Like in the middle of Life magazine

Music fans, especially older ones, will no doubt have heard all about this. Morrissey (who will be affectionally referred to as Mozza in this article) was interviewed by the NME. The published article seems to have some comments which could be construed as racist - certainly they appear to have racist undertones.

Mozza is claiming that his remarks were taken out-of-context and twisted by the NME who wanted to create a sensationalist piece in order to boost fledgling sales. You can read Mozza's full rebuttal over at Rockbeatstone. I'm no massive Mozza fan myself, but I can understand why he's pissed off. The fact of the matter is that he's been set-up royaly by the NME.

I was alerted to this by my mate Will with whom I had an empassioned discussion on this topic on Friday - while standing outside a pub sheltering from the rain, smoking rolled up Golden Virginia, in Brixton. We both agreed the NME had gone to shit, much like Mozza suggests in his rebuttal. One thing they may not have considered is how passionate some of his fans are. They make the Dylan freaks look sane.

Here's what they wrote on Conor McNicholas' (editor at NME) wikipedia entry... It will probably change soon, so I've copied the text as I read it at 15:30 on Tuesday 4th December. Go people power. It will be interesting to see how this all ends. It seems as if it will end in the courts... Still some good has come out of this - he probably can't afford this kind of publicity! And he's going on tour soon and has a future album to flog to record labels.

Conor McNicholas is editor of IPC-run music magazine The New Musical Express, better known as the NME. He sold the magazine down the river in the early 2000s by focusing on inconsequential tabloid rubbish and loads of boring identikit, indie-schmindley, pseudo-rebellious bands. He also bears an uncanny resemblance to a rodent, but has never let this get in the way of his magazine's worship of groundbreaking artists such as Dominic Masters.

His first professional post on a magazine was on a fledgling Manchester publication called Sub where he wrote a spoof horoscope under the pen name of Snufkin, which was not all funny. McNicholas went on to write for the dance press holding senior positions at both Ministry and Mixmag magazines before going on to edit Muzik.

In recent years he has turned the NME into a mainstream pop-magazine, with Lily Allen and The Mighty Boosh appearing on the front cover.

During his editorship Conor has won several industry awards including Consumer Magazine Editor of the Year (Periodical Publishers Association Editorial and Publishing Excellence Awards, May 2005), Entertainment Magazine Editor of the Year (British Society of Magazine Editors, November 2005), Tour of the Year for the NME Awards Tour 2006 (Vodafone Live Music Awards, October 2006), Editor of the Year and Music Magazine of the Year (Record of the Day Music Journalism and PR Awards, November 2006 ) and Brand Building Initiative of the Year for Club NME (British Society of Magazine Editors, November 2006).

In October 2007 Conor was listed as one of the 1000 most influential people in London by the Evening Standard.

In 2007 Conor was one of the judges for the Mercury Music Prize. The winning album was Myths Of The Near Future by Klaxons.

However, there has been some criticism over McNicholas's reign as editor, especially over claims that the quality of writing had slipped, the genres of music covered have become less broad and that the magazine now contains less content than in previous years.

In unrelated music news, I've written a piece for Rockbeatstone on Babyshambles' new album, Shotters Nation. The album is actually very good. Not bad for a smack head.

Last Thoughts on Woodie Guthrie