CLASSIC POP Magazine - ILM's Ideal Magazine for Old Farts?

pretty much guarantee the cereal and the Tango wd be better than any of the artistes in the mag

Funny how we'd rather remember a 90s mag than talk about a new mag that remembers the 80s.

Select did mixtapes - or rather told you what to put on the tape, provided you with a sleeve and left you to get on with it. These days they would just direct you to Youtube links.

Maybe Select and it's writers will relaunch one day as a Britpop Nostalgia mag? After all, they started Britpop.

There was a point in history when I adored Select. I think it was roughly 92/93. Graham Lineham wrote the movie reviews and I purchased a hot streak of albums on the strength of their reviews. But when I think back I was easily impressed back then and the only ones I can remember are Gravediggaz, The Jesus Lizard, The Pharcyde, The Silver Jews, Redman and Royal Trux. A lot of the stuff that followed was suede/blur/oasis. Thats when I blanked them out. There was a point where they seemed to get it right, I just cant date it from memory. I know when they started they were just another shit british rock mag with Bono on the cover with wrap around shades. The point where I stopped reading it every month was when I bought Gentlemen by The Afghan Whigs on the strength of one of their reviews and considered it absolutely awful.

that's a great album

I absolutely loathed it at the time. I was only about 20 at the time and still feel the same about it. It just doesn't do anything for me and is very laboured and dead.

It was Jon Ronson who took over from Lineham on film review duties. He had the balls to say that Hal Hartley's Amateur was better than Pulp Fiction. We are now in an era when Bradshaw gives 4 stars to Guy Ritchie movies in The Guardian.

I find it sad that I didn't even have to look this up. All from memory.

Sometimes I struggle to remember my wifes birthday.

Blimey, the mini-can of Tango - I remember that. Also the "mixtape" whereby you had to go and buy all the music yourself and compile it, until they saw the circulation figures and started giving away free tapes (not that any of them were that good).

But reading the monthlies now is like listening to over-zealous Radio 2/6Music broadcasters - ex-Select writer S Maconie, I'm looking at you - who over-explain and over-compensate and make listening to music radio about as sexy and exciting as a Wednesday morning in Hendon with Joy "Naughty Naughty Naughty" Sarney. You're waiting for the blackboard, chalk and lectern.

Someone at R2 actually admitted that their programmes were aimed at sad middle-aged men who have been collecting vinyl for thirty years and only want to be told what they already know, over and over.

When they play The Mekons' "Where were you" in preference to "Teenage Kicks" just *one time*, then we'll talk, Radio 2.

The only amusing bits on Radcliffe and Maconie's 6music show are when they get all pissy about having to play anything even slightly outside their comfort zone.

Even when he does his Freak Zone programmes, Maconie still comes across as a middle-aged university lecturer doing his desperate bit to get down with Teh Kids. Further to which, even calling the programme The Freak Zone is tantamount to putting up towers of barbed wire to passing/casual listeners and scrawling TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. But that’s enough about BBC radio.

But reading the monthlies now is like listening to over-zealous Radio 2/6Music broadcasters - ex-Select writer S Maconie, I'm looking at you - who over-explain and over-compensate and make listening to music radio about as sexy and exciting as a Wednesday morning in Hendon with Joy "Naughty Naughty Naughty" Sarney. You're waiting for the blackboard, chalk and lectern.

This, or they may as well just publish the PR sheet verbatim.

A lot of them do (naming no names).

I don't mind Maconie's OU lecturer act on Freak/Freakier Zone. Then again i don't need or even want the act of listening to radio to be "sexy".

Haven't listened to Maconie since the 90s but gushy radio presenters who constantly blether away about how much they luuurve the record they just played is one of my biggest bugbears. Actually I think this was the subject of my first ever ILM thread. I don't mind a bit of enthusiasm, especially if it's genuine and more importantly interesting, but all this "I was sitting in my kitchen the other day when this song came on and I have to say that this will blow you away" thing is so dully condescending it makes me want to switch off immediately.

You have to be able to balance it out. Too much enthusiasm and you wonder: "which PR company is paying the DJ to say this?"

I'd rather have sexy radio than Aspergic radio.

i.e. explain every last thing about the Clash as though brains or Google or YouTube didn't exist because you're afraid if you don't your listeners will switch to BetterMusicMix FM where they can hear "London Calling" 200 times an hour.

I think it's a common problem with music radio and music publishing; it's an industry based not on love, but on fear.

Print media is just more risky these days. At least with digital if you cover something niche you're sort of guaranteed someone will be interested, and even if they aren't it's not the end of the world. Once you start having to factor in printing and logistical costs it all becomes hedged bets.

But again it's not so much what is covered that gets me, it's how it's covered. We're at a stage where prestige for a written article has switched from print to digital, so a respectable writer would more likely appear online than in one of these shallow rags.

which is why people like Morley are pathologically grumpy about So-Called Internet Critics superseding "traditional gatekeepers." Someone from '76 calling himself a "traditional gatekeeper," oh my sides.

Something mags used to do was take the piss quite a bit - out of musicians, out of the music industry, out of themselves even. There was a kind of irreverence, a "who gives a hoot, it's only music" attitude that I don't see much any more even in the best publications and sites and certainly not in mainstream alt-monthlies where even a mildly disparaging review is considered daring.

was thinking about how much i LOVED buying magazines and how many magazines i used to buy! i would go to a barnes & noble 10+ years ago and buy, like, 15 magazines at a time. i never buy magazines anymore. i'll buy ugly things once or twice a year or however often it comes out and maybe once a year in the winter during a blizzard i might get some new mags at the drug store if i think i'll be inside all day.

turns out most of the planet can live without them.

i'd guess a lot of the demographic who used to buy magazines when travelling have portable dvds/internet/whatever that takes away their need to read

http://khu.music.s3.amazonaws.com/songify_504f6c10e6a0e.mp3

Celeb gossip magazines still sell shitloads and that stuff is all over the internet too.

Picked up this 'Classic Pop' thingie.
Editorially, it ticks off all the right boxes for a 40 yr old raised on synths n ABC n mtv, but the writing is flat and uninspired and the layout is kinda ugly. Oh well.

Can't see this lasting very long.

http://www.classicpopmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/CP01.CoverUK-250px-210x300.jpg

The story of Trevor Horn's ZIT

couldn't have been less entertaining than their story of Trevor Horn's ZTT!

mr.raffles, man he was mean (but probably fair)

btw what was the 'influence of Kraftwerk' article like? I'd like to imagine that it was just some blank pages with a note at the top saying 'If you've bought this magazine you can probably write this article yourself.'

On The Road With Madness - Adam Ant

^^^ you're ALL doing a much better job than CP did!

@sno - every article is a 'you could've written it yourself!' no real insight at all in these pages.

The Kraftwerk bit is an excerpt from 'Publikation' btw.

There's quite a bit of cobbling together features from existing sources.

Now with Added Vintage Rock Magazine

http://www.vintagerockmag.com/subscribe/

We were once given some tickets to see Goldfrapp supporting Duran Duran at the M.E.N Arena. It was a bit of a shock to see middle-aged people in cardigans *losing it* for the headliners. Classic Pop reminds me of that sometimes but it does have some very good writers.

how much is this mag now?

found out that Classic Pop is not part of the classic rock/prog etc stable and is just cashing in on the name

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NWHJMH3

Who should win the best ever 80s album? Tell us your favourite albums from the 80s and be in with a chance of winning 20 classic 80s albums courtesy of Universal. You can choose between one and 10 albums. Get your thinking cap on!