Kerrang find a new home

Mixmag media, who own, erm, Mixmag, have bought Kerrang! from Bauer and have big plans for the UK's last rock weekly (No, the NME no longer counts). The plan involves it ceasing to be a rock weekly.

Campaing Live reports:

Jerry Perkins, who runs Mixmag Media, plans to turn Kerrang! from a print weekly to a monthly in the UK and focus on building its global, digital audience.

"Mixmag and Kerrang! are quite similar – they’re ‘f*** it’ audiences," Perkins said. "They like what they like and don’t care about what anyone else thinks."

I think this is a polite way of saying "they're clinging to their unfashionable music tastes, and prepared to pay".

Bauer keeps the Kerrang brand for TV and radio - which isn't going to be easy; the K! radio playlist has drifted quite a way from the K! paper worldview even under the same roof. (Kerrang Radio is less 'fuck it' and more 'gosh, if we must'.)

As part of the deal, Mixmag have also bought the Face brand, with plans to revive it online, and maybe in print. At the time it closed in 2004, The Face had managed to slot itself into self-mythologised irrelevance, so it'll be interesting to see how that works online.

Face '83: Grandmaster Melle Mel

This is the spiritual heir to Gudbuy T'Jane - a song which had a 180 degree turn done from its original direction. To be honest, a song about cocaine being a good thing would have been a tricky sell, even in 1983, so probably a wise move to make it an anti-drug anthem. Or, perhaps, a suggestion that if you're going to get involved with drugs, carrying kilos of the stuff in order to avoid jail.



Let's give the point to The Face, to make the final scores:

Recordings that have stood the test of time and thus vindicated The Face's ability to spot a good thing:
25
Recordings which history has undermined and should at least cause The Face to blush:
20

That's not a bad strike rate for the Face, really. In 1983, at least, they knew what they were doing.

Up to a point.

This concludes The Face's best recordings of 1983. Thank you for watching.

Face '83: The Gap Band

GAP was an acronym. Who knew, eh? They were originally the Greenwood, Archer & Pine Street Band, which is a horrible, horrible name for a group. Seriously.

This is pretty good, and went on to be sampled and sampled and sampled again:

It's been so sampled it's almost a storecupboard staple more than a record.

And it somehow survived Andy Cole's cover version.

Yes, footballer Andy Cole.

Do you want to see what he did?

Back in 2008 there was a campaign to try and get the song into the charts, which Cole was not entirely thrilled about:

"I was a great deal younger when I made Outstanding and I can categorically say it will represent my one and only attempt to make an impression in the world of music," Cole told the Nottingham Evening Post.

But can we hold a later cover version against The Gap Band?

Not really.

The Face 24; history 20.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: Steve Arrington

The list has this down as 'Steve Arrington - I', but it's actually Steve Arrington's Hall Of Fame, Volume One.

Blimey.

Arrington had been a member of Slave, and this was his first solo effort. Here's a taste of what it was like: the track Speak With Your Body:



Arrington was about to discover Jesus, release an album with a bona-fide international hit (Feels So Real), quit music, became a minister, got praised as the first guy to balance secular soul with gospel music, and win a Grammy kinda-sorta.

All of that, though, was in the future. This wasn't the future. And looking from the future, this doesn't seem all that. The Face 23; history 20.

More-or-less as I write this, Arrington is in a studio somewhere prepping this album for re-release.

Face '83: Monyaka

Oh come on: the band not only namecheck themselves, they SPELL OUT THEIR NAME. That's pretty needy.



You can kind of understand them milking their moment centre stage, though - Monyaka were the go-to backing band for over a decade in Jamaica. They probably didn't realise that stepping forward would lead them to being over-enthusiastically adopted by Radio One and then just as quickly dropped.

Here's a handy rule of thumb: if something can be watered down enough to sit comfortably on Steve Wright In The Afternoon, it might as well not have happened.

The Face 23; History 19

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: SOS Band

You know what this needs?

More Lindy Layton.

The SOS Band - and this track in particular - are pivotal in music history as, having taken a quick break from touring with Prince, Jam and Lewis finished their production work just in time to get snowed in by a blizzard. Their 'not being able to travel through impenetrable weather conditions' lead to Prince firing them from The Time. Freed from The Time, freed up time for them to concentrate on production, and that had positive effects for everyone.

They'd go on to produce fifteen cracking US number ones, and a Mariah Carey one.

Well chosen, The Face.

The Face 23; History 18.

Glitter is falling from the ceiling. Fireworks are shooting off. The Face now cannot be beaten by history. The Face wins. But how wide will the margin be?

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: New Edition

One last push, and we can forget we ever eased the lid off the box marked 'Face best-of 1983'. If you've remained aloof so far, the general idea was I'd post a load of videos from 1983 and try and slap a veneer of science over judging if the records The Face magazine thought would be historic markers for the year actually were as timeless as they'd hoped.

At the moment, The Face has scored 22 good choices; the harsh judgement of history has won 17 rounds.

Next up is New Edition:

New Edition, famously, launched the careers of Ronnie DeVoe, Bobby Brown, Ralph Tresvant, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Cyrus Vance, Andrew Bridger MP, The Backstreet Boys and that bloke with the head like an egg off this year's Apprentice.

What's really scary about this band is not that they were so young, nor that they were so obviously the first serious attempt to clone and update the Jackson Five model, but that by the time of Candy Girl, they'd been going for five years already.

Five years.

After their first tour, following this massive hit, the boys made $1.87 each.

To be fair, their management did cut them a cheque for this amount - they didn't just get a letter telling them they'd receive a payment once their earnings had reached $25 - but it's all a bit disgusting.

This track, then, isn't young people having fun. It's kids being ripped off.

The Face 22; History 18.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: The Packman

So, a quick leap over the Ike & Tina Turner reissue, and a grudging 'yeah, I guess' to Thriller - you couldn't review 1983 without mentioning it and... if you skip the weaker tracks... I suppose that's one in The Face's favour.

Back at the start of this adventure I was puzzled by the presence of The Pacman on this list, and a helpful comment suggested this might be the song I was looking for:



Whether this is the song The Face intended or not, it's hard to see how 'pretending to be PacMan' would ever create a song that stood up to the test of time. And if it was this song...

... well. It's a miracle The Face even had the confidence to publish again.

The Face 22; history 17.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: Fab Five Freddy

We've come across Fab Five Freddy earlier, when he was pinching Phase Two's role in Wild Style.

Now he's up in his own right:



So, how great is this track? Let us count the ways: it's based on a dirty French film. It doesn't have an a-side and b-side, but male and female versions. Freddy went on to present Yo! MTV Raps, but was just about able to carry off the toe-curling name.

The Face 21; history 16.

[Part of The Face's best recordings 1983]

Face '83: Indeep

We've already, for sake of... well, brevity isn't the right word as, boy, this feature is dragging on, but let's say brevity... for the sake of brevity we've decided to skip reissues from the list, so go home Derek Martin, you're safe.

This bring us to Indeep's Last Night A DJ Saved My Life.



As an aside, whoever put this onto YouTube manages to claim that this is the "official video" despite not only being clearly from Top Of The Pops, but being clearly from Top Of The Pops with a sodding UK Gold logo burned into it.

So... has this stood the test of time? Or does the "away goes trouble down the drain" followed by the sound of a toilet flushing reveal that what The Face has done here is to pick a novelty record for its best recordings of the year?

You'll recall that we discussed InDeep earlier this year, and in particular the way that toilet flush was considered good enough to get its own track on the album.

Oh, The Face. History has the benefit of hindsight, but you should have spotted this one coming.

The Face 20; history 16.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: Cabaret Voltaire

The next item on our list of selections from The Face's 1983 best recordings list is Labour Of Love by UB40.

I suppose it could be worse - the magazine might have selected Level 42's Standing In The Light.

But even so... snicker.

The Face 19; history 15.

Come on, The Face. You need to come up with something pretty good now.



Ooh, alright then. That'll do.

Oddly, this was a double-a side with The Crackdown, although The Crackdown didn't make it onto the seven inch version of the single. Experimental times.

The Face 20; history 15.

[Part of The Face's best recordings 1983]

Face '83: Booker Newberry III

Hip-hop seems to be getting a bit of a cold shoulder when viewed with some perspective, but to be fair to The Face, they were sat in London trying to weigh what was happening in New York. They knew enough to know that this stuff was changing music - and their judgement there should be applauded - but didn't quite know enough to get what was worth saving for history.

A quick leap over the you-don't-need-these-embedded here for Power, Corruption and Lies from New Order and The The's Soul Mining, both albums, and both wise and sage choices - The Face 18; history 14.

This brings us to Booker Newberry III. The question we need to ask here: is this great, or is this Radio One Roadshow style soul?



Even Gary Davies couldn't destroy that. Even if he danced to it. Even if he danced to it wearing shorts.

(Newberry seems to have vanished off the face of the earth shortly after this. Anyone know what happened to him?)

The Face 19; history 14.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: Phase Two

Not the barely-noticed attempt by ITV to create a challenger to Top Of The Pops - that was still a couple of years off - this The Roxy was the nightclub in New York where hip-hop was first formulated.

Phase II was actually a graffiti artist, Lonny Wood, who would paint on stage while nascent hip-hoppers did their nascent hip-hopping.



Although Mr Two nearly got a role in Wild Style - eventually Fab 5 Freddie took the part - his greatest claim to fame was a namecheck in a KRS-One song. (Fab 5 Freddie, of course, managed to get a namecheck in Rapture, which means he bested Two again.)

I think "of historical interest only" sums up this track, and that means history isn't interested.

The Face 16; history 14.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: Tom Browne

Better known for Funkin' For Jamaica, by the time Tom Browne came to make Rockin' Radio, he'd already peaked. The good folk at Arista Records were still happy to splash some money around on his work, though, so Browne had been able to call on the assistance of Maurice Starr for this.

It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Starr was busily inventing New Edition at the same time.



The Face 16; history 13

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: C-Bank

Welcome back to the slow trudge through The Face's 1983 best recordings, in an attempt to weigh the judgement of The Face and its team of style-attuned writers against the harsher, 20/20 judgement of history.

1983. The year Carrie Underwood was born, and the year C-Bank teamed up with Eleanore Mills to make this, Get Wet:



There's not much to this, is there? There were shedloads of this sort thing about at the time. Sure, C-Bank might have been Arthur Baker's workmate John Robie, and around the same time C-Bank produced One More Shot, which would eventually get reworked to provide New Order with the mighty Shellshock.

That detail lifts this above 'dancey also-ran' as an act. But it can't lift the track from not being very interesting. The Face 16; History 12.


[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: 23 Skidoo

They called it a coup. The track sampled from Apocalypse Now; it would go on to be sampled by The Chemical Brothers in its turn. Oh, and they pulled in Aswad's horn section. In fact, if 23 Skidoo had bothered to stick out a seven-inch version, they might even have had a hit with this.

So were the Face right to applaud this?



Yes. Indeed, they chose it as a recording of the year despite the official release not even coming until February 1984.

The Face 16; History 11.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: Mann Parrish

Hip Hop Be Bop (Don't Stop) got more releases than a member of The Timpson family; eventually it settled for a place in history by appearing on the Shaun Of The Dead soundtrack.

Mann was still a way off from doing Male Stripper, and since without that track, this track would probably have sunk into half-forgotten disregard.



I think history is starting to overhaul the Face's judgement.

The Face 15; History 11.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: Newcleus

I suppose there's some kudos in having a song called "The Wikki-Wikki song" at a time when Jimmy Wales had yet to unfurl his first 'donate now' banner, but...



Oh, lord, make it stop.

The very definition of acceptable in the 80s. For about five minutes.

The Face 15; History 10.

[Part of The Face's best 1983 recordings]

Face '83: Nile Rodgers

Another full-album, this time from Nile Rodgers. This was the first outing he made under his own name, and you can see why the Face wanted to be impressed by Adventures In The Land Of The Good Groove.

Here's the title track:



Hmmm. Smash Hits gave it ten out of ten, and David Bowie was enthusiastic. But it was called Adventures In The Land Of The Good Groove.

In order to weigh up this one, let's call an expert witness. Niles himself talks about the record in his autobiography, and... well, he doesn't endorse the Smash Hits ten stars:

"I knew it was a flop right away. I'd been so afraid of being labelled a disco musician that I was too tentative about the album's direction. And the songs weren't hooky enough. Over all, I wasn't clear philosophically or sure what I was trying to say."

If it's not good enough for Niles, it's not good enough for us.

The Face 15; History 10

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: Tom Waits

And we're back, as we may be for every day of the rest of our lives, as we slowly work through The Face's favourite records of 1983, to decide if their choices were wise, or if history has had the last laugh.

Look, you could at least pretend to be interested.

The next choice from the list is Swordfishtrombones. The whole album. Which is a win for the face, if only because this track inspired one of the great online pseudonyms of our times:



Face 15; history 9.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]