Hmmm, or ‘Thinking About A New Magazine Format’

Must confess that I’m beginning to feel a little discouraged – what with the refusal of the broadsheet newspapers to respond at all to my requests for work (despite my writing for six or so magazines now and phoning and emailing with my best work), the difficulty of getting any response even from editors for whom I already write (worst example: The Wire) and the sort of response detailed in my previous post. I’m also struck by the negativity of many people I talk to about the music magazines available. The Wire gets the most drubbing, to the extent that it seems like a majority of respondents have stopped reading it at all. It tempts me to consider either giving up or setting up some kind of publication of my own. Here’s some thoughts I jotted down 6 or 8 months ago:

Rethink music magazine format and come up with something different and better

• There’s so much music that publications like The Wire and Signal To Noise try to squeeze too much into a limited number of pages. The resulting impression is of something like a factory churning out reviews which are too narrowly focused. Better then to choose carefully and concentrate thought and feeling on a smaller number of releases. This doesn’t necessarily mean that certain artists aren’t covered – but there’s a possibility that not every release will be considered.
• A music magazine which is entirely comprised of reasonably lengthy reviews e.g. page length/1000+ words.
• Reviews to include interviews and overviews rolled into a widescreen or utterly detailed reflection upon the music and the artist. The objective of setting that artist into a much wider context than the purely musical. However it would be very necessary to ensure that the whole thing didn’t become painfully indulgent – the music must always be the primary consideration, the touchstone – not the author’s personal view of the universe.
• Locate music writing within wider cultural sphere of art, literature, etc.
• Tie the publication into the web with a lively blog perhaps with mp3s, interaction with readers and make everything older than 6 months old available online (if affordable option)
• Could begin quarterly
• Invite guest writers on favourite topics, not just the same old crew of music journalists, but the likes of er Will Self, Jon Hassell, William Gibson, Julian Opie, etc, etc
• Not as dry/esoteric as The Wire and not as basic as Straight, No Chaser.
• Call it ‘Somnambule’?… or maybe not…
• Definitely try to make it funky visually, as much or more so as The Wire was until the last, awfully designed
• Could it even have a sense of humour??

I’m also wondering whether it might be a good idea to poll lots of people as to what they would like to see in an ‘intelligent’ music magazine.