really, really wishing the NME was actually a singular physical entity...

Hi! My name is Token!

That'd be at number three, then.

They are a side. If you no longer pick sides, then bully for you. But a lot of the best music came from picking sides.

but i've always wished the NME didnt take sides like that, maybe it has to to get the best sales but for fucks sake they might as well have put Liam Gallagher at number one cos they sound like him with his narrow minded Luddite rock n' roll preferences

and when i was 14 i thought the coolest people in music were relatively anonymous dance producers like Liam Howlett, Martin Price, Andy Weatherall, Pete Wiggs and the KLF...there must be kids that age now who think the same of down-to-earth trainspotters who just love the music and do not go in for flouncing around going thru every cliched rock n roll motion possible just so the NME can cum in its collective pants and celebrate the fact that it made rock 'cool' again by hyping up mediocre guitar bands beyond the realms of absurdity

When I was, like, three weeks old, I had no control over my bowels. Doesn't mean that this is a) right or b) to be encouraged.

This list is just a cheap way to get NME writers (and me) to feel cooler- after all, if THIS is the competition...

(Oh, and Token Nelly ain't cool, either, regardless of his music, he just doesn't have enough of an aura- I mean, just contrast him with Snoop, Rakim, Jay-Z...)

I can't believe how much I hate that retro shit too.

What is worse though that NME has still no REAL weekly competition !

(Kerrang is a joke too and unfortuntely, Seven Update has gone in the last couple of weeks to be replaced with a flimsy "fold out poster" style under the "Update" name ..and they want 75p for that...oh dear)

Or such is my understanding, though I admit to being blinded by my own impressions of ILM biases.

I am stuck on both sides, though I am aware of your suspicions regarding my rocking tendencies. I'm attracted by the idea of taking sides but incapable of committing to either. Cue my eventual old-arse rant about how back before mp3s we loved music more because we had to pick what to love based on what we could afford. NB: may need more work to stop it being revisionist piffle.

(And the other other point Andrew is that you *aren't* 14 and neither am I, and I for one am better off for it.)

I wish they'd left Nelly and Mike Skinner off and presented a straight-down-the-line garage-iste concept of cool. It would have been more of a statement, allowed more 'taking sides' too.

I think so. It was the first place I heard of the Avalanches. Or the Streets, for that matter.

You *aren't* 14 and neither am I, and I for one am better off for it

Prove it:) Remember to show your workings.

agreed. whether those rock people are rubbish or not isnt really the point, its the fact they chucked in nelly and skinner to try and make it look more across the board, give it more credence. if they'd picked 10 garagerock types it would have had more power. the presence of nelly actually weakens the list (and its not often i say something like that). ie - narrow focus='club' feel.

people dont buy music magazines to read about music, they read fashion/style magazines to read about music, and music magazines to read about fashion

http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=tbn:YLcnGHARLk8C:www.hcrhs.hunterdon.k12.nj.

obv in the grand scheme of things its all irrelevant but right now its a tiny little thorn in my side and this thread is the tweezers ;)

;)

do you really think so, gareth? i've seen you say stuff like this before and i really don't agree - eg sleazenation/the face's music coverage is terrible if you ask me. and what music magazines are people reading about fashion in? dance magazines maybe?

B) People like lists, shows with top 100, magazines have it weekly, in fact people liked it so much Vh1 had a show called the list, with a new one each week. The more lists, the more sales.

well i stopped reading the thing three/four years ago so i'm not able to comment.

but yeah, anything with a 'cool' list is highly suspect.

''I'm 15, and although I'm not exactly a typical 15 year old (having a good taste in music and all that)''

I think we, at ILM, will be the judge of that!

Dom, grow up. You don't know the man. Debating the content of a magazine is great, there should be more of it, take in all views and improve. But I find threatening violence (even tongue in cheek) against people really offensive. This happened last time there was an NME thread (something about April Long, Imran Ahmed and Mark Beaumont being buggered and fed to the hounds of hell I believe) and I stayed out of it because I didn't want to get sucked into a pointless and circular arguement.

Some points:

As I said, you don't know him. You may run into him in a pub, at a gig and really like the bloke. Okay, so what he's done with his magazine offends you. Your post offended me. I'd still be quite happy to chat to you on-line about your housemates trippping or whatever. There are bigger battles to fight. Discuss the content, don't resort to lame insults.

If anyone on ILX had said a similar thing about another poster, or a sub-section of society, all hell would break loose. Why does running a music magazine make someone fair game?

Finally - Amnesty International exists because of people carrying out ideas just like the one you made (even if most people Amnesty are concerned with are dealing with far more subversive issues than lists of musicians).

The sleeve notes quote from a NME review of the live event, by then NME editor Neil Spencer. For example, Elizabeth Smart has "a face through which a nine-year-old sometimes peers intensely through the many lines of experience."

I couldn't help thinking: that's what the NME needs right now. More reviews of 68-year-old Canadian poets.

I'm not entirely joking.

n.spencer used to review reggae prereleases by quoting lines from the metaphysical poets