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(Les George on Piano)
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It was in Sounds and Melody Maker where I came across my first dream guitar - an Aria Pro - in the classifieds. Don't ask me exactly what model, because Aria made loads of guitars with 'Pro' in the name, but it sounded pretty cool. Used to pore over those classifieds every week, whilst my drummer pal was fixated on Zildjian, Paiste, Gretsch, Tamar and Ludwig in the drums section. Early GAS ..... that wasn't sated for many years.
This was pre Kerrang, I was buying Sounds and Melody Maker and my impression - I could be wrong - was that they both made an attempt to cover and review most genres of music without being such cliquey wankers as the NME.
Sounds had more rock/metal (and eventually gave birth to Kerrang) but it also had things as diverse as Eric Fuller writing about ska and reggae, Garry Bushell raving about (or inventing) Oi! bands and a bloke called Dave McCullough droning on about Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and Crispy Ambulance. And all with Tommy Shaw of Styx on the cover.
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
When I went AWOL in 1971 for a few months, my Mum put an ad in the "personal" column of the MM, because it was the one publication she knew I'd buy.
They turned their noses up at anything that wasn't ironic and art school and all the bands they championed were all about going to the right parties and wearing the right clothes but produced shit music.
It was all about how cool it was to not like anything popular as far as I remember
Edit: I see the same phrase has already been used. Heh.
The reason it lasted so long is that this is a much bigger market than actual musicians, sadly...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
Sounds was way better. It didn't have the unecessary "is it hip enough" thing going on. They just wrote about music and bands.
For the most part, the MM covered the bands I liked (the "indie rubbish" that so many of you hate), plus it had a decent gig guide. The NME always seemed like it had some kind of agenda, which I could never work out. I was gutted that it was MM that folded and not the NME.
One day it occurred to me that I was only buying the NME for the crossword, so I stopped. I didn't miss it.
I met one of the more prominent NME writers a few years ago through a mutual friend. It was interesting to learn that all the IDM acts such as Aphex Twin, Autechre, et al, that he'd been championing since the early 90s, he didn't like them one bit. He just thought it would make him look cool.
I said maybe.....
I quickly preferred 'doing nothing' to reading it tbh. It was like it had been written by half the cast of Nathan Barley.