The phone rings. I pick it up.
"Hello, this is Terry from Uncut Magazine. You were previously a subscriber."
"Yes."
"We don't like to lose our readers. We're offering you the next three months of Uncut for only £5."
"No, thank you."
"Oh. Can you tell me why you stopped subscribing to Uncut?"
"I was just bored with it, basically."
"Oh. Thank you for your time."
I am amazed this magazine is still going. Those of its readers who aren't stopping their subscriptions must be dying off. Yes, Allan Jones has 8 million stories to tell, but they're all exactly the same. Allan gets pissed with Nick Lowe or Elvis Costello or Ian Gomm or Wreckless Eric or Billy Bremner or the bloke who played the drums for Ducks Deluxe. Big deal, Allan.
The magazine's obsession with so-called "Americana" was bordering on the insane. Bands who get audiences of three perennially single middle aged men wearing Bob Dylan 2005 Tour t-shirts and reeking of onions were getting double page spreads! The reviews always included "stunning" returns to form by artists who peaked in the 1960s and whose new albums were recorded on life support machines. The covers featured close ups of male artists so old that we were actually on a government register as corpse fetishists.
So, no, I didn't take up Terry's offer. For music was my first love. And it will be my last.
But it's gotta have some life in it for gawd's sake.
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Are you SURE you don't want to keep up with what's-a-happenin' with Grant Lubbock or The Novotels?
ReplyDeleteHow else would you find out that Roger Daltrey is starting his solo tour down the street from me this Autumn?
ReplyDeleteAnd that tickets are only $99 Cdn. (plus service charges)?
Roger Daltry's solo tour refers to the number os paying customers. Even Pete Townsend is supposed to be "working" on a book.
ReplyDeleteThe expression "Perennially single middle aged men wearing Bob Dylan 2005 Tour t-shirts" had me blushing until I remembered I'm perennially married.
Have you tried Word Magazine?
Betty - I'm sure there are new grizzled young men falling out of punk bands into rooms with acoustic guitars as we speak, holing up in Big Pink and spending a year being sincere and hungry. But nobody means it like the Grant Lubbock of yore.
ReplyDeleteMJ - That's a bargain! I've heard his solo tour is a "return to form" and he even gets his bitch's tits out for the ladies!
Rog - Bob's still got it. The nasal whine, that is. Just that you can't understand what he's "singing" now. Uncut was the end of an era so no Word for me. It's back to reading Whizzer & Chips.
Phew!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the warning Geoff.
Think I'll stick with Kerrang(!)and Woman's Weekly .
OK. That's it. I'm giving up on the electric internet.
ReplyDeleteI thought that "Uncut" was about a totally different subject, and was surprised, in a totally nonjudgmental way, that you should have been a subscriber.
"Bands who get audiences of three perennially single middle aged men wearing Bob Dylan 2005 Tour t-shirts and reeking of onions were getting double page spreads!"
ReplyDeleteSentence of the week. It's the onions that win it. Geoff, you rawk.
Does it feature Barry Manilow then?
ReplyDeleteSx
Kaz - Where does the Woman's Weekly stand on the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. Saxon or Samson?
ReplyDeleteVicus - It aptly describes the editor's hair though his life story is more Half Cut.
Tim - It could've been me if I hadn't experienced Kajagoogoo in the 80s.
Scarlet - Barry's too happy-go-lucky.