15: The Music Press

For many years it was all I wanted to become a music journalist. I wanted to be at the forefront of music news and opinion, the first to listen to the newest albums and impart my thoughts on them to the masses. Stood on the front row at not just the biggest and the best gigs, but also at the obscure, to shape the up-and-coming trends and sounds by relaying what they meant to me with the joyous power of words.

Then something happened to me. I realised that the music press existed merely to mock us all. The other day I picked up a copy of Kerrang at the train station and thought I would spend my journey to Bristol reading it. It took me 15 minutes to read pretty much every word in it and realise that it wasn't a bastion of hard-rock journalism, instead it was one step above a comic, full of teenage opinion and writers trying to dumb down their skills to appeal to 12 year old Paramore fans and people who only know who Led Zeppelin are because Fearne Fucking Cotton has a t-shirt with their name on.

I thought back to when I would religiously read the NME and Melody Maker, before they merged into one terrible, childish tome. I would read what was written and so many of my opinions on music were shaped by their editorial policies. I would like bands who were completely shit, purely because they were recommended to me by the NME writers. I would hate bands based on who they had chosen to slag off that month. I would get into entire genres of music, almost obsessively, because they had decided that particular style was "in". I dare say the bastards were partially responsible for the way I dressed.

A later rant will deal with Student Music Chauvanism, but the music press are to blame there too. The music press make plenty of twentysomethings and teenagers claim that they like much more obscure music than anyone else, purely because they're armed with a music rag or two under their arm. Bollocks. I thought that when I was a teenager and when I was a student. Let's examine the evidence:

Teenager - Favourite bands were The Clash, Green Day and Ash.
End of Uni - Favourite bands were still The Clash, DJ Shadow and Blur.

Not exactly tiny little artists, right? And the only reason I liked DJ Shadow was because the NME told me to. It took me to my mid twenties to realise I can like whatever the fuck I want, even if it's as disparate as Elton John, Girls Aloud and Gallows. But way back then, I thought I was better because I'd selected what was cool to enjoy. Not simply because I heard something and thought "wow".

Let us not forget, the NME have put Robbie Fucking Williams on their cover in the past merely to shift units. And they've come a long way from the serious publication that mockingly allowed a young Steven Morrissey to rant about the New York Dolls back in the mid 1970s.

I was thinking of bands that the NME tried to get us to swallow but no-one ever did. They do this from time to time, as if to test our resolve as listeners and to see if we're merely just following the herd because they tell us to. I can only think of a few past coverstars that they've failed to get the British public to actually like on a massive scale. I mean, bands like Oasis and Embrace (especially the latter) had massive press merely for being wankers, way before anyone ever heard their music. Don't even get me started on the NME's cool list each year, which seemingly thinks that smack is the key to coolness, rather than my innocent youth where it was merely wearing shades indoors.

So yeah, bands the NME failed to get us to like - off the top of my head.

Bis - how awful were they? Pinnacle of their career was recording the theme to the Powerpuff Girls.
S*M*A*S*H - Ah, the legendary "New Wave of New Wave" movement, loosely translated from journo into English as "we've ran out of wanky genre names".
Campag Velocet - Seriously, in the mid 1990s they never shut up about them. Name one song. I dare you.
Gay Dad - I remember hearing that several members of said band used to work for the NME. Really? Well, that's a massive surprise.

What I like is how you can follow the cycle of a bands career based on how the NME reports on them. Pick any remotely successful band from the past few years and all of them have the same 5 stages of their career as recorded by journalists.

1: THE BEGINNING

A band is doing quite well, well enough to be signed by an Indie label - so that makes them well and truly on the radar already. Nevertheless, the music press (and probably Jo Whiley) will claim them as their discovery, citing some reference two weeks prior where the band was mentioned in their gig listing page. A small pictorial will follow. If the press gets an inkling that this band is becoming popular, they'll then move to phase 2.

2: THE ASCENT

Said band is doing ok, with one minor chart hit. The album comes out. Even if it's awful, it will get at least 7 out of 10 as the magazine hedges its bets and decides to not piss off the band, just in case they become the next Oasis and hold a grudge. The band get pushed to high heaven. The lead singer ceases to have a first name, being pictured on the front cover and referred to by his first name only, like a Brazilian footballer. No-one can remember his surname, as no-one ever really knew it to start with.

3: THE PLATEAU

Band work on their difficult second album, which will be a massive letdown but still score higher in terms of reviews than their first, merely because thousands of extra pounds have been spent on the production of it. It will sell very well indeed, coupled with wispy pictorials of the band and fluffy interviews containing no substance whatsoever. Some letters will be printed in the letters page slagging off said band to test the water for stage 4.

4: THE DOWNFALL

Band release third album. Is actually their best yet, as they have matured musically - but press choose to slag them off mercilessly, making them the butt of "jokes" wherever possible and using their bandname to prefix the word -esque whenever they feel they need to make a negative point about another band, or compare another band at stage 1 or 2 in a favourable light. Band sell millions anyway, and don't give a fuck about the music press. Massive tour goes amazingly well. Move to stage 5.

5: THE PHOENIX

Band has been doing great anyway, but with album 4 about to come out the press try to bury the hatchet (caused by themselves) by doing endless features about how the band are now legendary, bigger than Jesus and so on. Massive tour exceeds all expectations. Editorial in magazine cliams responsibility for the bands success. Somewhere, a kitten dies.

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