Those of us who cut our teeth on the weekly music press are, by nature, bullishly nostalgic for the days when NME and Melody Maker sold hundreds of thousands of copies, reputations and heated pub exchanges hinging on their contents. Music and its chronicling seemed like the central whorl around which the universe spun. The tone alternated between bumptious certainty and shit-stirring mischief, in-jokes and crusading.
Then two things happened. Around the time Kurt Cobain died, newspapers decided music was worth covering in more depth. A few years later, the internet banjaxed most things printed in ink, including the unofficial university of the British arts: a febrile hotbed of loudmouths, obsessives and romantics who self-mythologised even as they hymned the acts they loved. A predominantly male and predominantly white hangout full of people posturing like fury, this particular era of the music press prized wit above all; it was often uncomfortably brutal in its pillorying. But it was also intellectually curious and wide-eared; progressive enough in its politics. Its alumni are still keeping gates all over the British cultural sphere.
