Get In The Q: We Read The British Music Magazines, So You Don’t Have To

Brian Raftery | March 20, 2007 1:15 am

Once again, we save you precious time (2.5 hours) and money ($27.74) by surveying the latest issues of the big British music magazines: Q, Uncut and Mojo. After the click-through, our handy consumer’s guide.

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Uncut Cover: Keith Moon Centerpiece Feature: Moon’s friends and bandmates remember all the crazy shit he did. Highlights: An obituary of overlooked songwriter Dennis Linde; an oral history of Madness’ “Our House.” Lowlights: We still can’t understand why Uncut uses up valuable feature-well space to reprint “classic” stories that are only a few years old. What’s the point of running a Robert Smith interview from 2004? To see if his hair looked any less spiky back then? The Arcade Fire album: Will it save us all?: Maybe! (Three stars) The “Whosit’s Doing What Now?” Award For Most Prominently Featured British Celebrity We’ve Never Heard Of: Russell Brand

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Q Cover: Some guy from Snow Patrol. Nigel something? Ian? Louie? Centerpiece Feature: “The 100 Greatest Singers & Their 1000 Greatest Songs,” a.k.a. “The 100 older artists who we bank on to sell magazines, and the photos of them that we’re running for the 1000th time.” Highlight/Lowlights: When the best you can do is Q&As with Gary Lightbody and Joss Stone, your highlights and lowlights merge together to form one big, white, blinding dervish of mediocrity. The Arcade Fire album: Will it save us all?: Of course! (Five stars) The “Whosit’s Doing What Now?” Award For Most Prominently Featured British Celebrity We’ve Never Heard Of: Russell Watson

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Mojo Cover: Iggy Pop Centerpiece Feature: The Stooges: Will any other album this year get so many fawning features, and yet so few positive reviews? Highlights: A Ron Wood Q&A, in which he talks about being near-knifed by Keith Richards (though come to think of it, every Q&A subject in Mojo in the last year has probably had the same problem); a feature on newly resurgent ’60s folikes Pentangle. Lowlights: The article on Genesis’ mid-’80s heyday is way too short–why skip over the Invisible Touch years? We want to know what happened to that Bruce Springsteen puppet! The Arcade Fire album: Will it save us all?: Probably! (Four stars) The “Whosit’s Doing What Now?” Award For Most Prominently Featured British Celebrity We’ve Never Heard Of: Sergio “Russell” Pizzorno