Word back up

What's this? The Word podcast has sprung back into life, two years after the last emission.

The last Word

Some grim news this morning for people who like being entertained by the written word done well: The Word is closing:

We regret to announce that the August issue of The Word, which will be published in the second week of July, will be the last.

In the nine years since the magazine launched there have been dramatic changes in the media and the music business. These changes have made it more difficult for a small independent magazine to survive and provide its staff with a living. This hasn't been made any easier by the economic climate of the wider world.

I've been lucky enough to have some things published in The Word, and some of you (lots of you) read this blog when posts turn up on their website through the magic of RSS, but it's as a reader that I'll miss the magazine.

I still remember devouring the first edition on a journey from Liverpool to Barrow - this turns out to be nine years ago - and looking forward, monthly, to each next instalment.

Many magazines vanish without leaving a ripple. Some close, and it's a pity. The Word going is a crying shame.

Thanks, everyone. You'll be missed.

Senseless Things weekend: Hold It Down

Done live at Terry Christian's circus of the unstomachable:



[Part of Senseless Things weekend]

Missing Words

Curious. A four-page retrospective of The Word in The Guardian today, and not a - ahem - word about a certain newspaper which sponsored the programme during its first run.

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Def Leppard

A shower of glorious love to David Hepworth and The Word for pointing the world in the direction of the New York Times wedding section. Always a haven for the unexpected - it should be subtitled "if I'm compromising, at least I'm going to do it as publicly and expensively as possible" - this week, they recorded the nuptials of Def Leppard's Phil Collen and Helen Simmons:

Ms. Simmons, too, felt a spark. “But emotionally, there were a lot of other things going on with us,” she said.

The other things included a wife from whom he was separated, a girlfriend from whom he wasn’t, and Ms. Simmons’s boyfriend.

Two days later, he asked her for seven minutes of her time.

Not 5 or 10? “I knew I needed more than 5 and I figured 10 would be too long,” Mr. Collen said matter-of-factly.

There's a lot of that sort of thing.

Embed and breakfast man: The Charlatans - Some Friendly

You don't just do one big splurge of video when it has Tim Burgess in it. (Although we did, once). You savour it, slowly, however much you might want to rush forward to the Jesus Hairdo one where he's smeared in bodypaint. However much that might appeal.

Today, then, just some bits and pieces from the tracks which formed the Charlatans' debut album Some Friendly. Released on their own Dead Dead Good label (Beggars Banquet wearing a hooded top, in effect) the album was a number one debutante. Hard to imagine the band being in that sort of position again, if you're honest.

Equally hard to believe is that there were only two singles lifted from the collection. This is one of them, then, and it's Then, performed on The Word back in 1990. Look! It's Big Brother and Would I Lie To You's Terry Christian and everything:



Buy
You'll have this album, of course. But just in case, Amazon offer it on CD, mp3 and cassette.

More dipping in to the record to come
The Only One I Know
Sproston Green
Opportunity
Polar Bear

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet

The Word talks to Thom Yorke about Radiohead's departure from EMI:

How did Yorke feel about being briefed against as if he and his management were rival CEOs?

"It fucking pissed me off," he snaps. "We could have taken them to court. The idea that we were after so much money as stretching the truth to breaking point. That was his PR company briefing against us and I'll tell you what, it fucking ruined my Christmas. I was so angry, I decided I'd go for a walk, come home, write something on Dead Air Space [Radiohead's blog] and that would be it, it's over, the end. There was a certain satisfaction in knowing that I could redress it on our own website, but it was a clear indication that the relationship was over."

The Word is sorry

Morrissey has had his day in court over the NME story from last year, and has won an apology from a magazine. Although it's The Word that has apologised in the High Court, for a piece by David Quantick that referenced Tim Jonze's original NME report and, according to Morrissey's legal team, could, in the words of the MediaGuardian report:

have been construed to suggest that he was a racist, held racist opinions or that - as the child of migrant parents - he was a hypocrite.

The magazine offered its sincerest apologies to Morrissey.

Morrissey himself issued a statement reiterating his intention to pursue the NME and Conor McNicholas.

Pretend that we're cred

MediaGuardian's Monkey column reports on Alex Zane getting all overcome with excitement at the recent Royal Television Society Futures event:

Zane wants more live TV where you don't quite know what's going to happen next, citing as an example the edition of The Word where a member of L7 threw a tampon into the audience.

Erm... except, of course, that never happened. Donita Sparks did drop her pants on the Word, and she did lob a used tampon into the crowd at the Reading Festival, but somewhere in Zane's fevered memory box these two incidents have become conflated.

Stereolab weekend: French Disko

The state of pop tv must be bad if we're starting to miss the contribution of The Word to Britain's musical cultural life.



Stereolab weekend

Was the Word

It's always nice to hear Mark Ellen on the radio, as he is at the moment; and it's always nicer to hear of him being involved in a magazine launch (was ever anyone so wasted as he was when at the helm of Arena?).

Word, the much-anticpated magazine from Ellen and Hepworth's new stable has arrived, and it sounds like its got its mind in the right place (although it's an bit rich for Ellen to snipe at magazines bragging about "200 LPs reviewed and rated" - who was it who started that trend when they were editing Q, Mark?). If any copies show up in Liverpool, we'll let you know.