Magazine Madonna
My mother called on the weekend. After the usual ‘what have you been doing?’ type updates she informed me that my father had been cleaning out the garage. I knew immediately what this meant.
‘No’ I shouted ‘You can’t throw them out!’
She sighed. ‘Well, we can’t keep them forever. You did move out of home [pause, counts] 17 years ago.’
‘But it’s history, social history! I can’t get rid of them, they’ve been around this long so it would be absolutely criminal to throw them out! And I will come and collect them at some point.’
‘Yes, I know… [sigh]… I’ll go and talk to your Dad.’
We are referring to my magazine collection. I’m not usually a hoarder, but when it comes to magazines it’s a whole other area. Scarred from an early brush with ‘decluttering’ where I stupidly, foolishly, terribly chucked out some old Smash Hits magazines, I’ve practically clung onto everything ever since.
This means that tucked away in a tiny, tiny corner of my parents absolutely massive garage is a rather fine collection of magazines I acquired when I lived in Australia: Girl, Jackie, Dolly, Just 17, Countdown, Number One, Smash Hits, Jukebox, NME, Melody Maker, Select, Vox, Q, Rolling Stone, Mojo, Uncut, Cinema Papers, Sight and Sound… And as if this journalistic account of 80s and 90s pop culture wasn’t enough (which it wasn’t), I had also saturated myself in the past, scouring garage sales and antique shops for ’women’s interest’, music and movie magazines going back several decades.
So if you looking for 1930s knitting patterns, live reviews of The Senseless Things, photo stories about the tragedies of falling out with your best friend over a boy, articles about how smoking can help with weight loss, scandals about Morrissey, blow-by-blow accounts of the Queen’s 1954 tour of Australia, pin-ups of Herman’s Hermits, quizzes testing whether you really are a Brosette, tips on how to make the most out of powdered egg, exclusives on the new Stackridge album and advice on how to get Doris Day’s new look then you know where to go. My parents’ garage.
I tell my partner that my parents are hassling me about the magazines again. He is unsympathetic: ‘Are you ever really going to read those boring interviews with Neds Atomic Dustbin and Chapterhouse again? And how long are you planning on keeping all those Q and Word magazines that are in our loft anyway? And what about those 3-year old copies of The Economist over there in the magazine rack?’
I start to sigh now. What am I going to do with my magazines? Spread over two countries, neglected and lying unloved in garages and lofts, I just can’t part with them. They are social history, the social history that people so often throw away (or used to anyway). And more than that, so many of them are my history as well. Call me mad, call me selfish but my parents are going to have to hang on to them for a bit longer and well, our ceiling is not about to collapse just yet.
Tags: 30-something angst, dirty nostalgia, regret, woe is me
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:09 am
I went through the same trauma a few years back…. but i finally did it…. I dumped about 25 years worth. The only one I kept was the very first NME I ever bought, sometime in the late 70’s. I had this mad idea of ‘flicking thru’ one last time, just to salvage any particularly interesting articles, but it was useless, the amount was just so great.
I do regret it some days, but I console myself with these two thoughts…
1) If I ever get REALLY desperate, don’t the British Library keep a copy of every book and magazine ever printed? I’m sure you could book an appointment to wander along and view them.
2) I’m convinced that at some point, someone will put the lot on a CD…. it works better than you think. I picked up some of the National Geographic ones and they work very well. They have left all the adverts in too, so it’s just like the real thing…. and they get about 100 years worth on a cd!! It’ll happen… fully searchable too I reckon…. NME, Sounds, Melody Maker, Smash Hits… the past is the future!
P
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:23 am
With you all the way – I’m a terrible hoarder of all sorts – I found box fulls of music mags and papers a couple of years back. I unloaded most of the papers apart from key issues, but kept the mag’s. they’re an absolute treat – a flashback snapshot of the time, that clarifies any received rememberance of an era and adds in long forgotten highlights and balance
Keep them and blog the selected highlights (as long as you can get some long distance scanning arranged). I’ve managed to sneak a couple of my scans in on the blog. Tell your parents they’re collectable – you’re planning to sell them on ebay and will cut them on the winnings
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:20 am
Like you I”m a hoarder too, so I’ve kept everything. I did judiciously weed out my magazines, as they’ were unwieildy, but I do have all the ones that matter, and if you don’t have them, there’s always ebay. I sold off quite a few Smash Hits, then regretted it and ended up buying them back. It was money well spent.
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:21 am
Also, Cocktails, what’s that song the Summer of 81 actually about? Standing on a balcony waiting for the Countdown – was it something significant or just seeing in the New Year? I need to know.
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:57 am
Piley, I’m liking your optimism but I’m afraid I’m suspicious of technology coming to the rescue. In the future, you might well not be able to access those CDs but your print will always be there. The BL made some scandalous decision a decade or so ago to transfer swathes of their serials to that cutting edge technology, the laser disc. Who the heck has a laser disc player these days?!
Exactly Mondo, exactly. The truth is in magazines! And it’s not just the content, it’s the design, the layout, the writing style, the ads. I have a couple of issues of 60s pop mag, Fabulous 208, and it really is an insight into a contested world. Freddie and the Dreamers, for example, were a lot more popular than you might expect. If my parents ever get up to speed with technology, I’ll sort out some scans for the blog.
FC, it wouldn’t be an understatement to say (or maybe it would) that throwing out my Smash Hits was one of the BIGGEST MISTAKES I have ever made. I’ve tried to resist buying them all back, but I think I might have to.
And Summer of 81? You know, I’ve never actually thought about it! It’s just a guy um… contemplating his relationship? The countdown might well be waiting in the New Year. It is in summer, there usually is a rubbish fireworks display which you could watch from your balcony… I’d like to think that it was about Countdown, the best music show in the world eva, but I suspect it’s not (no’ the’ in the programme name), so yes, maybe a new years reference?
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:03 pm
I too have a seriously large collection of 1980’s NME, Melody Maker and Sounds (Sounds was the best!) plus a few Smash Hits and Number One’s from a shadier period in my life.
I rescued them from my own parents garage a few years ago and now they are safely stashed, wrapped in plastic in my own loft.
“Are you ever really going to read those boring interviews with Neds Atomic Dustbin and Chapterhouse again?” Well yes actually. When I was looking in the loft for something a few months ago, I ended up spending hours up there reading and not finding what I was looking for. That Neds interview was better second time around, funnier with hindsight.
Piley I don’t believe you threw them away!
When I’m in the old folks home years from now I shall read through the whole lot of them.
September 3rd, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I remember back in the 80’s my brother, cousin & I stumbled across all the old magazines from the 1970’s that my uncles had. We loved looking through all of them. They had everything from rock magazine to martial arts magazines. Good luck trying to figure out what to do. I do hope you don’t throw them away.
September 3rd, 2009 at 4:49 pm
as long as you don’t think that the BBC or gordon brown isn’t going to ring up one day demanding to know the tour dates for the primitives 1988 oct tour and that they are just stuff there’s no harm you want to avoid dieing crushed under a pile of old selects 1988-1995 though.
http://www.bitterwallet.com/shopaholic-killed-by-pile-of-unnecessary-stuff/5960
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Hello and welcome, FitForNothing. You are clearly a man (I suspect – correct me if I’m wrong! ) of taste – and very reassuring too. I KNOW that I’ll re-read those magazines, or at least flip through them again. In fact, doing that very thing is one of the (many) benefits of going to see my folks! And you don’t have a ’shadier period’ in your life. My theory is that everyone has an inner pop demon waiting to get out.
Keith, I can only dream that any of my relatives have hidden stashes of magazines I’ve yet to discover. My grandmother used to have loads, but I suspect that she’s long chucked them. Ah, dear…
BLTP, I think that there is a picture of me somewhere ‘posing’ under a pile of NMEs and records. And no, I’m not going to dig it out!
September 4th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Oh, I think we need to see that picture.
I’m a great fan of digitising old mags – have found loads of old computer ones on the web so maybe there are some music archives as well. I used to buy the binders and everything for computer mags back in the 80s and regret chucking them when we moved house.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Simon, there are kind of some music ones eg. http://archivedmusicpress.wordpress.com/ – but it makes no difference. It’s not the same!!
And computer mags eh? That just highlights my personal biases! For every tut tut from Mr C about my magazine collection there is an equal number back from me about his shelves of computer/programming manuals from the 70s and 80s…
September 4th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I have every single issue of Mojo , Classic Rock , lots n lots of Q plus some Select , Vox , Uncut etc etc. I cant let them go either much to my wifes annoyance. The only thing i did let go was all my papers 10 years worth of Sounds and some NME (ENEMY , tossers) and Monotony Maker becuse they had all gone yellow. Even then i cut the interviews out i wanted (sad bastard i know) but finaly slung them last year. These things mean a lot to me and i’m always dragging out old issues and re reading them. Keep them cocktails, big yellow storage perhaps :-).
September 4th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
I hope you don’t regret chucking those articles one day, Carl. Perhaps you could have sold them on ebay – I’ve seen people selling packs of press clippings! Glad you kept the mags though. I really am in good (and sympathetic) company here. Hoarding is the right thing to do!!!
September 5th, 2009 at 8:53 am
I had them all too…Sounds, MM and NME from 1986 to about 1993. I could never quite work out why the Maker newsprint smelled like chip wrappings.
September 5th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Hello Jamie, thanks for stopping by. I note your use of the past tense here – does this mean that you threw them all out? Any regrets?!
September 7th, 2009 at 10:44 am
To be honest i do wish i’d kept the clippings but it’s too late now. When i was a kid i loved hot rods and stuff and i had loads of Custom Car and Hot Rod etc magazines. I chucked them out and i’ve regretted it ever since. Space is the problem (and my wife lol) , where do you put it all :-(. My music mags are staying put end of :-).