The other day I went to an interview at The Wire. This was thanks in part to Jim Clarke who drew my attention to a vacancy they were advertising for a web editor. Cheers Jim. Apparently they'd received 80 CVs and were giving only 8 interviews. I was pleased to be taken seriously enough to warrant being summoned; was in truth a little anxious about how I was going to squeeze my duties into an already busy week, but determined to manage should they take me on. I didn't get the job in case you're wondering...
Their offices are tucked behind Spitalfields market, housed in a building called Universal House. This detail never makes the rubric of their address. They feel it might confuse the general public who might assume there was some connection between them and the UNIVERSAL media machine. It did however make discovering their whereabouts doubly complicated. Really how Wire-ish is that !?!
It felt really great to talk to Tony Herrington face-to-face. The mag may have it's detractors these days but let's face it, they're hardcore aren't they! They're doing their thing and surviving. I have a respect for that. Also I have an eternal affection for my own Golden Era of their activity between 1993 and 1996 when KE, SR and IP ran amok. It was particularly nice for me to be able to run a few scripts on Tony pertaining to how I might manage their Website; which I guess doubled as a method of feeling out what possible routes might be open to them. How would they feel about a little lebensraum being granted to coverage of, say, Urban World Music or Country or Metal (Don't mention Grime Matt!) Tony countered by remarking that he'd have no problem whatsoever with that. Actually I was really surprised. He said that with the magazine they're limited by the dictates of space as to what makes the cut, volunteering Grime as something which might be covered. With the website space wouldn't be a problem, he said, and consequently the remit could be broader.
OK so maybe this was disingeneous, after all what defines a magazine EXCEPT what is left out. But I was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think their anxiety about including a greater spread of music stems largely from a distaste of that perennial cultural studies bugbear, the "taking Madonna seriously" syndrome*. However if that means we don't see turgid writing by the clever brigade who've lost touch with the cutting-edge of music then I'm happy. And actually I can disclose that one Mr. X. has had some luck pitching them a primer more in keeping with this particular rhizome than one might expect.
Funny to note that Tony Herrington's greatest reservations with writing on the internet was it's uniformly formal sloppiness. S'funny cos I know at least one other blogger who doesn't sleep if he's got a comma in the wrong place, or at least correctly misplaced. Thanks to Tony and Ben for seeing me.
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Dan Selzer says:
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my partner and I will be on WFMU tonight from 11pm to
3am eastern time. http://www.wfmu.org
it will be archived, it's OCDJ's show. If you can't
hear it tonight, check it out later, we'll play some
pretty cool stuff, some italo/eurodisco, regular
disco, 80s club stuff, punk whatever.
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That'll be some wkd shit.