NME off to the Internet

One of my favourite NME covers

The end as come for NME music magazine after it was finally put to the sword its print edition that is and will now live on the internet where one day all newsprint will end up, sadly. I was not big into the NME I was a dipper in kind of reader as I was a Sounds magazine follower and would go into town every Thursday to by it.

Music was an essential part of my late-teenage years even earlier and a lot of my attitude toward music even today was shaped by it. There was really nowhere to keep up with the new trends in the music scene other than specialist music magazines/papers. Before the likes of the Daily Mirror newspaper noticing say the emerging Two Tone scene in the late seventies the musical press had already analysed, studied, and given a verdict on the music.

Like I said I occasionally picked up NME, but one thing I did notice with the covers of NME their covers were edgy. It (Sounds) was clever, funny, often savage, and introduced me to a world beyond music to films, books, and a bit of politics. The music writers popped up with some good features and gig reviews making for an enjoyable read.

I stopped reading it around 1982 because of the New Romantics killing off my interest in new music and it was becoming too Heavy Metal based. To be honest the arrival of the New Romantics meant the end of the music tribe with cheesy pop and American music taking over. Lucky for me my music lifeline came mostly from the seventies although there was still music produced I liked but the odd tracks.

I used to buy albums before I’d even heard them on the word of a Sounds review (not always with positive results I have to say) but nobody has to do that these days. Nor do they need a list of tour dates. Like many paper publications, to keep themselves going they needed to retreat to the internet. Even Sounds was relaunched on the internet after shutting down in 1991. I’m still very sad to see the print word gone and feel the teenagers of today are missing out. End of an era.