k-punk
Spectres of Mark
I think CoM worked better for two reasons:
1. It had a clearly defined concept, which was narrow enough to give it consistency, but broad enough not to be constricting. (By contrast, the 1974 thing, while interesting, is perhaps too narrow and too mechanically programmatic, especially for the internet: if it were in a book form, the reader could jump back and forth at will, whereas now both writer and reader are subject to the tyranny of the alphabet, lol).
2. It was published weekly, which meant there was a definite sense of event (i.e. what is he going to be writing about this week?)
I'd say I was a cured romantic about print, in that I was the world's biggest print devotee (I still have most of the key issues of NME from when I started reading it from 83 onwards until it got shit, i.e. when Collins and Maconie arrived). I thought the internet could never match up to the NME at its peak, or MM when Simon, Stubbs, Oldfield were on it.
Now, though, I would take the opposite view. If the internet isn't good enough, it's down to the readers and writers: who else can be blamed?
There is no equivalent in print media of any kind of the type of exchange that is happening on the web, between intellectuals and pop fans, between theory and popular culture. Once, print media may have had visionary editors (like Mark S on the Wire) who were capable of making their publications more than the sum of their parts: now, they are grub street PR hacks, subservient to big business and demographics, who do the opposite. For example: does anyone seriously think that the pieces Marcello is allowed to write for Uncut etc are BETTER than the ones he produces on the internet? The print world looks pathetically cramped compared to the internet. I haven't bought a pop magazine in years. Even when there's one good article from Simon in them, it's better to read them in the shops, because you then don't have to clutter up the house with boring drivel on the Band and Bob Dylan etc etc.
With the web, you get to edit together your own mag.
So no need to have to put up with Paolo Hewitt and Stuart Cosgrove, let alone the dullard time-server press-release re-writers of the print press now.
(I'm going to write a post on this on k-p when I get home).
1. It had a clearly defined concept, which was narrow enough to give it consistency, but broad enough not to be constricting. (By contrast, the 1974 thing, while interesting, is perhaps too narrow and too mechanically programmatic, especially for the internet: if it were in a book form, the reader could jump back and forth at will, whereas now both writer and reader are subject to the tyranny of the alphabet, lol).
2. It was published weekly, which meant there was a definite sense of event (i.e. what is he going to be writing about this week?)
I'd say I was a cured romantic about print, in that I was the world's biggest print devotee (I still have most of the key issues of NME from when I started reading it from 83 onwards until it got shit, i.e. when Collins and Maconie arrived). I thought the internet could never match up to the NME at its peak, or MM when Simon, Stubbs, Oldfield were on it.
Now, though, I would take the opposite view. If the internet isn't good enough, it's down to the readers and writers: who else can be blamed?
There is no equivalent in print media of any kind of the type of exchange that is happening on the web, between intellectuals and pop fans, between theory and popular culture. Once, print media may have had visionary editors (like Mark S on the Wire) who were capable of making their publications more than the sum of their parts: now, they are grub street PR hacks, subservient to big business and demographics, who do the opposite. For example: does anyone seriously think that the pieces Marcello is allowed to write for Uncut etc are BETTER than the ones he produces on the internet? The print world looks pathetically cramped compared to the internet. I haven't bought a pop magazine in years. Even when there's one good article from Simon in them, it's better to read them in the shops, because you then don't have to clutter up the house with boring drivel on the Band and Bob Dylan etc etc.
With the web, you get to edit together your own mag.
So no need to have to put up with Paolo Hewitt and Stuart Cosgrove, let alone the dullard time-server press-release re-writers of the print press now.
(I'm going to write a post on this on k-p when I get home).