right, i've read these pieces now.
i really don't see what the fuss is about at all.
rob young, as well as being a thoroughly nice chap who just i happen to disagree with about almost everything musical apart from my bloody valentine, has one great attribute as a music critic beyond being able to write better than most: he's really honest.
that editorial was a bit bonkers in terms of the comments about 2step IF he's talking about 2step garage (some of the girliest urban music ever, surely? and that girliness is a big point in its favour; one that's almost totally missing from dubstep now).
however, he might actually have been talking about drum & bass.
if he was, he's absolutely bang on the money and i agree unequivocally.
(i think this is worth finding out about, so might well ask him if i remember.)
as for eveything else, it was simply honest, and as far as i'm concerned, was actually pretty gutsy, rather than something to froth at the mouth over.
the wire has ignored a vast amount of music and has done for a long time. we all know that and that editorial actually came out and point-blank admitted it, offering a glimpse at the reasons why, in all their totally subjective glory.
sure, these reasons, and a lot of the wire's general aesthetic can be seen as flawed if you approach music from a street-level standpoint, but that's not necessarily wrong, just a differience in perspectives.
what the wire had never done before, though, was fess up to why a lot of pretty decent music wasn't being touched.
it's a risky move for a magazine to come to a scene this late and i thought it was handled really well.
if you read the editorial properly, all the contentious points within it are presented from a personal perspective or from the perspective of that one publication.
they're absolutely not stone tablets being offered from on high, telling you the way it is.
i mean, if it said "the wire has always supported the best of british urban music and now we're bringing you this great new development called dubstep" you'd all have a right to be livid about it.
it didn't, though. it basically said: "we're not even vaguely street here and we do have prejudices. we even approached dubstep with trepidation, but in the end we were competely won over by it. here's some stuff we love."
that's fine, and way better than i expected after all the pissing and whining.
(does make me want to refer them back to the several ignored pitches i made about horsepower productions back in the day, but hey, that's just a writer's life.)
that the editors' choice of "wire-friendly" artists is being seen as a bad thing is plain silly. what were they supposed to do? choose people who their readers wouldn't be able to get into or relate to?
sorry. that's just what magazines do — it's called catering to your demographic and it's the only way places like the wire, uncut, mojo and the precious few other music mags left in the UK stay afloat.
also, slagging off the wire for covering something that's essentially an idm record is completely loony. it's what they do and probably why they thought it was worth writing about in the first place!
anyway, look to the positives. it was nice to see the back of steve's head in there. he deserves the props.
also this issue might even prompt a few wire readers to look at your blogs and get into a much wider range of dubstep artists.
can't say i envy them that particular chore, because i don't like much of it at all any more, but that's me being subjective and honest, too.
