Something else I read last week in KL was one of those glossy music magazines you see around these days - this one called The Word. In my teenage days, up to my years at university, I regularly read The Melody Maker, at that time the heavyweight of papers dealing with music. Glossy it was not, but necessary it was, if you were going to know who had an album out, who was touring, and the like. But I stopped buying such publications in the punk boom when the NME became fashionable as by that time I had decided to be as unfashionable as possible. Something I achieved with alarming ease.
Reading The Word made me realise what turned me off this kind of publication, though I can't recall ever having purchased a single one of the glossy mags for musos on account of their extortionate prices. But fear not, I only paid ten ringgit for this one (an out-dated April issue I found at a stall for out-of-date mags going cheap) which in real money is around four and a bit Sing dollars and in somewhat less real money not even two quid. And I also got a free CD with tracks by luminaries such as The B52's (I thought they'd retired), the brilliant Blind Boys of Alabama (saw them live at Womad - sensational), the deeply wonderful kd lang, the deeply rocking Nick Lowe, and the deeply, wonderfully subversive Billy Bragg, and quite a few other people who I'd never heard of but who were generally good to listen to. There were also some readable articles, particularly an interview with Elvis Costello who, as you might expect, had interesting, insightful things to say about all sorts of matters.
But I wouldn't buy another edition, even for just ten ringgit. The problem lies in the writing. There's an uncanny uniformity of style in these publications, and the essence of that style has not changed since the early 70's. It's based on the writers trying to show (1) how clever they are, (2) how funny they are and (3) how hip they are. That's not to say these are not talented writers. They are, but the talent is channeled relentlessly it seems into showing just how talented they are. And how funny their view of the world is.
Why does everyone (I mean the folk who write for these publications) want to be, need to be, funny?
Funnily enough I know something about trying to be funny, related to the stage. It's a simple point I find myself making to many young performers playing comedy and it goes like this: don't play it for comedy. If the audience feels you are trying to make them laugh it won't work. The strain will tell. And it does in The Word, sadly enough, despite its many virtues.
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