'Fagazines' - The Death Of Raygun & The Demise Of Contemporary Journalism

Am I the only one out there that remembers the golden era of music journalism? I must be, NME's sales soar through the roof, but yet title after title folds. Unfortunately not into your pocket or bag, I'm talking business folding, a cold, emotionless origami for unit counting vultures interested in money, not substance. I'm not a great writer, here's proof of that, but I was a great reader. There's nothing more rewarding and as close to meeting your idols as to reading a well written article of someone who has. Sadly those days are long gone. Modern day journalists are more interested in slipping in a little throwaway snapshot of themselves beside their headline, than another finely crafted image of the artist they review. I hate to say it, but I really don't give a fuck about you, whoever you are. I know you've got yourself into a nice little earner. Free tickets, CDs and DVDs. Free merchandise to Ebay for extra drinking money. If I was interested, I would read an interview with you as the feature. I never will... You know why? Because you're fucking boring.



You report on others for a reason, because you create nothing yourself. You may state that you create 'hype', I would disagree that hype is ever created, it is merely redirected. It has always been and always will. People are wanting, submissive, unsure creatures. Hype directs us to our similar, it filters us to our tribes. It cleans us of our ability to hunt and scavenge. It un-uniques us.

So where am I going with this? It's hard to say, for me, it's a very swamped minefield to skip through. Having a successful partner writing for a successful magazine doesn't help matters. My words can cut deep. They can fray years of loving with a single sentence. I have no love for music journalism nor even music anymore. It wisps by me like dust, sometimes sticking to an eyeball, irritating, uncomfortable, but mostly it goes un-noticed. I have a love for her and what she writes, I care for her and want to know all I can. I try to hold back from stating it, I somehow try to phrase that I'm not grouping her in with the same people. It's impossible, it's like saying to an artist that they're not an artist and they should not claim to be. I reason with it, I try putting it in a way that she will understand that I don't mean her, but I do believe that 'Modern journalism, as a creative medium, is fucking awful'.



I stated a few posts ago that I would rather die than read another NME. I was serious. I am that passionate about this. I would rather be sodomised by a HIV positive, bird-flu suffering deviant than have to buy a newspaper. For me, journalism is exactly what it states; 'journal-ism'. I understand the cold, non-biased styles to tell of an event or debate an argument, but we ourselves are not cold, we are definitely not non-biased. So why have I the choice of 30+ similar publications expressing, or rather, 'not expressing' this method, yet no other?



The blog is the human way of trying to recapture our instinct to record. I don't want to look back on some lifeless report to discover my past. I want to read a heated, abusive, crying, lost paragraph that feeds me with thoughts. That sparks the first electric impulse to that great 'remember when' story. I want to read racist, outrageous, all hating views. I want to be disgusted to the point of laughter. I want to be challenged. I want to feel myself breathe when I read. I want to know that I am aware, I am lost in the text, drowning, submerged... but at the end, on that final full stop when I resurface, I will have found another little piece of myself.



Very few things impress me anymore. I will not try. I will not want. I do not crave what was or mourn for what's gone. I just like to remember what has been. I have many keepsakes. These are my records. Not a '90 issue of Melody Maker. Not a 9/11 photo supplement. Not a Hallmark DVD of what happened on my day of birth. I would rather lose my life than lose many of these treasures. These are real journals. They tell many stories, explain many things, about the most important thing... me.



Most of my adult life I have moaned and despaired at the disappearance of 'Raygun'. A magazine, for me that held everything that a growing, learning, passionate kid could want. Beautifully descriptive, cleverly laid, with challenging, often frustrating and offensive design. Each month it morphed itself to another object of love and hate. Some kind of selfish asshole chameleon. It chose your most loved and trashed their image to beyond recognition, it hid away life changing quotes, cut words and pissed us off. It chose your most hated, surrounded them in the most luscious composition and design, it compressed their words into some beautiful silhouette, it took a phrase and spent days upon end illustrating it, making it beautiful, making it hard to hate.



For those that have never known Raygun, I envy you, for you do not know what we have lost. I dream of a day where I can forget. A day where I could stupidly jaunt into an newsagents and buy a magazine without thought. I could browse that magazine, taking nothing but trivia in. I can throw that magazine away without regret. I dream of that day as I know it will simply never happen. I wish I could be an instinctive animal, fuck and eat, live for fun. I dream of oblivion.

:But dreams do not come true, they are only awoke from...

Awake my tired, sleepy friends. Awake and yawn. The day holds a beautiful memory in every second.