Hello tricksters. Sorry, I'm everywhere at the mo. To anyone who was doubting that the terrific JENOWL was a real person and not the warped vision of a 20-something prankster, there's now a photo of her in the Gallery. Doesn't prove anything, I suppose. So JIHADS! is an instrumental. That figures. Reid, I've got worries along the same lines as you, but I know I'll have to live with it for a few months before I can even consider jumping ship. I just wish they'd somehow managed to not take so bloody long over it. Right, the rest of this post is my last word on the inkies, so the sensible ones can stop read now.

By the time I was taking an interest, the post-Morley NME seemed to have slipped into stultifying greyness (the Lamacq years), while MM extolled everything vibrant and left-field*.

Well Lamacq was only the live editor, wasn't he? Poor boy - he's harmless enough. Grey as the err... wind, though, you're right. Maybe I caught the end of MM's golden era. I just remember them getting all excited about Cranes and the Telescopes while the NME was getting on with the business in hand. Err.. Baggy. I expect Mike's right that Reynolds et al. cared more about what they were writing. I just had the impression they were barking up the wrong tree most of the time. I did enjoy the flights of fancy sometimes, but you must remember that in those days I was still impressed by Steven Wells' belligerence. And Collins and Maconie were funny in print. The NME covered hip hop and dance music a lot better too. Number Ones in End of year writers' polls: 1987 NME: Public Enemy - 'Yo! Bum rush the show' Melody Maker: The Young Gods - 'The Young Gods' 1988 NME: Public Enemy - 'It takes a nation of millions..' Melody Maker: The Pixies - 'Surfer Rosa' 1989 NME: De La Soul - 'Three feet high and rising' Melody Maker: The Cure - 'Disintegration' I think hip-hop *was* the most important/exciting genre of those times and frankly the MM's choices (maybe 1988 is debatable) just look bizarre. When did Steve Sutherland take over at MM? I definitely hated it then. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+