A basic guide.

Love or hate them journalists tell us the stories of the day, give their opinions and report on what’s happening both locally, nationally and the world at large. This is the same with music and the history of the music press is long and interesting particularly in Britain where it has flourished remarkably well until the online revolution finally relegated the inked word in the late nineteen nineties and the 21st century.

In Nottingham today, we have the excellent “Left Lion” which started in 2003.

The 1990’s was served by the equally excellent “Overall: There is a Smell of fried onions”.

In the eighties “Citywise” took the political mantle and “Scoop”, more a fanzine than magazine covered local music.

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With a short look back into history we can plot some of the highlights of the music press nationally and close to our region.

Although preceded by “Gramophone” in 1923, the first excepted music paper was when the Melody Maker was launched in 1926 by songwriter Frederick Lawrence Wright. It was the first recognisable magazine devoted to music in the world at large. Mainly aimed at the Dance Band musicians of the day it set a standard of reporting and writing that would inspire others. Jazz was the primary concern of the Melody Maker, something it kept at its core for many decades.

The “Gramophone” was a magazine published monthly in London. Established Scottish author Compton Mackenzie. It was devoted to classical music, and in the 20’s and 30’s it also featured gramophones and sound equipment.

In the 1940’s smaller Jazz publications were available and Notts had two writers who were part of that British jazz movement. Bill Kinnell who was a founder of the Nottingham Jazz club (the country’s oldest surviving jazz club), gig promoter and larger than life character befriended James Asman who was based in Newark. They both wrote articles for “Jazz News”. James Asman would carry on his journalistic career and eventually joined the Melody Maker team in the fifties.

The New Musical Express (NME) was launched in 1952 from the old “Musical Express” and they published the first recognisable pop chart on 14th November 1952.

By the late fifties with the advent of Rock and Roll Disc magazine and Record Mirror were also in competition. The Beatles and the sixties youth explosion saw many teen annuals and magazines littering the newsagent stands such as Rave, Pop Weekly, Fab 208 and Beat Instrumental. Midland Beat magazine had monthly reports on each Midlands county and the local groups of Nottinghamshire between 1964 and 1967 are well recorded.

The national and local press were starting to allow articles on music to be printed and in Nottingham Richard Williams wrote in the Nottingham Guardian and Evening Post in the late sixties before moving to the Melody Maker and eventually the national press via a short stint introducing the Old Grey Whistle Test.

In late 1967 a short lived colour magazine appeared called “Flower Scene”. Its editorial and advertising offices were based at Leen Gate in Nottingham. The editor was Martin Graham and it concentrated on the national scene which at the time was dominated by Pepper style Beatles, Frank Zappa, Hendrix, The Who, The Stones, The Pretty Things and co. It only managed 4 issues before closing. It may not have been a “Nottingham” magazine per se but maybe had some connection.

In the mid sixties there was the rise of the underground press and a more serious approach to music journalism. In America Rolling Stone was at the forefront and in Britain underground radical press like Oz, It and Friends beckoned in a new direction for writing about the music culture of the sixties and seventies. Trent Bookshop opened in 1964 on Pavilion Road near Trent Bridge before moving to Drury Hill giving an outlet for Avant Garde literature and also helping produce “Tarasque press” published between 1965 and 1971. “Mushroom”, Nottingham’s first underground / hippie book shop opened on Arkwright Street in 1972 before moving to Heathcote street in town. Closed around the turn of the century “Five Leaves” is now the independent bookshop for our times.

There was University publications too. At Nottingham University they produced Gongster. The students also produced their annual rag mag “Chick” In 1967 the Trent Polytechnic had “Iota”.

The clubland scene was served by the “Gazette”.

In 1973, Nottingham magazine “Splinter” covered local politics and cultural aspects giving an alternative voice with music being covered by Dave Brett and Al Atkinson.

From 1974 onwards there was also “Grass Roots” which became the “Nottingham Voice”, closer to a fanzine than a magazine, which both reported on the political and cultural aspects of Nottingham life but also covering music. Dave Brett wrote for both before launching the fully music devoted music magazine “Way Ahead”. In 1978 the Nottingham Voice became “Nottingham quarterly”.

It was in this environment that Nottingham saw two music magazines arise. In 1975 Liquorice was launched by Malcolm Heyhoe concentrating on mainly British music and in 1976 Way Ahead magazine, headed by Tim Minnot and Dave Brett, was pivotal in giving a voice to local bands and the local scene as well as the national outlook.

LIQUORICE

WAY AHEAD

All through the 60’s and 70’s the three national music papers kept us abreast of all that was going on in the world of rock and pop. The Melody Maker, New Musical Express and Sounds were more likely to be seen in a young persons hands than anything from Fleet street.

These papers and the many other music mags like Zigzag, Nuggets and Dark Star continued to thrive through the seventies and into the eighties.

With the advent of punk in 1977 fanzines appeared around the country and in Nottingham, “Rotten to the Core” produced by Dave Chaos was the first to appear locally in 1977 and 1978.

The music press in general had its zenith in the sixties and seventies but still retained a powerful prescience in the eighties. Smash Hits and The Face defined that time. In the sixties the music press only looked forward. This was the same for most of the seventies with only a little “looking back”. In the 1980’s stirred the first signs of proper nostalgia as popular music now had a long enough history to peruse.

In the late eighties the fanzine “Lobster Telephone” could be found at the “Garage” or “Selecta-Disc”. It was in the late eighties that there was a boom in football fanzines and a closer alliance between the worlds of music and sport.

Casey Watson, November 2022