Cue the Music

It's with a tinge of sadness that I read that the next issue of Q magazine is to be the final edition. Q is a magazine that I started reading when I was 17 and had a disposable income in my pocket. Smash Hits, as excellent as it was, I'd outgrown, the 'inkies' like NME and Melody Maker always seemed to take thmeselves far too seriously while Kerrang! just seemed rather childish (and there's a whole other post in how hard rock and heavy metal in the media is dished up to the fans). So Q came along at just the right time as my interest in music was growing massively with its mix of what we now call 'legacy acts' and pushing the hot new darlings. There was also a sense of humour at work, which I wouldn't expect any less with former Smash Hits editor Mark Ellen at the helm.
So yeah, I'd found my mag. Each month I'd devour the mag from cover-to-cover, learning about the aforementioned legacy acts like The Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd while looking to see what was new and exciting with the expansive Q Review which covered everything from albums to films to books. I'm not entirely sure but did they invent the star rating system? At the very least they popularised it. A one star review was always much more fun to read than a five star (complete with red stars to emphasise how great this thing was) because you knew the reviewer had put the boot in. This was 30 odd years before the admirable 'be kind' movement. It was the 80s and despite Live Aid, people weren't particularly kind.
Ah yes, Live Aid. Would Q have existed without the events of July 13th 1985? Probably but not in the form it went on to take - Live Aid validated the appreciation of artists whose best work was released perhaps ten to twenty years earlier. So it's no great surprise that McCartney appeared on the cover of issue 1 and the likes of the revitalised Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and Mick and Keef were regular cover stars in the first decade of its publishing life.
Then, bouyed by the success of Q, the publishers decided to launch Mojo. I think this diluted the brand somewhat. The legacy acts that had their place in Q were now on the cover of Mojo, so Q's shift was then on to the newer artists. To me that wasn't what Q was about. It was supposed to be 'the modern guide to music and more'. So as much as I wanted to read about Radiohead or PJ Harvey I also wanted to read about Fairport Convention or The Isley Brothers. I resented that I was being ased to buy two magazines. So I didn't.
I stuck doggedly with Q until 1997 when my circumstances changed - I had my first mortgage and percieved luxuries like glossy magazines were put on the backburner - I remember the last issue I bought as a matter of course clearly: the issue where the Oasis album Be Here Now was given a five star review. Now I know that artists are much more receptive to giving a magazine more access if that mag is seen as being on board with the product but five stars for Be Here Now? Really? Britpop was already going down the dumper and this lumpen, rambling, overlong, cocaine-fuelled muscal travesty was surely no serious music journalists idea of a five star album, was it? That was where the mag lost some cred with me.
So I did buy the odd issue when I could afford it or if there was something I really wanted to read in it. In fact for quite a while I hardly bought any music magazines regularly. Then the team that brought us Q originally then brought us The Word (or just Word as it was back then, not the definite article). Now this was the very magazine for me: legacy acts? Yes! Newer acts? Yes! Decent review section? Yes! Funny? Yes!
And then, sadly, The Word left us. But that had rekindled my love of music magazines. So I now subscribe to Prog and regularly (not every issue but regularly enough) buy Mojo (I finally succumbed,), Uncut, Classic Rock and Record Collector. Cherish these things and buy them because it's no good lamenting them when they're on the way out. Buy the physical copies. Don't be like the person I heard on a podcast a few months ago say that he no longer bought music magazines "because someone invented the internet". In all spheres physical product is king, streaming services whether that be Spotify, Netflix or Apple can and will pull things down and not bother paying the creatives their worth. Nobody discovered The Incredible String Band because they clicked a link on Pitchfork.

The photo up there is of the first Q I bought. So I was a regular for nearly a decade. Not bad going.

Percy

There's a good documentary to be made about Rockfield Studios to be made. Sadly, the one shown in BBC4 on Saturday night wasn't it. Dave Edmunds, the guy who made the studios name, was only shown in a brief clip and as much as I'm not fussed about Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody was talked about only in passing. However, we did get treated to Liam Gallagher effin' and jeffin' for ages and Chris Martin droning on about the gestation of Yellow. Which was nice*...

I was listening to a podcast the other week that claimed Robert Fripp had 'won' rock music: he's very highly respected, lives in a nice house and is clearly still able to make a substantial living from his work. Sadly for him, he  has the misfortune to be married to Toyah Willcox so no, Bob hasn't 'won' rock music. I'll tell you who has, another Robert and a contributor to the Rockfield film, Robert Plant. He's filthy rich, can pick and choose what he does, people are still interested in his output, can sell tickets, can and does tell Jimmy Page to do one, retains a highly approachable everyman image which sees him sitting in the stands with all the other punters at football and, crucially, he ISN'T married to Toyah Willcox.
So why not give this a watch instead of the Rockfield film?

*It WASN'T nice.