Totally Wired: The Rise and Fall of the Music Press

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You simply can't separate pop music from its coverage in the greatest publications of the past half-century. I learned so much from this riveting sweep through the birth and evolution of the music press. The characters in it are almost as fascinating as the stars and scenes they wrote about' Totally Wired, published by Thames & Hudson, explores the development of the music press between the 50s and the 00s, honing in on particular genres, artists, publications, figures and events that shaped these decades. There’s been a recent glut of memoirs by former music journalists lamenting the decline of the weekly and monthly music press (Ted Kessler’s and Jude Roger’s memoirs being excellent examples of this burgeoning sub-genre). So it is welcome to get a book like “Totally Wired” that sets out to provide a broader, objective overview on the history of the music press and how it dominated much of cultural criticism during the latter part of the twentieth century. Whatever happened to the music press? The weekly inkies with their idiosyncratic repertory companies of insufferable know-alls, motormouths, upstart crows, teenage tastemakers, solipsists and fantasists, common room anarchists, preening poseurs and pseudo-intellectuals.Despite what the publisher, Thames & Hudson, claim, this book can’t be “definitive”, because some of the key voices in music journalism during this period are no longer alive to share their perspectives. And any magazine or paper is always a collaboration – some of the art directors are mentioned for notable redesigns, but what of the less visible influences of photo, production and sub-editors, whose roles as gatekeepers of the music industry have never been captured? Paul Gorman is interviewed by Mark Ellen and David Hepworth about his new book on YouTube /Word in Your Ear/Word in Your Attic. By the time these so-called inkies had been joined in the early Eighties by freshly booming teen magazines such as Smash Hits, millions of copies were zipping across newsagents’ counters every week, making figures such as Morrissey and Madonna famous when telly and Fleet Street didn’t know who they were. Barney Bubbles: Optics & Semantics August 31 – September 23, 2017 Rob Tufnell Lambeth Walk London UK Role: Curator See here.

Gorman covers everything from The Beatles to Bowie, bringing the styles to life by talking to designers, tailors, stars and style icons past and present” The Face, April 2001 Including such material undeniably made the content of the book richer, bringing to the fore more unique and less commercial publications. Paul highlights Gloria Stavers as a key figure in revolutionising US pop publishing in the 50s and 60s, working at 16 magazine where Paul says she “catered to the demands of young females in America”, coming up with funny questionnaires for popstars to answer, and insider lingo – now a central component of publishing for young adults. “It may seem corny but this made readers feel part of a world apart from their staid parents,” Paul says. “In such generation gaps, pop culture thrives.”An illuminating treatise … Gorman expertly combines first-hand interviews with his own insight from inside the trenches to paint a vivid portrait … essential reading' By the time Ted Kessler became editor of the monthly magazine Q in 2016, all the above and more was available for free online. No wonder he was afraid that he would be Q’s last editor. Four years later his fear came true, which at least gave him the title for his book, which is a combination of personal memoir, war stories about wrangling the likes of Radiohead, Happy Mondays and Oasis, and rueful reflections on how things looked from within the industry when the tide was going out, never to return. In any area of media, when the market is expanding it’s hard to do much wrong, and as soon as it’s shrinking it’s impossible to do anything right. The music press as we knew it barely exists any more, which makes 'Totally Wired' the perfect eulogy - a broad, deep, fascinating exploration of its 100-year lifespan' - Alexis Petridis Herein are documented the rise and fall of scores of music papers, from titans like New Musical Express and Melody Maker to radical papers like Oz and IT, from later, hugely successful, glossies like Smash Hits, The Face and Q to publications that were little more than Xeroxed fanzines, all of them staffed by schemers and dreamers drawn to the bright lights of pop, most of them engaging characters of one sort or another whose work is documented and, to some extent, assessed by colleagues and the author himself. Furthermore, although the emphasis is on the UK, Totally Wired extends its reach to the US with its dry trade journals like Billboard, twinkling teenybop mags like 16 and hard-nosed monthlies like Creem, and where the struggle to outshine Rolling Stone continues to this day. In that regard, author Paul Gorman has certainly done his homework. Starting with ‘Melody Maker’ in the 1920s, Gorman traces the origins of the music press in both the U.K. and the U.S. He follows the rise of print titles such as ‘New Musical Express’ (whose launch in the 1950s inadvertently invented the Top 40 singles charts) and ‘Rolling Stone’ (that combined music with politics and protest while also commoditising the 1960s even while they were still happening). From there, “Totally Wired” brings us through the 1980s, possibly the high watermark of music press publications (in the U.K. at least), when glossy titles like ‘Smash Hits’, ‘The Face’, and ‘Q’ captured the cultural zeitgeist.

First started reading "my bible", the NME in late 1977, early1978, and religiously never missing a copy through the 80s, until the late 90s, when imo, it started to go downhill. The teen market spawned a slew of vibrant newcomers—notably Dig, Hit Parader and 16, which laid the foundations for US music criticism in the 1960s and ’70s. Dig’s target market was made clear by the name of its publisher: Teenage Magazines. It emerged from Hollywood in 1955 alongside other bids to exploit the new demographic, such as Modern Teen and Teen Scene. “In sharp contrast with the moralistic flavor of earlier youth magazines,” one sociologist of the period concluded, “the post-war group is distinguished by its hedonistic values within an essentially amoral setting: the teen years are not ones of preparation for responsible adulthood, but of play and diversion.” Everyone from Bob Geldof, Chrissie Hynde and Neil Tennant to Danny Baker, Caroline Coon, Julie Burchill, Barbara Ellen, Caitlin Moran, Miranda Sawyer and movie directors Cameron Crowe and Anton Corbijn (and even Michael Winner) cut their teeth on music magazines such as Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Rolling Stone, ZigZag and Smash Hits. Columnists included DJ Pete Murray, a presenter of the BBC’s first pop television show, Six-Five Special. He was among the high-profile entertainment names who gathered to launch Disc in February 1958. The mood was dampened when Buchan announced that he would not make a celebratory speech because news had broken that eight Manchester United footballers had died in an air crash in Munich.Edited by and written for young women and people from disadvantaged communities, 30 issues of LA-based Ben Is Dead (named after the ex-husband of prime mover Darby Romeo) were published over 11 years from the late 80s and distributed free through an alternative network of record stores, coffee shops and boutiques. Each issue adopted a theme – ‘Sex’, ‘Broke’ and ‘Disinformation’ – and combined wiseass humour with kaleidoscopic visuals. Romeo and her partner-in-crime Kerin Morayata were hired as contributing editors at Vanity Fair and their ‘Sassy’ edition featuring cover star Chelsea Clinton made it to the White House.