NME & Melody Maker

I've kept my old Q magazines from the 80s and 90s before the 'rock' content became miniscule! Still have all my 'Classic Rock' and 'Prog' magazines (and a number of 'Wonderous Stories' from the Classic Rock Society in Rotherham), but I wish I'd kept all my Sounds newspapers from the 70s, as they'd have been a great read now. I stuck with Melody Maker in the mid-70s, although it could be very dry at times. Never warmed to the NME and when they effectively declared war on 'prog' in 1976, I gave up on it completely.

Not sure about the value of any of your collection. I assume somewhere all the copies are on microfilm or digitised, to help authors with clippings and quotations etc. I suppose it all comes down to your available storage space.... a clean out is always good for the soul. Might need to start decluttering in the loft myself while my old knees can still get up the ladder!

^ Good idea - I would imagine front page stories are collectable for some people - such as announcements of changes in band line-ups, tours or, sadly, even deaths.

A friend of mine runs a business selling copies of old magazines and papers. I don't know how succesful it is now but he has been doing it for quite a few years now.

A bit of trivia for you, in 1975, Juergen Fritz put an ad in a Melody Maker mag for a replacement lead vocalist sought after for his band Triumvirat after existing lead singer Helmut Koellen quit, (Doug Fieger, later of the Knack, was lead vocalist for a very short while, but left after just a few weeks), and he got a response from British singer Barry Palmer, who mailed him a tape of himself singing a version of Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed", which was Fritz's favorite song at that time, and Barry got the position! 

Edited by presdoug - December 29 2018 at 05:58