Plan B

[tafkac]

OK, so I was wanting a bit more of a substantial musical read, in paper form, and got myself a copy of Plan B magazine, as it had that nice thick matt paper and a picture of the Arcade Fire on the front.

OH MY FUCKING GOD. It is almost unbearably shit. I have literally never read anything simultaneously so far up its own arse and so empty of content (except Sartre maybe). It out-Pitchforks Pitchfork - at least they sometimes talk about the music. I am going to throw it in the canal. I am actually going to throw it in the canal.

[Darcy]

Nothing worse than Mags/people who are totally up their own arse. It's worse than incompetence IMO.

Cheers for the heads up, I'll avoid this like the plague.

[JohnDTraynor]

Plan B has some good writers; it also has a lot of writers who write like they think they should write for Plan B. They follow a pattern: slightly over the top entusiasm, strange meaningless metaphors, comments about themselves that are irrelevent to the review, and homage to all the Are You Scared To Get Happy, Legend! and Kvatch fanzines. They are a bit serious. But, I do like the magazine.

[John Brainlove]

I like Plan B.
I agree that some of the content is nauseatingly self-indulgent, but I do like the idea that music is a very personal thing, and that music writing can be too - and compared to the other stuff that's out there right now, I'll take Plan B's precocious preciousness over the empty headed NME gossip-column crap any day of the week.

[Miss Waistcoat]

where are u mr? selfish cunt good?

[John Brainlove]

hiya
didnt go to the selfish cunt gig in the end, it's on the other side of london - seems v v far away right now - i'm still hungover & tired from last night's plan b extravaganza, went to gemma's local with fellalady & their friend laura instead. I'm at SCL's now, she's just gone to bed and I have a lovely big sofabed instead of fidel's floor, yay x

[bamos]

Plan B isn't very good, IMHO. I bought the 'pilot' issue thing, cos I saw the name Everett True on the cover. But it's like a Nathan Barley sketch. Only real. Cool mag for the 'cool' people. It vexes me.

[JohnDTraynor]

bamos said:

Cool mag for the 'cool' people

Why do you say that. I haven't a clue how "cool" Plan B is, and I doubt that the writers know either. What do you mean by the use of that slang term. Is it "cool" because it talks about music, films and comics that are not mainstream?

[bamos]

I mean cool in the Nathan Barley way. It's just slightly bizarre. I like some bands that aren't mainstream as well, it's not just that...but you must be able to see the Barley-esque qualities in putting a pair of ten year old girls on the cover, and writing an Art Brut live review that contained nothing but the words 'Art Brut! Top of the Pops!' (no matter what you think of the abilities of the bands concerned) It just seems like one massive long in-joke.

Ya get me?

[SuperSheep]

It's a bit pretentious in places, yeah, but it's not all bad. Most of the articles were moderately amusing, despite the tendency to start on one subject then wander off into recommending some obscure artist as the best thing ever. The album reviews weren't bad, but I think 13&God deserved more than that crappy little column review where the reviewer mostly talked about fucking.

Perhaps next time.

[JohnDTraynor]

bamos said:

I mean cool in the Nathan Barley way. It's just slightly bizarre. I like some bands that aren't mainstream as well, it's not just that...but you must be able to see the Barley-esque qualities in putting a pair of ten year old girls on the cover, and writing an Art Brut live review that contained nothing but the words 'Art Brut! Top of the Pops!' (no matter what you think of the abilities of the bands concerned) It just seems like one massive long in-joke.

Ya get me?

I understand your point, and I think it's daft. Plan B, almost by definition, is not going to fill its pages with well-known mainstream artists because other magazines do that. John Peel didn't fill his show with chart music, and he did like some of it. Smoosh were on the front cover because they are damned good (that's an opinion). Your attitude seems to be that if someone doesn't like what everybody else likes then they must be putting on a cool act, and such an attitude is just dumb.

[Monpot]

Well I think what Bamos is saying is that it's trying to be cool/obscure for cool/obscure's sake, not for the sake of actually championning new music. It just wants to be ahead of the pack so that 6 months down the line it can brag about how ahead of the pack it was.

[John Brainlove]

I really don't think Plan B is like that at all.

[Monpot]

I dunno, never read it! I'm just trying to relay what I think Bamos was trying to say.

[John Brainlove]

The article about Born Heller pissed me off. It was the bad side of autobiographical music journalism. I felt like I'd been forced to read someone's diary and had not learned a thing about the band. Rubbish. But Plan B isn't always that way. Hm.