Now y’see I like Albert Freeman. I like his excellent radio programme, I like his ready wit, I like his beard, hell, I even like his high visibility vest, but I can’t let his recent comments about my beloved NME go entirely unanswered.
So without prejudice and taking into account the fact I owe him money, I’m going to put forward a case for the defence.

There was a time, when meat were cheap,God were a lad and you could see allt’way to Olrenshaw’s Mill from top of slagheaps on a sunny day, when there were three weekly music papers.

Sounds, which was for people who, for some inexplicable reason, possibly linked to a childhood trauma, liked goth bands like The Mission, Melody Maker which was for people who liked miserable buggers like the Red House Painters and used phrases like “whirling catherdrals of tumescent sound”, and the NME.

All of these were excellent in their way and, as observant readers will have, er..observed, two of them are gone, washed away on the fickle tides of the market economy like Kickers, Reni Hats and smoking without risking hypothermia or being shat on by pigeons.

Sounds went in 1991, Melody Maker hung on untill 2000 , it’s last issue being a glossy, Christmas special which featured on it’s cover, in a desperate attempt to pander to, rather than inform, it’s readership, Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst. An ignominious end, made even more tragic by a little card inside that said “We’re closing , thanks a lot ” which demonstrated the ugly haste with which IPC had made the decision to axe it after 74 years.

Which left the NME, just about kept afloat by the quality of it’s writers and the fact that it chose to diversify online at the right time.
The populist stance that Albert decries, came of necessity to ensure it’s survival. Since then, it has kept to this, mostly limiting its cover stars to bankable faces like Liam Gallagher, or the horrible Johnny Borrell to bring in the curious pop kids, in search of slighty more dirty thrills than JLS can offer them.

However, its inside pages have kept a link to its illustrious past in championing new and exciting things alongside the more staid fare that admittedly comprises some of its content. The recent full page rave review of the new Comanechi LP being a case in point.

Also it’s WEEKLY, so it actually feels like something is happening , rather than the dreary monthly magazines which alternate between Q, which appears to think that anyone intrested in music wants to read about U fucking 2, and Mojo which exists mainly to tell you that Spiggy Wankface who used to be in The Searchers has drowned in his own trout farm or what Tom Petty had for his breakfeast in 1975.
There’s an interview with Sting in the latest issue. Fucking STING!!

The other thing that these Jools Holland loving dadrags never do is take stands. It’s hard to imagine another magazine, music or otherwise actively encouraging its readers to march against the BNP but the NME does it all the time.

And occasionally, just ocasionally mind, it does something genuinely subversive that makes me love it even more, most recently by featuring a naked picture of Beth Ditto on the cover.

Seeing our Beth, 18 stone of unashamedly butt nekkid, squirrel eating, lesbian, punkfunk goddess with a lipstick tatto on her arse, lined up alongside the stereotypical Hollyoakes reject, brickie wank fantasies on the covers of Nuts, Zoo, Loaded and all the other low rent cowards’ porn mags in W.H Smith, made my soul sing. Can you imagine that on the front of the Observer Music Monthly? Can you bollocks.

So I love the NME , it’s not what it was, but neither are Wagon Wheels and I still eat them. Its a treasured part of our cultural heritage and we’re lucky to have it. So there.