Q magazine closes...

When I moved from the UK to the US in 1988, Q kept me up to date with all that was going on in the UK, and helped me with some homesickness. I'll always have a soft spot for Q for that. I bought Q for -what - around 30 years! I did eventually switch to Mojo about 4 years ago.

 

The loss of jobs, and the further demise of written media, is regrettable.

Q, though, for whatever reason (and many have been given already) lost its way and/or became a shadow of its original self a long time ago. I bought it religiously for the first 10-15 years, and for the first 10 of those it was an event, one of the biggest things for me each month along with the weekly charts in RM.

I migrated to (The) Word and that was a real kicker when it shut down. That was the moment when quality music journalism was effectively sentenced to a slow, painful death.

EG.

 

Think Mojo should be alright( safe)
Record Collector one of the oldest mags. I remember when it was small sized. Sorta pocket sized .. thought better.

 

Record Collector I still buy occasionally, if I've got a long train journey or something. Mojo very very occasionally but, basically, hardly ever. The Wire is probably the only one I buy more than once in a blue moon.

 

As late as 1978, Rolling Stone would still dare to trash even a superstar like Dylan:

Street Legal

From the infamous five-star review of the Who’s It’s Hard, Rolling Stone has long since turned into a puff piece factory for classic rock artists, and Mojo has long since adopted the same “best since Exile on Main Street” puff piece policy to the Dylans, Nick Caves, Jack Whites, R.E.M.s, Paul Wellers, etc. whom it can’t live without. Every new album is a four or five star masterwork. Never mind that back in the day, Mojo didn’t even assign stars and actually wrote meaningful reviews or dared to acknowledge that not everything was wonderful and perfect.

It saddens me that I can’t find it in my heart to agree with my colleague Dave Marsh that Bob Dylan‘s new record is a joke, or anyway a good one. Most of the stuff here is dead air, or close to it. The novelty of the music — soul chorus backup (modeled on Bob Marley‘s I-Threes), funk riffs from the band, lots of laconic sax work — quickly fades as one realizes how indifferent the playing is: “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power),” the most musically striking number here, is really just a pastiche of the best moments of the Eagles‘ Hotel California. Still, I believe some of the songs on Street Legal: those that are too bad to have been intended with anything but complete seriousness. Dylan may have once needed a dump truck to unload his head, but you’d need a Geiger counter to find irony in “Is Your Love in Vain?” or affection in “Baby Stop Crying.”

 

Eighties Q Magazines were thick door stopper sized. You would flick through and discover something new you missed the first time.

 

According to the editor’s tweet and last issue letter the pandemic was the final nail in the coffin though...

 

MOJO will be alright as long as it continues to feature the classic acts it always has, Dylan, Beatles et al. The current issue #322 September 2020 features Aladdin Sane era Bowie on the front cover. The classic acts have been MOJOs bread and butter since issue one.

 

Perhaps they were, but as I mentioned, their cover mounted CDs were fantastic. They introduced me to a lot of great new music. I think they put Thea Gilmore on them 6 times in the span of a couple of years, and every one was a keeper.

Come to think of though, it was because of Uncut that I was able to catch Yasujiro Ozu's "Tokyo Story" in the theater in London. Just their description of it made me want to see it. They obviously knew their movies too.

 

I've always preferred Mojo and Uncut to Q, but this is very sad news.

 

One of the few times I got my name in print was in Q Magazine, in the "Whatever Happened To" when I enquires about The Motors.
I stopped buying it when they got fixated on REM and U2 but im sad to see it go.

 

For this Gen Xer, Q, Select, NME and Melody Maker were auto buys in the mid 1990s until the early 2000s. I discovered a lot of UK Music Artists through those Magazines, despite being cynical on some of the high rated reviews. Also, NME was such a Hype Machine for The Strokes, The White Stripes and The Vines(remember The Vines, who were suppose to be the Next Big Band?).

I still recall the Q Magazine Best of 1997 CD that introduced me to the Music of Mansun, Texas, among others. Cost a lot of money to buy these Music Magazines in the US. In the past 10 years, I only bought Q(and Mojo & Uncut) December issue as a referral for their Best Albums of the Prior Year, but started to realize how they lowly ranked or some times not included at all, some Great Albums.

Music Websites(and the Best of 2020, 2019, etc. Threads on this Forum) have replaced my needs to discover New Music Artists. I would occasionally buy Q, Mojo or Uncut if there was a Cover Feature of one of my Favorite Music Artists, but really not much interest in Uncut that is just an ‘OK Boomer’ Magazine, which keeps recycling Covers of Jurassic Rock Music Artists(some I like and some I have no interest in their Music).

I concur with other Members here, on how much better and missed The Word Magazine was in their brief existence.

Magazines are too expensive for what they provide in content, and like Newspapers, have been made obsolete by websites to get similar content. Sorry about those, who lose their jobs with Magazines and Newspapers going OOB, but society changes and you need to adapt and move on to survive. Like how we had Film Cameras, then Compact Digital Cameras, and now most people(outside of Professional Photographers) just use their iPhones for Photo Needs.

 

The magazine is a mere reflection of what’s happening on the scenes
I’d blame the decline on the decline of music.

Mojo and the like only survive by constantly putting heritage acts on the cover and having 8-12 page articles on such acts.

Q, for better or worse, did always try to be a bit more modern. But as a result I stopped reading it a while back. I continued to pick it up but found myself flicking through most of it saying “never heard of them , them or them...”

 

Yes, agree entirely. Haven’t bought a mag since. Threw out hundreds of them years ago, kept a few specials. It’s a real shame because at their peak these mags were real events. But there’s only so many times you can rehash the same stuff in honour of another reissue, even allowing for the change in the print media business and the music business overall. Word still do stuff online, and regular live events if you’re in London.

 

Sad to see any music publication go...

That said, I'm always amazed by the amount of music mags that are supported in the UK (Uncut, Mojo, Shindig, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Record Collector, etc.) while stateside we have the corpse of Rolling Stone, and... ummm... Entertainment Weekly? People Magazine? Am I missing any? ;-)

 

Totally concur. I loved NME, back in the day, precisely because it wasn't afraid to bite the hand that fed it. No pandering to artists, record companies, advertisers, or even readers. It also had a clutch of top-class writers, who could be relied on to shoot off at tangents.Whereas the monthly glossies, have long since become powder puffs for the music business; magazine and artists totally co-dependent on each other. Loads of sycophancy; 'everything's wonderful' reviews; same old acts endlessly recycled. Articles aren't critiques, more hagiographies.

 

Does old music magazines sell in the U.S., is there a market for them ?

 

I preferred Mojo over Q, but still sad to see it go. One problem is the cover price of these magazines are pretty high, which is one reason I don't read them
anymore.

 

I enjoyed Q for quite a few years. They had their biases, as all magazines have, and I did not agree with many of them. Still, like me, the writers had a passion for music, and that´s the main thing. They did not manage to maintain the high quality throughout the life of the magazine, but I am sad to see them go.

 

As I said above, how long can that go on? How many more articles about Aladdin Sane era Bowie can they write? Even I’m getting bored with that format. I have several Mojo Bowie specials to read already. Sooner or later, they’re going to have beyond Joy Division and the Smiths as the outer limits of their cover star acts. For a while there, they would occasionally feature a new artist like the Strokes or the Arctic Monkeys on the cover, but it’s been a while since they’ve done that. Maybe Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever or whoever else is the Mojo-approved new artist of the moment isn’t going to shift enough magazines. But I think they’d be wise to put someone like Angel Olsen on the cover once in a while.

 

How many UK mags is left now?
All the UK music weekly press is long gone .. MM, Sounds ..NME( Record Mirror...).

 

I used to love the album reviews pages. I wish they’d put these online. I’m sure some of them were in the early days of the internet.

 

Me, too. I disagreed with a lot of them, but they were always interesting. And sometimes funny - deliberately or not.

 

Haven’t bought Q in years, but always sad to see another one go. Took out the bargain Uncut subscription during lockdown (around £2 a pop) and did subscribe to the ever-improving Long Live Vinyl, but that’s just gone under this week as well

 

Still get mojo and uncut even though the price is hiking up a bit, but a great read . Stopped getting readers wives years ago ,,