Q is becoming Hotpress which became smash hits Uncut has a special on bowie this month with the cd full of bowie covers - pure choons like

funny i was thinkin exactly that...have you seen the 200th issue? should be a bit of a milestone right? pathetic! obsessed with the fact that courtney love got naked in london and interviews with yer wans aguilera, lavigne and the bird from party of five. absolute horse s h i t

Stopped buying it years ago - around the time I discovered Uncut, a vastly superior publication IMHO. If I had to fault it, they tend to run a lot of their feature articles on seventies groups but I do find them all to be interesting (particularly the pieces on CSNY and the Eagles - musically very suspect but the stories of their excess and infighting are jaw dropping). Equally, I finally ran up the white flag for my relationship with Radiohead having read a 25 page interview with Thom Yorke there in which he came across as mind numbingly boring. Generally, it is worth every penny of its 7 ish euro.

q is a major label advertising rag. hotpress is only good for the whats on and whats out. uncut is too retro. kerrang is for kids. nme is too arrogant.

Actually bought NME for the first time in years just before Christmas. Could.t believe what a steaming pile of piss it was. It really must take time and effort to write such dross. Agree that Uncut is too retro but still the best of a very bad lot. Has anyone (ever) bought Mojo? On the other hand, we all know how bad these mags are, are there any good ones we should check out in other countries (preferably Engrish). Surely we can sourse a good mag from someplace round the globe via the old interweb?

Mojo has improved a lot over the last few years. Less of an emphasis now on the Beatles and Beach Boys, more on new music and the more obscure groups & styles of the past. Q is a joke. So are Hot Press and NME. The Wire is good if you want to read about off-mainstream topics. I used to like Straight No Chaser for dancey stuff, but I haven't seen it on the shelves in ages.

To be honest if it's more then €3 you can stick it...I can't beleive the price of the sh*te that's on the shelves these days...not trying to be all bah humbug or anything - but come on.....€6 for a frickin magazine? gis a break....and NME was once upon a time a cheap and cheerful publication (when it was half interesting I suppose) but even that's a rip off now....If it was crap you didn't care cos it cost 75p or something so you could just use it to wallpapaer your bathroom or something....!

the simple reason uncut have annoyingly endless cover articles on the beatles, stones, who etc. etc. is that noone's going to buy the mag if bonnie prince billy or whoever is on the cover...in an ideal world, he or wilco or beth gibbons etc. would adorn the cover but then the mag'd go bankrupt...i HATE all the coverage given to these old legends who mean nothing to me...the only music i listen to pre-80s is nina simone, gram parsons and early tom waits...the beatles, bob dylan, the stones, the clash etc., like i said, mean f**k-all to me and i'm sick of the sight and sound of all of them...but without the majority of people buying uncut to read yet more stories about john lennon or whoever, the minority would not get to read about new and exciting acts, esp. from america, that they cover, albeit in far less detail...they do feature underground (for want of a better phrase) music, esp. on their free CDs, which, for me, have been a joyous source of much great music i've gone on to discover, people like sparklehorse, damien jurado, the czars etc...so if we have to put up with perennial mush about bob dylan or whoever to continue unearthing truly great music, then so be it!

can i also say uncut have featured much irish music well before hot bloody press, the irish times or anyone else gave a s**t...they latched onto gemma hayes and david kitt early on, have featured paul o'reilly, including a song on one of their cds, the same is true of desert hearts and they gave boa morte's record a rave review on its release...

I agree that Uncut tends to be very retro in it's choice of cover stories. For instance, next month is a top 50 Bruce Springsteen tracks as voted by current *stars*. It will be a crock as all of their top 50 lists have been. Nonetheless, some of their cover articles have been hugely interesting even if their subjects (on the face of it) have not. I couldn't believe how much the Eagles hated each other, how Led Zeppelin changed the face of touring for all bands by making sure they and not the promoters got the money (before them no band had made any money touring America) or how the drums the spent weeks perfecting for the Bowie track Fashion were the sound used for all of the drum machines used in the eighties. So, whilst the subjects themselves might not be that interesting musically, the annecdotes are always worth the read. Agree with King of nails though, their CDs always throw up a couple of excellent new bands which I for one would never have come across. I can safely say that a lot of the music I am listening to recently is lifted directly from their reviews. The likes of Wilco, Jesse MAlin, Flaming Lips, Giant Sand not to mention those classics I have dug up from the vaults like Sugar, Afghan Whigs, Jeff Buckley. SO, their cover srticles tend to be a bit dad-rock but everything else about the mag is pretty much spot on.

Best of a bad bunch, if you ask me............. Q2

Actually, the success of the Wire shows that you don't have to put oldies on the cover to sell magazines, but you do have to have quality journalism and keep your eye on the musical ball (Hot Press take note!). The Wire is Britain's biggest selling properly independent music mag - by which they mean the editors and publishers are the same people. I also like informative articles about the music of yesteryear, but I despise articles that suggest that Pet Sounds and Revolver were the best records ever made. Mojo don't seem to be doing so much of that any more, thankfully. Must re-check out Uncut. When it first came out it seemed a poor mish-mash of middle-of-road music and films.