The decline of Q magazine

Thanks for your insightful post.

 

Didn't it start to go downhill in about 1987? I am amazed it is still going. I have never met anybody who has read it for 25 years.

 

I have every single edition and have continually subscribed since it's second month of existence and I have absolutely know idea why I continue. The magazine has been in decline for many a year and as pointed out earlier in the thread it ought to be retitled Gallagher's Monthly. It's not good value either the current subscription is £40, £10 more expensive than the yearly subscription to Uncut which isn't exactly thanking long term loyalty. it can be read in a fraction of the time spent with the other monthlies and no gifted CD either. OCD in full effect. "What we have here is a dead shark".

 

Free article about a musician with every book of adverts!

 

You're welcome. I suppose what I was trying to get at was that most magazines have a more or less natural life span. Mark Ellen, founding editor of both Q and Mojo, has said Q caught the wave of CDs/the CD generation (inc. people upgrading vinyl to CD hence rediscovering 60s/70s guys as well as current 80s/90s artists) while Mojo caught the 'box set' wave - the expanded/deluxe second-wave of CD reissues and those same 60s/70s guys again, but with a more serious, reverential, grown-up tone than the early Q years. There comes a point that most of the key artists - and by that I mean artists that WILL shift units if they're on the cover - have been featured so many times that their story has nothing more to give. These days, there are only 5 or 6 cover artists who sell music magazines in meaningful numbers in the UK - Beatles, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Neil Young, maybe one or two others. At the level that Record Collector and other niche magazines like Prog, RnR, Shindig!, etc operate, c.20,000 copies, it can be others - but at the Mojo/Uncut level, they are to a great extent in thrall with a handful of acts and the advertising that goes with them. The LZ deluxe editions and the various Beatles projects in recent years will have been a godsend. Similarly, every time Paul McCartney has had one of his single-album deluxe sets out, he's had a Mojo front cover, proclaiming it a great lost work with exclusive interviews and penetrating analysis. Sad, really.

 

The Beano's sales are up on last year, which were up on the year before.

 

That's great to know. Long may it continue!

 

Think my baling out point was the Spice Girls on the cover. Great at the beginning but went into a bit of a decline for me.

I still buy Mojo but recently went through and ripped the bits I wanted to keep and ditched the rest.

 

Record Collector is the only one for me these days. Finally put the money down on a subscription--happy I did. Only wish Jonny Trunk's OST column would appear every month, but, hey, that's what back issues are for!

I stopped buying Q regularly a few years ago, but cannot resist a Q Noel Gallagher cover/interview, ever. Still, I mourned the decline of the photo captions, "Who the Hell..." (admittedly a victim of its own success), general wit, etc. Sadly, I also pass on Uncut and Mojo these days...

 

My favourite photo caption was one of Crosby Stills Nash & Young with the caption CRA&P!

 

I still have an international subscription to Uncut and I pick up Mojo whenever there’s a cover subject that interests me (maybe 1/3 of the time)... at this point it’s just habit. Something to have on hand for lazy Sunday afternoons. There’s some good stuff, but lots of fluff, too. And cycling through the same subject matter gets cumbersome. And as an American, there’s no way I’ll ever solve the crossword ;-)

That said, I’m glad there’s still an audience for this material. I just wish half of the cover subjects wouldn’t be the same year after year. But I appreciate that they are still considered relevant enough to be featured in these publications.

 

I still remember the one with R.E.M.'s four members referred to as "Weirdy, beardy, boffin, and bongo".

 

Was sorting through magazines the other day and putting them into storage boxes. For some reason I only have a few Qs although I'm sure I bought more (I seldom ditch magazines and do go back to them on occasion for a retro read). I do have the Threatles one mentioned and the 10th anniversary issue had an outing recently.

There are large collections of Record Collector, Mojo, Uncut and a box of Word too (which I'd forgotten about and will have a look through). There are others that I have just occasional copies of (Zigzag, Jamming, etc.) but the only complete run I have is Shindig along with the annuals, special editions etc. It is the only one I'm subscribing too at present. The others are occasional purchases now. Q I have not even browsed for a long time. I'm not sure what went wrong. I guess I'm not their target audience anymore. Shindig, which is admittedly a niche magazine, does still work for me and does cover both new and old music within its remit and it does seem to actually care. I think some of the others lost an element of 'contact' along the way.

I don't really subscribe to the internet replacing the printed word. There is nothing quite like holding a real magazine and I think that you do invest more of yourself into something that you have financially invested in rather than just grabbed from the net. Layout and design mean something to me too so a well laid out magazine is always a joy to behold.

 

Cannot remember that one, but would like to reread that article.

 

I think my favourite was from the late 90’s when they ran this photo of Marillion with the caption:

“Marillion. Relax ladies, they’re married.”

 

I've stopped even browsing through Uncut & Mojo these days, partly due to the repetitious nature of so many articles about the same old warhorses, as already mentioned, but certainly since everything released by Bob Dylan automatically gets 10/10 or ***** now, even what I consider is barely listenable. By most standards I'm a great fan of most of Dylan's work too but I'll never be a Dylan sycophant which practically rules me out of reading those mags!

 

Mine was under a picture of Liam Gallagher swaggering about on stage with a tamborine.

"He's not just a singer y'know."

 

People are talking about covers and stories being rehashed, well that caption certainly has been over the years - amongst others, I remember it being under a picture of Uriah Heep too!

 

I totally agree with that summation of Allan Jones, never a missed opportunity to start going on about all the cool s*** he saw or was involved in back in the day.
Stopped buying it before Mulvey took over. Too many reviews, on and on, and you'd see on the cover 700 Albums Reviewed! but some of them were just a line.

 

I used to buy 'Sounds' as a kid (B&W music weekly with a generally rockist slant). I used to skim through the NME and Melody Maker in the newsagent too, though rarely buy them.

I then had a stint buying Kerrang! but it became embarrassing...

Then I found Q and bought it from issue 2 onwards, every month until the late 90's. I also bought the first few issues of the short-lived 'Vox' magazine (which used to have a cassette on the cover!).

I the mid to late 90's I started on Mojo and, occasionally, Uncut and I've had a subscription to Mojo for nearly 20 years - though I rarely find time to read it now...

Q was great for quite a long time but we parted ways when I became older and it seemed to get younger. - Occasionally, to this day, I will dig out an old CD and find a copy of the 'Q CD Sleeve Notes' inside. Does anyone remember those?

I've bought many a copy of Record Collector in my time, though not for at least 15 years. It used to annoy me more than entertain me because the editor/writers would sometimes INSIST that a certain record existed in a certain pressing and would absolutely and utterly refuse to accept any other opinion or evidence to the contrary. Sometimes these totally false 'facts' would persist for years; usually based on nothing more than half-arsed assumption and/or lazy investigation - UK spiral Vertigo label Ralph & Florian (Kraftwerk)?! No! - UK pink Island label Bryter Later (Nick Drake)?! No! - There's a long list...

I'm rambling now...

 

From where I sit - Mojo/Uncut has done a really good job of convincing readers that it's okay to just keep returning to Floyd, Paul, Zep, etc.

Granted, one of them had an "Island Folk" freebie disc that furthered me on my journey with that stuff (John Martyn and Sandy Denny especially). But these days I'm seeing subjects rehashed and reworked once again so many times I've lost count since I started buying them circa 2001.

 

Yes, I kept them too, with the CD.
The Clash, Exile, Blonde On Blonde etc...

 

I have a real fondness for this magazine. I have every issue from the first up until the end of the 90s stored away in the attic. Occasionally, I go up there and take a trip back through time. It was a wonderful magazine back in the day.

 

I also recall an unflattering pic of industrial band Godflesh the caption to which was "the drum machine gets all the groupies"

 

So you are saying that it went downhill after only one year?
Complete bull, it was a great magazine for a good few years, maybe up until the early/mid 90's.