. Smiths speed-reading the inkies.
Right now [early 96], the British weekly music press--New Musical Express (NME) and Melody Maker (MM)--is going through one of its periodic phases of feeling self-important. The reason, of course, is Britpop. The weeklies didn't create the movement, but they did name it, and for two years now they've given Britpop their unconditional support. The official line is that 'we've never had it so good' (an echo of a famous political slogan from the '60s); that Britpop is a golden age for UK music, and that if you want to keep tabs on this fast-moving scene, you've got to buy the weeklies.
Grunge wasn't a bad time for the UK music press (in fact Melody Maker was way ahead of American publications in picking up on what was happening inSeattle). But the Brit-press is happiest when it can cover stuff happening on its own doorstep, on a week-by-week basis. If a band is local, it's so much easier to kickstart the hype-cycle that so appals Americans: the group's discovery at a live gig by a cub reporter ('I have seen the future'), its endorsement by a more established writer, the granting of 'Single of the Week' honors, the pricking of major label A&R interest, the full-page debut album rave, the front cover, and so forth. So accelerated is the hype-cycle these days that stages are often skipped; buzz bands sometimes make the front cover before they've even released a record.
Being so USA-based, grunge interfered with this process. NME and MM rely on record companies to pay for trips outside the UK, which means that most American bands are already signed by the time the press write about it. Grunge also goaded the Britpress' patriotic pride, triggering its reflex-resentment towards America's domination of pop culture. After an initial anti-grunge backlash in '93 (Suede's defiantly Anglophile blend of glam Bowie and glum Morrissey), Britpop really got rollin' in '94. There was the neo-Merseybeat swagger of Oasis, Blur's unexpected self-resurrection out of the 'has been/never-was'dumpster, and Pulp's strange and wonderful ascent to cult popularity, after 15 years in the wilderness. In '95, Britpop went into overdrive: Elastica, Supergrass, Bluetones, Cast, Gene, Shed Seven, Menswear, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
The Britpress will seize on any excuse for a fit of chest-swelling, tub-thumping jingoism. Britpop was ideal, since its aesthetic base--the mid-60's,filtered through its late '70s echo, New Wave--had hitherto been strictly an indie style, and thus the province of the weeklies. At the same time, Britpop bands are overtly anti-experimental and pre-psychedelic; they combine a playsafe 1966-meets-1978, three minute pop aesthetic with a doctrine of stardom-at-all-costs, making them highly desirable to record companies and extremely radio-friendly. Because the bands it deals with now hit the charts, the prestige and morale of the Britpress has been boosted; for the first time in 15 years, people turn to them as tipsheets on future stars. For instance, this January a grubby little gang of sub-Oasis oiks called Northern Uproar appeared on MM's cover one week, and on Top Of the Pops the next (TOTP being the UK's premiere pop TV show, based around that week's new chart entries). Furthermore, Britpoppers behave like pop stars; they make strenuous efforts to give good face and good quote, all of which makes the music papers' job much easier.
That job is basically to convince the readers that stuff is happening. Now, you might think that ain't so hard, given the plethora of scenes and sounds generated by the merry postmodern tumult of the 1990's. But the Britpress readership is deeply conservative, and its idea of what's relevant is decidedly narrow. Look at the NME and MM annual readers polls in the last 15 years and you'll invariably find the Best Band position occupied by a white, all-male, British guitar band: the Jam, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Smiths, the Stone Roses, Suede, Blur, Oasis. The Top 10 Band, Album and Single categories usually feature no women, no blacks, no dance music, and rarely any Yanks (although REM and Nirvana did briefly challenge the Anglocentric bias). The Britpress has to give its readers what they want, i.e as many pieces as possible on the 10 or so Big Brits (pegged around the single, the album, the tour, any excuse whatsoever basically), plus features on Brit-pop 'contenders'--younger bands waiting in the wings for fame and fortune to take its toll on the established Brit biggies. That still leaves a fair number of pages which have to be be filled by token coverage of 'minority' interests like techno, hip hop, weird guitar experimentalism, American rock, and other stuff which market research shows the readers are simply not interested in.