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When Mojo magazine started in November 1993, the rumour was that it was going to be aimed at us elderly pop-folk who found Q a bit too challenging and young. Which frankly would have been a daft idea at a time when The Auteurs, Suede, Blur and the Manic Street Preachers were creating the most exciting British rock scene since 1977. Luckily none of this came to pass. I've got every issue of the magazine and - mostly - it's still a decent mag. It was one of the few publications to celebrate Cornershop during the lean years, it's happy to spend several pages ruminating on the Village People and it's the only non-specialist magazine that even mentions doo-wop. In other words, it has the stature and weight of the American monthlies without the stultifying obsession with old white men. In fact it's got a decent claim to being the best rock magazine in the world. At least this was true when Mat Snow was editor. Now I'm not so sure - feels to me like sometimes they think they're a bloody Beatles fanzine: the range of subjects seems to be narrowing. Anyway Snow and Jim Irvin have long been amongst the most informed and committed rock journalists we've got, and they're both old enough to have grown up in the early-70s. Even so they don't claim - like so many others - to have subsisted entirely on a diet of The Stooges and the New York Dolls in the pre-punk years. They were just kids who were a bit more into music than most of their contemporaries and whose love of new sounds continued to develop even after they became 'grown-ups'. Well, you'll see this when you read some of this stuff. Meanwhile, all I'd add is buy Mojo and write to the editor as often as possible to tell him to broaden his coverage.  |
Eddie Amoo | ||