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.

Now we are 3

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday is that while I've been away on holiday this blog celebrated its third birthday. Hooray for Modern Gutnish! Little did I know that back in the summer of 2008 whike innocently posting a photo of Diane Keen with a breast on show on one of this blog's first entries, Modern Gutnish would be no.1 in the Google search list for 'Diane Ken tits'. Who knew so many people were interested in the Cuckoo Waltz star's knockers? Not I, that's for sure as mustn't. Turns out this blog is also no.2 on the Google list for the search term 'Jo Whiley tits'. Funny thing is that the sentence I wrote on that particular entry was "Jo Whiley's a tit". So, for all the pervs out there I'm going to try a little experiment just to see how stupid some people are. Here goes: JUNE WHITFIELD TITS. There, now I just need to sit back and see what happens.
Getting back to 2008, do you remember it? A long time ago now of course, but let's get a bit nostalgic, eh? Lehman Brothers Bank was still very much a going concern, Gordon Brown was well on his way to becoming one of the UK's best-loved Prime Ministers, your house was worth double what it's worth now, you could get credit just like that, Cher Lloyd was busy being a school bully, my mother was still very much with us, there was one of the greatest statesmen of our time in the Whitehouse, nobody had heard of swine 'flu, I still thought Christine Bleakley was nice, Rupert Murdoch was a cuddly old gent who just happened to own a few newspapers. Halcyon days indeed. Here's to the next three years of Modern Gutnish!

Now then

Yeah, I'm back, back, BACK! Got meself a hot new computer and internet connection. I bet you're all so pleased, eh? No? Oh, please yourselves...
Anyway, I'm back and have absolutely nothing to blog about, so soz about that. Icould have a moan about something I suppose, but sod it. Not only that but my sister's just texted me to tell me that Elbow are on BBC3 in ten minutes so I'd better hurry up and settle myself in for more, er 'stuff'. I'm sure you'll be hearing more from me, but tonight I'm going to watch some telly for the first time in ages. As the song goes: "Food in my belly and a licence for my telly and nothing's gonna bring me down" Hurrah!

Edit: I have got something to moan about: the announcer on BBC3 saying "One Day Like This byElbow is one of my most favourite songs ever - always cheers me up" Oh, piss off will you?

'Ere, have a bang on this, currently residing in the 'where are they now file'.

Ooops

There was a blog post here about how much Peter Andre spends on shaving foam and stuff in a week (£600), but I decided that it was a bit too similar to this far more rewarding blog post, which I read afterwards. So if you're interested in my thoughts on Peter Andre's 'grooming regime' then drop me a line to the usual address. In the meantime here's a nice picture of some F4 Phantom jets. Enjoy!

Deep joy

I've been thinking about Professor Stanley Unwin today, I don't know why, I just have. I can't think about him these days without also being reminded of something a colleague said when the news of Unwin's death was announced on the TV at work: "Thank fuck for that, I could never stand that old c**t." Which I always thought was a terrible thing to say, not only because he was being deeply disrespectful to someone who'd just died, but also because I believe that if Unwin doesn't even raise the briefest of smiles with you then you're a pretty humourless individual (that's not to say I can tell people what's funny and what's not).

Unwin always reminds me of two people who loomed large in my life when I was smaller. They were both childless but have a love of kids and loved to share little songs and stories with us. I reckon a lot of it had to do with the fact that they weren't parents themselves and didn't mind making a tit of themselves if it got a laugh out of a child. My dad, for instance, went to work, came home, had his tea, washed-up and then dropped off to sleep in front of the telly. Every night. That's not to say he was a bad parent, as he quite plainly wasn't, it's just that it was his job to provide for the kids, and be with them at weekends or on holiday.

My dad's brother, Uncle Jim was a man who spent his whole life living with our grandmother. Whenever you went he had a fresh Jane or Andy Capp book for us to look at, could knock out a tune on a concertina and would sing us songs, his favourite being one about snot and bogey pasties, exactly the sort of thing kids love. The one line I can remember went "You can have the black ones, 'cos I like the green ones." Brilliant!
As recently as the mid-70s I remember going to their house and having to use an outside loo. This was always fraught with danger as it was a home to many large spiders. Uncle Jim always came good though because to take your mind off the spiders he's let you take his lantern with a flashing beacon on top to light your way. The excitement of a flashing beacon was too much to bear for this 6 year-old.

The other guy was my mum's butcher. You'd go into his shop on a Saturday morning - trying to avoid the carcasses of dead animals which were dripping blood all over the sawdust-covered floor - and the first thing he'd do would be to shout at his wife to go and fetch the biscuit tin. Biscuits were duly handed out - usually a malted milk or a sport biscuit - then he'd launch into any one of a hundred songs. Particular favourites were There Was and Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, Susannah's a Silly Old Sow and one which told the tale of a woman who took a pig to market and couldn't get it over a stile. She took a stick to the pig to make it go over the stile, but the stick, unbelievably, wouldn't behave itself, so it went "Stick, stick, beat pig to get over the stile/Fire, fire burn stick to beat pig to get over the stile/Water, water, quench fire to burn stick to beat pig to get over the stile" It continued ad nauseum until the exact moment my mum's meat was cut, bagged up and paid for. Perfect timing.

Anyway, enough of my useless and uninteresting childhood reminiscences, here's some classic Unwin. You Tube's disappointingly light on Unwinese, but fact fans, clip one contains an actor who was born on the same street as me. That's right, I was born at home, there'll be a blue plaque on that house one day.

A virtue

Please forgive me if I don't update this as often as I should. Life isn't exactly going to plan at the minute.

Here, watch this video instead. My favourite sodding off song.

Men-bashing. Again.

Turn it in. I don't know why I bothered reading this. I'm not one of those types mentioned and know how to treat a lay-dee on a date. Who fancies finding out? Nobody? Thought not...
As Twisted Sister once said, I am I'm me.

By the way, since when has Gordon Ramsay been English?

How much...

...would you have to completely hate someone to buy them this for Christmas?

Night of the living dead

That time is nearly upon us again. That's right, I know it's only mid November but plans for Christmas are being made already. I mention this because my boss came to me today to discuss whether our department should go out for a Christmas drink. I normally hate going out with workmates; I don't go out with my 'proper' friends enough, so why would I choose to go out with a bunch of people I can just about tolerate?
The last time I went out on a 'works do' in 2004, the guy who worked the opposite shift to me threatened me with 'I'm going to kick your fucking head in' for no reason whatsoever. Oh, how we laughed on the Monday after when he claimed not to have remembered any of it. Not. Personally, I think he might have wanted to say that for a while but the drink loosened his tongue. Perhaps he wanted to take it out on me because I went on my own and he took his wife who had a face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle.
Anyway, I always said that that was the last time. I now think my boss feels as though enough time has elapsed - and the head-kicking guy has since left - to suggest another pre-Christmas snifter. I told him to see what other people on the department thought. And because they're all young and full of spunk they all said 'yes!'. Bah! That means I'll have to go, if only to show how miserable the only guy older than me on the department is for not going. I still like to be down wi' kids, see? And they've convinced me by saying that it's the office staff's night out on the same day, so Knockers O'Neill and the Scottish Siren will be out too. Woo, and indeed, hoo!
I'm not looking forward to it though, they'll all want to go in the pubs I hate. You know the ones, the ones where you feel like Tommy because you can neither see, hear or make yourself heard. And there's bound to be the local market square heroes out looking for a scrap. I'm running if it all kicks off, I don't want a shiner for Christmas Day.

Can I just say that I enjoyed a marathon Charlie Brooker's Dead Set the other night. I'm not usually in to horror but it was rather good. It was about zombies taking over Britain and the action was set in the Big Brother house. Believe me, nothing is more satisfying than seeing Davina McCall get a lamp stand shoved through her head. I also love the fictional idea of some mysterious plague or virus wiping out huge numbers of the population. Which is why I've always had a soft spot for 28 Days Later, The Day of the Triffids, Z for Zachariah and The Stand. I think living on an island nation it doesn't leave much to the imagination to think that something like that may actually occur.

And, as it's Friday, and I've mentioned the 'C' word, you can have this:

Number Six

I've been tagged by Mr Avenues and Alleyways to do this writing six random things about yourself thingy. I'm not tagging anyone else because I don't know six other bloggers well enough, and I can't be arsed. Anyway, here goes:

1. I once saw Motorhead's Philthy Animal Taylor walking around the town in Newark of a weekday lunchtime. I knew it was definitely him because he's fairly unmistakable, right? It was during his second stint in the band in the very early 90s. As I was too shy to approach him, it was like a scene out of a cartoon, he'd stop to look in a shop window, so I'd stop twenty yards behind him to look in another shop. I often wondered what he was doing in Newark of a weekday lunchtime. I later found out that he's from Chesterfield, and while that's not exactly round the corner, it's close enough for him to feasibly have family in the town.


2. I didn't realise how bad my baldness was getting until I saw a reflection of the back of my head in some restaurant toilets last weekend.


3. I've never seen any Star Wars, Godfather, Sylvester Stallone or Lord of the Rings film. Nor do I have the desire to.


4. I once went on a protest over the visit of General Jaruzelski of Poland to Newark, when he was still the Communist leader of the country. Well, when I say protest, I mean I went and stood with some protesters outside Newark cemetery gates - which was across the road from my house - in the hope of getting on the Six O'Clock News. I didn't get on the news but the report did, I was stood behind the camera during the melee as his motorcade passed us on the way to the Polish war graves (and, more importantly, the grave of General Sikorsky, leader of the free Poles during WWII) in the cemetery. I read in the paper the other week that he's currently under trial in Poland for imposing martial law in 1981. Our house got on telly though.


5. I've been a best man twice. I haven't spoken to the first guy I was best man for in about five years. I haven't spoken to the second guy I was best man for in the last twelve months. I know this because it was his birthday recently and the last time I spoke to him was on his birthday last year. Kind of sad really...


6. The first CD I ever played on my first ever CD player was the Pet Shop Boys' Introspective on my 18th birthday. The second was Marillion's The Thieving Magpie. See, I've always had a weird taste in music. I think I played the PSBs first because Left to My Own Devices probably demonstrated the superior sound quality of the source material better (it had strings on it). Or something equally as wanky.