Q 300

So the British Music magazine Q recently published its 300th issue, which is pretty amazing, when you think about it. The contents include a cover story on Adele, whose latest album had been number 1 on the UK charts for 11 weeks at the time of the article’s writing (beating the previous record held by Madonna), a 46-page year-by-year look back at pop history since the magazine’s launch in 1986 (“includes the inside of Madonna’s lavatory, The Stone Roses dancing like fish, smelling Prince, Lady Gaga’s dildo, sharing a bed with Bob Dylan and hindsight from Dido, Johnny Borrell, Justin Hawkins and many more”), and interviews with the usual suspects: Bono, Liam Gallagher, Keith Richards, all familiar faces to Q.

Recently a friend of mine lamented the death of rock radio on local FM, and while the idea of discovering bands through tuning in is a powerful one that goes back to our childhoods, to be honest, ever since I was a preteen, I had been learning about music in a more disreputable way: through music magazines. From the foreign glossies to Jingle on newsprint to the short-lived The Score, I devoured reviews, interviews, and rants on music through the medium of word on paper, and afterwards would pester local stores with the names of bands I had learned about that way.

I came across Q in the ‘90s, when I found a copy shoved into a magazine rack on the second floor of a supermarket on Katipunan Avenue. I had never heard of it before, but something about its heft and its hyperbolic cover lines appealed to me. Those Brit magazines don’t do things halfway: each issue had about 200 reviews, and the features were satisfyingly long. I ended up subscribing, which was quite a commitment for me; then, as now, it wasn’t cheap. But where else was I going to read about Bono’s burgeoning megalomania, the magnificence of the Manic Street Preachers, how electronica was going to take over the world, the ex-Stone Roses guitarist’s now-defunct new band, the wit and wisdom of the Spice Girls? And aside from the better-known acts, each issue had hordes of bands I’d never heard of, handfuls of which would prove to be worth my attention.

Something changed over the years, though. I stopped buying Q in the 2000s, though I missed the thrill it gave me, and would still occasionally pick up an issue if I found one in the Book Sale bins. To this day I’m not sure if, as a friend of mine framed the question, the writing got less interesting, or the artists got less interesting, or both. Three years ago, a London-based friend of mine sent me a new issue and there was a feature on “bands you should know about” (or words to that effect), and as I flipped through it I realized to my surprise that  for the first time  I already knew about all the bands featured. I had read about them on the blogs and listened to their stuff via streams and downloads. And those “list” issues (best albums ever, best live acts, et cetera) do feel less special when you can find tons of the same kinds of lists  often very well written  online.

It’s a familiar problem by now: What will happen to the music magazines? Blender, which was essentially an American Q, shut down years ago. Rolling Stone and the rest seem to be struggling. Q is still at the top of the heap in the UK, apparently, but sales are falling. And while it’s diversified and spun off into a radio station, an awards show, even a television channel, its essence seems to have lost a lot of its luster.

But still: 300 issues, nothing to scoff at. And more music reaches more people every day now  whether through the blogs and social networks (and, let’s face it, torrents) or services like Spotify or the upcoming iCloud. It’s hard to look into the future (except perhaps to assert that electronica as a genre is not going to take over the world), but another 25 years might very well be in the offing for Q, and for other music magazine survivors. And perhaps it is not just nostalgia that has me looking forward to that possibility.