Picture from Vive Le Rock

Only recently I wrote about how the once trusted music magazine NME is on the bones of its arse having just resorted/relaunched as a free publication and how useless the idea of a print magazine is these days to the young music fan. I used to write for a long forgotten Nottingham music fanzine called Night Flight that fizzled out a few years ago and I was recently asked about the possibility of relaunching it and I expressed the opinion that it would be a silly idea. Leftlion has been around for just over ten years and struggles as a monthly magazine and used to be quarterly, this meant that the website obviously had more up to date content but despite a slight drop in quality they are still going and still popular. It helps that they started covering music when Night Flight vanished (it was Night Flight that repeatedly took the piss out of Leftlion for its lack of music coverage calling it a 'catwalks and cocktail bars' paper) and are taken more seriously but I don't think there's room for another locally focussed magazine. I stand by what I said in my previous blog that we simply don't need a new music magazine, or at least I don't. The existing publications are not full of enough content to warrant their price as far as I am concerned and I tend to buy them on the odd occasion there's a feature on David Bowie or some such music maker I care enough about to spend this sort of money on.

It is strange therefore that a new print magazine should happen to come out while the first editions of the NME are still clogging up the doorways to music shops as if to symbolise the death knell of paper magazines. Louder Than War has existed since 2011 as an online magazine/blog dealing with reviews and features publishing a call to arms manifesto stating their independence and has since built up a reputation and respect within the music industry. To suddenly take such a risk seems equal parts brave and ridiculous but if you have a look at the decreasing section devoted to music in the magazine racks then maybe they have a point. NME is now the music world's Metro and Word disappeared in 2012 so there isn't really anything to replace it since Q vanished up its own arse at some point in the last decade. Titles like Mojo and Classic Rock don't look to the future and of course there's the Internet to pick up all the readers who want their music news straight away rather than waiting until publication day. This is where Louder Than War and others scored because they could have something available (without the restrictions of a word count) within the hour. When I interviewed David Nolan about his biography on Jake Bugg I was the last person that day to talk to him, yet I beat the Nottingham Post and BBC local radio to it because NottinghamLIVE was able to wait for me to transcribe it and have it there for people to read on their phone or tablet on the way to work the next day.

Because it was a first edition and I am missing a proper music magazine in my life, (I still enjoy and prefer reading physical editions) I went out and invested £4.99 in Louder Than War to see if it was going to be worth it in the future. With a banner advertising INDIE - ALTERNATIVE - POST-PUNK - WEIRD above the mast head and Ian Brown as the cover person it certainly looked like the sort of thing I would buy. At the moment they are only going for quarterly so the price isn't too intrusive (cheaper than a packet of cigarettes and I can always find the bunce for that) yet I do think that if they keep to this standard it won't be long before Louder Than War becomes a monthly magazine. Perhaps a little advert heavy, (I know nothing about running a magazine so will assume that this might subside once sales pick up) LTW is the music magazine that the shelves have been crying out for with plenty of reviews, features on the established (Morrissey, Happy Mondays) and the current (Sleaford Mods and Kagoule ensuring reasonable sales in Nottingham at least) and writers that aren't trying to be too clever or entertain each other (NME). It was a brave risk to take but one that will pay off in the long run.

The Sunday Alternative Podcast #57 is available from here

===

October Housekeeping

Donations have slowed down a bit and this has had an adverse effect on filming plans. Ideas are waiting to become reality so please do consider making a donation using the PayPal button above.

In return for your gift I will make entertainment that I will put online to be enjoyed free of charge by everyone. Comedy sketches, documentaries, short films and podcasts are waiting to be made so dig deep.

You get 365 blogs a year, a weekly podcast and a forthcoming Nottingham music podcast (at Christmas) free of charge already.

Some ways to help:

You can have a kazoo cover dedicated to you.

Beat the 5p carrier bag charge here (and check out other goodies)

Download my audio books here.

Sunday 21st July

Given that I present two radio shows devoted to Nottingham music, one in England and one in America, that I am a well regarded champion of the scene, and that I have been given the dreadful title of 'Nottingham's Mr Radio', (which I find embarrassing to a degree but am flattered in equal measure), you would imagine that I would have been at yesterday's Splendour Festival. Especially given that this year's line up is the most Nottingham-centric in Splendour's short history. Aside from the usual Courtyard stage, which has the local acts, the Jaegermeister stage had Ferocious Dog, Saint Raymond, and Kagoule, while on the main stage, Indiana and Dog Is Dead appeared, the whole festival was opened by the winner of Future Sound of Nottingham; The Gorgeous Chans, and the headliner was Jake Bugg. You might therefore be wondering why I wasn't there to oversee all this.

The short answer is that I gave my press pass to a friend. To be honest, as good as it is to see Nottingham acts, a lot of whom I have worked with and possibly helped on the way up, there wasn't a great deal else on offer. I can see all of these bands any time, and the rest of the line up was pretty weak. If I'd paid thirty pounds to see this line up I'd be feeling short changed, especially as one of the steps taken by the council to systematically ruin Nottingham was the axing of the free City Pulse three day festival As we discussed on Wednesday's show, we see a lot of the same people at gigs; band members, promoters, broadcasters, and if you asked a member of the public about a band or singer then they wouldn't know who you meant.

The fact that there were some Nottingham musicians appearing at Glastonbury this year was exciting, (I say 'exciting', in my opinion Jake Bugg and Dog Is Dead don't really represent Nottingham at its very best), as that is a festival regarded as one of the best in the world. Having Jake Bugg as a headliner shows an unbelievable display of goal-hanging on the part of the organisers. It feels like we've only just got rid of him and now we're inviting him back without having changed the locks first.

Besides the Nottingham acts that did deserve to play at Splendour, the rest of the line up was the weakest one yet. In the past the festival has been headlined by Blondie, Madness, Scissor Sisters, (who I assume were booked during their twenty minute moment of something resembling  relevance), and the Pet Shop Boys. The grounds of Wollaton Park, (affectionately known as 'Batman's garden') have a history of music festivals; the free Heineken Festivals of the 1980s, City In The Park, The Longest Day, and Distortion to name a few from a dusty cardboard box in the back of my memory. With that in mind, I can't help wondering if this is all part of Nottingham City Council's ongoing plan to fuck Nottingham up. The event this year sold well, so they have to up the ante now and book worse acts than this year, until a few years down the line they will be able to say that the whole thing has been cancelled due to lack of interest.

We still haven't had a sufficient explanation as to the cancellation of City Pulse yet, although the news report at the time blamed it on money. Has everyone stopped paying council tax?

When I moved to Nottingham in 2007, the city had a real feeling of excitement about it, and a feeling that anything was possible. I noticed that not only was there a shop called Jugglers, which only sold balls and bats to juggle with and is sadly now reduced to being a mere window display, but there seemed to be a fancy dress shop on every corner. The Market Square was redesigned and reopened in 2007, and a lot of people complained about it. The people who complained were wrong, as the square was able to accommodate a wide variety of events including the aforementioned City Pulse. Other treats included the big-wheel, Christmas ice-rink, and the Nottingham Riviera. All gone or reduced these days. The big wheel is now just a memory, as is the Christmas ice-rink. In fact the Christmas Wonderland went the same way as the beach; all the free entertainment scaled down in favour of stalls selling things.

Part of the problem with Nottingham is the people who harbour these apathetic thoughts; I know people who don't go to the city centre or Goose Fair because it's busy or too noisy. Don't live in a city if city life is too exciting for you. If you lived in a seaside town, you'd go to the beach wouldn't you? Wouldn't you?

===

My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)