Welcome to Nite Songs...

Warm and dark and the moon is low
I try to think of a better place I'd like to go
All alone in a room of friends
The kind of night that I almost hope would never end...

I'll be there with my nite songs
Summer fun with the radio on
I'll be there with my nite songs
Feelin' right when nothing is wrong
Nothing could be this good
Nothing here ever could
It's bigger than Hollywood...

The Wildhearts - "Nite Songs" (1996)

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So welcome to a new music webzine (I think that's the correct term?) dedicated to a mixture of the bright and dark sides of alternative and rock music.

A Bit About Us (or rather me to be precise)

Well, my name's Andy James and I've been working as a fanzine journalist for, scarily, around 24 years now and been a gig-goer for, even more scarily, about 28. I've previously written for (in reverse chronological order) Pure Rawk, Sinzine, Bubblegum Slut, Leeds Music Scene and Sandman plus a load of student publications in Stoke-on-Trent way back when which time has (probably thankfully) forgotten. This new webzine is pretty much a one-man operation so please be aware that the setup here is gonna be anything but professional - stuff will be posted as and when I get round to writing it in between doing a day job and general life stuff.

So how did I get here is the first question I suppose. Around the end of last year, it was decided that Pure Rawk webzine, where I'd been writing for the previous decade, would be going on hiatus for the foreseeable future. As I'd only just finished relocating back to Leeds (my original hometown) after a decade of living in the home counties, my original plan was to take a well-earned breather from music writing to concentrate on sorting my life out.

...and then the lockdown happened. Suddenly I'd gone from being perpetually knackered and feeling as if I never had any spare time to myself to having much more than I'd ever had before. In a way, it's been good - I've been catching up on a lot of TV, finally made some attempts to get some weight lost by getting out and going for some walks in the countryside near where I live and generally feeling a lot less like I'm living on a knife-edge than I have for years.

My original plan when I moved up north was to get a new band together and get out and start playing music again, even if it was just a few covers on an acoustic in the pub or similar (I used to be in a few gigging bands in the early noughties and I'll be honest, it is something I miss a bit) but obviously as things stand the live music scene in the UK is very much on hold right now. So that was out. Which led me to the route most failed musicians choose and back to music journalism.

The truth is, people had been sending me stuff through the last nine months or so and a lot of it was well worth giving some publicity to. So I thought what the hell, let's jump back on the horse and see where it goes.

So what's going to be in this webzine then?

Well for a starter, there's nine-odd months of album reviews to catch up on so initially I'm gonna try and put a couple a week up here which should give you plenty of stuff to (hopefully) enjoy over the next few months! It'll be a mixed bag...but see the next section for more about the sort of music we'll be covering.

Beyond that...well, live reviews are obviously not going to be a part of this thing for the foreseeable future. If the live scene in this country ever gets back to something approaching normality then that will hopefully change but somehow I can't see that happening for a long time yet unfortunately...

There will be some other features though to make sure that this isn't a non-stop reviewing fest - many years ago at Bubblegum Slut I used to do a column called Songs From A Wasted Youth which was about great forgotten and overlooked albums and bands from years gone by (mostly the '90s and early '00s) and that may well be resurrected here under a different name. I'm also hoping to do an "albums guide" thing for more prolific or well-known bands (got a couple of these almost lined up and ready to go so keep an eye out)

There may be the odd opinion piece column on here (I used to do these on occasion back in the old days) but the thing is that I generally don't consider myself to be a writer with his finger on the pulse of what's popular so I'm probably not the best person to be writing about current affairs in the music scene. These days I'm very much part of the out crowd and I'm happy with that.

At some point in the dim and distant future I may try to do some interviews with bands who are favourites of the 'zine but the thing is that when I used to do interviews, they were always an absolute ballache to organise and very time-consuming so it may not be something I attempt until I've got a good few months' worth of stuff in here. After that, we'll see...

What sort of music will you be covering in here?

One reason I kind of stepped away from music journalism after Pure Rawk went into hibernation was a growing realisation that I'd very much turned into a middle aged grumpy bugger. I think this really hit home when I looked at my Albums of the Year list for last year. For the last 3-4 years, there'd always been a good 6 or 7 debut albums from new bands in my Top 20 but last year the number was way down to 3. Now there's two ways of looking at this - either modern music is rubbish or just that you've hit the age (40 in my case) where you're generally comfortable with what you like and aren't bothered with chasing trends anymore. And if your answer's the first one then it's probably a telltale sign that it's actually the second if you get my drift.

So I'm going to say it now, if you're looking for a fanzine which is finger-on-the-pulse and keen to rush into the heart of the scene and bring you the news on the latest big thing that's breaking through, you've come to the wrong place I'm afraid. This is very much a place where I'll be covering the sort of music that I enjoy and to hell with whether it's on the pulse or not.

That said, I'm going to try and keep Nite Songs as a fairly broad church so let's have a look at what you're likely to see and not see in here.

DEFINITELY IN

Well, my favourite group as those who know me will testify are the Wildhearts - everyone has that one group who very much changed their life and Ginger and co are very much mine. So expect to see a lot of other Britrock stuff in here - from stalwarts like Terrorvision, Therapy?, the Quireboys, Black Star Riders, the Darkness, Last Great Dreamers etc to more recent stuff like Black Spiders, the Eureka Machines, the Virginmarys, the Spangles, the Fiascos etc.

Other stuff I like:

Goth (although mostly the old school '80s and '90s stuff) so expect to see the likes of the Mission, Bauhaus, the Cult, the Cure, Spear of Destiny/Theatre of Hate, Gene Loves Jezebel etc. cropping up on these pages when they've got new albums out or tours going on. Ditto for newer bands like Saint Agnes and Evil Scarecrow who dip a toe into these waters as well.

Glam - right from the '70s originals like Bowie, T-Rex, Roxy Music etc through '80s glam metal (no, I'm not ashamed although it'll be more the G'n'R/LA Guns/Love/Hate end of things rather than the lightweight end like Winger, Bon Jovi, Dokken etc which I generally can't stand, sorry) right up to the modern day bands who owe a nod in their sound to the classic Bowie-era.

Punk - another style of music I've loved for almost as long as I can remember so expect to see old school stalwarts like the Stranglers, the Skids, the Toy Dolls and 999 rubbing shoulders with newer arrivals like Dirt Box Disco, Hands Off Gretel and the Bar Stool Preachers here as well as the more hard-edged ska-punk bands like Sonic Boom Six and the Skints.

Power Pop - there's been some really good bands on this genre who don't quite fit into either the glam or punk end of things come along in recent years like the Speedways, Lucy & The Rats, Duncan Reid & The Big Heads etc. Rest assured I'll be happy to cover 'em in here.

BORDERLINE

Indie - Believe it or not, a lot of the first gigs I went to in the early '90s were bands who were NME/Melody Maker stalwarts like Carter USM, the Wonder Stuff, the Senseless Things etc and I'm certainly going to be giving some column inches to them and similar bands from the pre-Britpop and Britpop eras on here. However...if I'm honest, come the early noughties and the arrival of bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes who pretty much just left me cold, I very much drifted away from it and although there's still the odd band or artist like Frank Turner who gets positive coverage in the indie mags nowadays and I'm also a fan of, I tend to avoid the more pretentious art-school end of the genre. So this one could go either way really.

Metal - now this is a tricky one. Obviously groups like the Wildhearts, Terrorvision and the Almighty played a huge part in shaping my music taste and I think AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Metallica etc have all come up with some cracking albums in their time (though less so in recent years in the case of the latter two). However...I've always been a guy with an ear for a decent tune underneath the chaos and the more shouty grunty end of metal just never really did it for me I'm afraid (with a few exceptions like Ministry and White Zombie who were heavy as f**k but had some great songs with it). So I think this will be another area that this 'zine may dip its toe into on occasion but don't expect to see a whole load of it in here. 

NO CHANCE

Well obviously any sort of dance and r'n'b (unless we're talking the Dr Feelgood style R&B) stuff is out - I'm sure there's plenty of sites out there who'll give you good coverage of it but it's just not for me I'm afraid. Along with that - nu-metal (yuck), frat-punk (Blink 182, Sum 41 and their loathsome ilk), emo, indie that falls into the category of being unlistenable sub-Radiohead stuff, irritatingly twee Mumfords-style rubbish or pretentious dross that isn't half as clever as it thinks it is, bad copycat blues rock (Black Stone Cherry, Greta van Fleet etc) and music that's generally either unlistenable or completely ideas-free and derivative without having any real energy or bite to it are all very much out here.

***

Right, I hope that's given everyone a rough sort of idea of what to expect here! Where this whole thing is gonna lead, I have no idea but we shall see I guess. In the meantime, hope you all enjoy the ride and expect the first couple of album reviews (and maybe even a feature of some sort) to be up in the coming days.

Cheers,

Andy