In The R.Elms of the Senseless (the style press then and now)

 

NME cartoon circa 1981 nicely skewers the self-declared aristocracies of club culture 

Apropos

Oh the myopic narcissism of the young!  Or in this case, the once-young....  

Of course there was rather a lot more to the Eighties even within the narrow realm of trendy clothes worn and trendy sounds danced to than what went down at Blitz

A preponderance of  right-time-right-places... and we won't even get on to rock's claims on all that

I'm sure it's just a subtitle to sell books and he doesn't actually believe that Blitz set the template for the entire decade.

Would be tragic if he did... 

In The R.Elms of the Senseless....  Actually I don't mind his Face-era writing at all -  a naturally gifted rhetorician, in full command of those cadences that announce "listen up, I'm about to hip you to the score", carrying you along despite yourself. 

The Hard Times piece, while risible in its complete reversal on Blitz-escapism, is a rhythmically exciting read - redeemed (or at least, made effective) by the sense that he really does believe it, in the moment of typing. 

Then there was another turn of the cycle - Hard Times (clubbing as political, deejays as militants, torn jeans as recession wear. "Money's Too Tight To Mention") was followed a few years later by Good Times (not quite an overt celebration of casuals and their expensive sweaters but it does say "money is in")

Talking about self-declared aristocracies 

“Picture angular glimpses of sharp youth cutting strident shapes through the curling grey of 3 am. Hear the soaring joy of immaculate rhythms, the sublime glow of music for heroes driving straight to the heart of the dance. Follow the stirring vision and rousing sound on the path towards journeys to glory.”

That's Robert hymning Spandau on the back cover of Journeys To Glory 

The 1980 NME live review (no worries about conflict of interest in them days! he'd only named the band.... ) that launched it all

"Their strident elitism means that unless your ears are pinned firmly to the 'right' ground your chances of seeing them are at present slim. On the evidence of their latest performance it really is your loss"

NME pisstake Elms's I-wanna-Face-of-me-own venture New Sounds, New Styles

In the Eighties, I used to think of the style bibles as the enemy but I read them avidly - well they had loads of good writing, including a lot of people who once used to write for NME and the other weeklies. The Face had some of the sharpest columnists around - Savage, Burchill, Marek Kohn.... and the super intellectual team of Steve Beard and Jim McClellan, who seemed to oscillate between The Face and iD.

And in truth I would have been happy to write for them and in fact did write for iD, sporadically in the second half of the Eighties, and then after a pause, again a few times in the '90s.   (Eventually I did write for The Face too - in the 21st Century). (Oh yes and well before that, in the early 90s, I did some stuff for Arena - which was a sort of men's magazine offshoot of The Face, yet another Nick Logan invention with Neville Brody design). 

In the 1980s, the style bibles were useful adversaries, ideologically speaking. They beamed out this fantasy of metropolitan chic and rock-is-dead eclecticism - the idea that there's a place where it's all happening, an in-crowd subworld - they beamed this dream out to hair salon owners and aspiring fashion designers in the sticks. 

We at MM pushed our own quite different fantasies. 

The thing that surprised me when I went around to the iD office, which was then quite near Melody Maker, Drury Lane / Holborn, is just how shabby and cramped it was. Melody Maker was incredibly messy but it was quite a large space.  And quite bustling. The iD office was empty apart from the editor Dylan Jones and assistant editor Alix Sharkey, whose face I recognised from fronting the Morley-hyped but spectacularly null funk outfit Stimulin.

And apparently it was much the same with the Face in its first decade or so - a shoestring operation. Not the chic salon-like place that the design and the look of the magazine would suggest. 

Both magazines were done on a meagre budget yet managed to concoct this mirage of hip London that they transmitted all across the country and indeed internationally. (Joy bought both religiously).

If you look at an old issue now, especially early on, you can see how Face and iD were cobbled together in a last-minute dash just like the music papers. All kind of no-hope chancers getting featurettes, completely forgotten groups and motormouth types hawking something or other.

I remember Kodwo Eshun - I had no idea then who he was going to become! - came up to interview me (supposedly for the Oxford student mag Cherwell - I think he just wanted to meet). During a lively conversation at an outdoor table in Endell Street, he expressed disappointment that we hadn't gone straight from Monitor to The Face and iD. Like it hurt him to have to pick up a copy of Melody Maker every week, this broadsheet that left ink on your fingers.  

But I rather liked the idea of operating from this supposedly clapped-out, obsolesced institution, going against the grain of times.  (When the grain of the times was things like Absolute Beginners). 

Besides, the format was in alignment with what we were pushing - a resurgent rock underground.

Also the music papers came out 51 times a year, whereas the style mags came out monthly. So there was just vastly more space for our verbosity to frolic in. 

I should imagine it was very hard for a freelancer writing for a style magazine to make enough to live on, given you only have 12 paydays a year. And I seem to remember the iD word rate was modest, no better and possibly worse than the frightful word-rate at MM.  At MM, if you were prolific and voluble, you could make a nice living as a freelancer, simply because there was so much space to fill. 

The 51 issues (Xmas a double, lasted a fortnight) enabled you to construct more of an ongoing world.

That's what all these magazines were about - world creation, world maintenance. 

I miss that. Is there any publication today, print or online that does that?

Well, No Bells does. They have meet-ups, events where people read music criticism aloud. It's a social space, not just a disembodied discourse space. The magazine is a locus of vibe. 

Talking of style bibles, on a recent trip to New York, we went into a store that was choc-a-block with magazines into cutting edge fashion. Sort of modern day equivalents to iD and Face (both of those still going of course, as print entities - and bigger than ever in a literal sense - each issue is a monstrous paving stone of glossy fashion spreads, adverts, something you could injure yourself with if you picked it up without bending your knees properly, or injure someone else with, if wielded as weapon.) 

I was staggered by how many of these style magazines there were - piled up everywhere, not an inch of space in this hipster newsagent I guess. From all over the world, with Steve McQueen-esque ugly-as-beauty images on the front. 

Rather like with art books, I wondered what the financial and production logistics are when doing a magazine like this  - quality paper stock, full gloss ultra-vivid images.  The bottom line. 

Do all the photographers and models and make-up and styling people just work for free in the hope of furthering their careers? 

Advertising must bring in some money, from fashion and beauty products and trendy shit. But the cost of doing something so luxurious looking and feeling, and in presumably quite small print runs, must be enormous. And then the physical cost of distributing something so bulky. The shops must take a hefty mark-up given the amount of sheer volume each issue takes up.

Also rather like with art books, I wondered who actually buys these things,... They seemed to be retailing anywhere from $20 to $40 bucks each.  I have a mental block with paying that for a magazine. 

So I guess very rich people, or cutting edge fashion obsessives (same difference?).

And they doubtless function less as something to actually read and more like a coffee table book. Something to flick through desultorily or just have sitting there. 

Still mystified by the title of this sports-as-style-microculture magazine

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Paul Oldfield fires a salvo at The Face on the occasion of its 100th isssue.

And also analyses Neville Brody's work.

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Wandering around NYC I was amazed how saturated everywhere was with fashion advertising. I mean, yes it's always been there, but it was really kind of total in places like SoHo. Enormous, glossy images. Everything hyper-real and supersaturated. Often on LED screens rather than just posters. 

Was also startled by the fashionization of Dr. Martens

I remember in the 1980s having to going to a rather poky, plain shop next to Camden tube station to get DMs.  The kind of place that would do shoe repairs and cut keys as well as sell shoes. (Actually I might be imagining that aspect but it certainly had nothing fashion boutiquey about it). 

DMs were "cool" through the skin and punk connection, but they still had some kind of residual currency as practical footwear, the kind of thing someone who worked in a factory or on a building site might wear for protection against things falling on the foot. 

I expect this chic-ification has been going on for a while and I hadn't noticed. 

Our kid asked for a pair of DMs some years ago and only wore them once - I was furious. They cost about $130.