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The NME is a shit magazine. The writing is poor, it's unadventurous in what it covers and almost gives more space to adverts than journalism. Like them or loathe them, the likes of Burchill, Parsons, Morley, Baker, etc, as well as photographers like Pennie Smith and Dennis Morris or the cartoonist Ray Lowry, were all unique voices, with something to say and the eloquence to say it. The fact that many of these people have thrived post-NME speaks for itself.
However, even if the NME were a fertile, ground-breaking, brilliantly written and illustrated paper, there would still be little demand for it. As previously said, this is partly due to the internet usurping the need for a weekly magazine, but also because music is not important to most people in the way it used to be. It's a consumer commodity, like chocolate bars or mobile phones.
This all ties in to Phil C's vented spleen piece, which makes some good points, though it's not just the political aspect that is being lost, it's the part of music that speaks to the soul and engages our emotions. Most people don't look to music to be anything more than a pleasant form of entertainment. This has always been the case, but in the past there was a sizeable enough minority, with a real passion for music, to sustain four weekly music papers. That minority now would be barely enough to keep one magazine afloat, even without the competition of the internet.
With hip hop now having been around for over thirty years and having been absorbed into the mainstream, there is only really the outer reaches of the UK grime scene that has any kind of grassroots outsider element, outside of the mainstream vibrancy to it and even that's been about for well over a decade. It's a rather parochial scene, that doesn't have the political vibrancy that Phil C has lamented the passing of, but it is still largely an outsider movement. There doesn't seem to be any other music that divides the generations in the way that music used to. There are a few acts, scattered amongst the fringes of other genres making more adventurous music, but there is not sufficient interest in this music to support anything more than niche websites, such as this one.
Maybe the fact that nearly all contemporary music is in genres that have been loved by the parents of today's youth that causes it to have no rebellious spirit any more. Between 1955 and 1985, there was the emergence of rock & roll, rhythm & blues, ska, mersey beat, soul, garage rock, psychedelia, prog rock, glam rock, disco, reggae, krautrock, punk, post punk, hip hop, house and a whole host of sub-genres as well as an evolution in jazz that took it far beyond it's roots. That's a thirty year period. In the thirty year period since, there has been some evolution in hip hop and dance music, but one that has been slowing to a halt. I like the way young people are open to listening to stuff from different genres, but often there seems to be a complete unawareness of genre, which leads to all music being the same; no feeling for the the different emotions expressed in, say, punk & gospel. I think there will be little interest in reading about music by young people, until the same young people come up with a music that they can call their own; a music that brings with it an outlook to the world that they can call their own. Don't hold your breath!
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Curmudgeonly Rock 'n' Roll time traveller from ye olden days
2nd verse same as the 1st...
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