Q Magazine goes tits up

in the 90s and early 00s a general multi-taste magazine made sense because everything was consumed together. Top Of The Pops and The Chart Show and The Box were how I got to see music videos and mimed performances, and if I wanted to see the video for "Let Me Be Your Fantasy" I also had to sit through a Take That performance and Oasis. Everything came in bundles and you couldn't easily access one without the other. So you were exposed to everything and it was easy to become a dilletante.

Is there really no audience for a chart based music show like TOTP on terrestrial channels or Netflix? Seems like a massive missed opportunity to offer up a bundle like that, get some tribalism and opposition going again.
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
tribalism and opposition are great, they're vital parts of being a fan - you're not just defined by what you're interested in, but what you're not interested in. I think youth/pop culture really suffers not having that.

but the reality is: there's so much #content out there to consume, nobody is going to sit through something they have no interest in. When I watched last years TOTP Xmas special it was an hour long and I think I got through it in about 30 mins, absolutely no chance I was sitting through a bunch of fake Sheeran copyists, life is too short
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
It depends though doesn't it? I always liked to watch TOTP not just to hear music I liked but to know what music other people liked. Maybe people don't do that any more though I dunno.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
tribalism and opposition are great, they're vital parts of being a fan - you're not just defined by what you're interested in, but what you're not interested in. I think youth/pop culture really suffers not having that.
This takes me back to my sixth-form common room, with territory cleanly divided up between The Townies, The Punks and The Others (who were mainly indie kids, although they were literally referred to as The Others).
 

luka

Well-known member
thats the horrifying thing about provincial England. There are only 2 or 3 personalities available. The sausage factory makes 2 or 3 sausages and that's it.
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
Glasgow, early noughties. We had:

1) the neds. Outdoor jackets from Berghaus and Helly Hansen. Probably the best music, happy hardcore and hard house, but no room for a gay teenager like me.
2) the moshers. Truly awful people. Mostly boys, baggy jeans, Limp Bizkit and South Park, cultural death.
3) the trendies. Furry hoods, streaky Piz Buin, Ugg boots. Boys who looked like Blazing Squad. Nice as individuals, collectively boring and yet somewhat intimidating. 50 Cent and Ashanti, but also Eamon and Lisa Maffia.
4) the geeks. Self-admitted and proud. No real music taste or identity. Pokemon cards after the show stopped being popular.
5) the not-quites. A dozen of us, not necessarily anything in common but united by not being part of anything else. Daria-core. Boys into Star Wars, girls into Tori Amos. First group to fall apart after the common bond of school ended.
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
my brother is only three years younger but he had a totally different experience of teenage cliques because nu-rave and mephedrone happened. They all got into dance music and went to clubs while I rolled my eyes at my peers playing Arctic Monkeys albums.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
thats the horrifying thing about provincial England. There are only 2 or 3 personalities available. The sausage factory makes 2 or 3 sausages and that's it.
I wonder though, is that just an English thing? In any given place there are probably only a few sausages available. Maybe across the US there is a plethora of sausages but if you're in one particular place you probably only have a choice of two or three right there, how much comfort is it that tantalisingly close but three hours drive away they are making a spicy venison sausage - especially if no-one you know has a car.
 
Someone called me a grebo once, in 1992. It's only now I've bothered to look it up and, yeah, he was right.

We had grebos, townies and metallers, with a subcategory of townies called shellies if they came from the shelthorpe estate (I was one generation out of that estate and used to go there all the time to see grandparents, it wasn't too bad, used to be flagship social housing in the 1930s) . Then, once a year, the fair came to town and fought everyone, regardless. Special shout out to the rich kids from the villages who played golf and wore jumpers over their shoulders.

Mark Fisher came from the same town, he was a few years older than me and probably grebo+
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The main reason I lament the death of magazines is that I think I would have enjoyed writing for one as a career in the days when it paid well enough to live off it. (Were there days like that?)
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Kerrang 1986 - Slayer reviews, interviews with Dave Lombardo and Tom Araya, good bits on bass fuzz pedals, interviews with amp technicians and good tips on fixing a blown valve etc

Kerrang today - spews biles into mouth followed by a gaviscon (not that I’ve bought Kerrang since 1986, but what a shambles these days), see image
 

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IdleRich

IdleRich
The main reason I lament the death of magazines is that I think I would have enjoyed writing for one as a career in the days when it paid well enough to live off it. (Were there days like that?)
The other day my friend pointed out this woman from the Independent on fb or something looking for an article about Lisbon under lockdown - I boshed something out in fifteen minutes and sent it off - they paid £150. Seemed extraordinary to me, I'd love to do more, you'd have thought the Indy was printing loads of articloids like that, if you could get a deal to do, say, ten a weak thst would be 75k a year and you would only need to work a few hours a week.
Admittedly the Independent is online only now... and they have resisted all my further overtures in that direction for some reason...
 

Leo

Well-known member
pitch them on a Dinner of the Day column. you could steal our contributions here for any times you're to knackered to cook. between you and tea, you'd have most days covered.

better brush up on the photography, tho.
 

luka

Well-known member
craner was moaning to me about how the photograpohy in that thread has put him off dinner for good. he doesnt eat it any more. renounced it.
 
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