Classic Rock Magazine

I recently picked up the October 2018 issue of Classic Rock Magazine (Issue #254), cover story on Led Zeppelin.  If the issue tally is any indication – 13 issues per year including the twelve months and a summer edition – the magazine has been around since 1999.  My earliest issue is #85, from October 2005, with the cover story on Hollywood Rocks.  I can’t say my collection is complete, I started diligently getting the issues in 2008.  My buddy Phil got me a gift subscription a few years ago, but at the moment I’m reliant upon Barnes & Noble.  It’s a British magazine so here in the US we’re about a month behind them.  

Last winter the parent company went out of business, and for a brief bit it seemed as though the magazine would stop publishing.  Fortunately Ben Ward (singer for Orange Goblin) rallied a campaign to seek a new owner and the magazine was saved.   So far as I can tell there are no missing issues.  Excellent.

The earliest rock magazines I recall are CREEM and Rolling Stone.   My only recollection of CREEM is a negative reference to Black Sabbath (Ozzy and “dark goons who flanked him” – Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler), and Rolling Stone struck me as too politically oriented and also hostile to Black Sabbath and other  heavier bands I preferred. 

Then came KERRANG!.   We started reading this in Paris, purchasing it at W.H. Smith on Rue de Rivoli off of the Place de la Concorde, just blocks away from the US Embassy.  Kerrang! loved Black Sabbath and the heavier bands.  They really loved Faith No More, giving The Real Thing a maximum 5K score, which led us to catch the band at the old 9:30 Club in DC in fall 1989, followed by an opening slot in 1992 at RFK (Angel Dust tour) for Metallica (Black Album Tour) and Guns N’Roses (Use Your Illusion Tour).   Then we moved back to the US and lost touch of Kerrang! for awhile.  When Classic Rock came around, we eagerly caught up that, and I recognized some names like Geoff Barton from Kerrang!. 

The magazine features obituaries, “look who’s back”, full length articles, and then the following:

The Hard Stuff: New Albums.   Guess what?  They review new albums.  Now they have a 1-10 rating.  I’ve yet to see anyone get a 1 rating, and a 10 rating is also rare, so consider an 8 or a 9 the effective maximum.  There are also Round-Ups on Melodic Rock, Sleaze and Blues, specific categories.

The Hard Stuff: Reissues.   By now bands are reissuing earlier material, generally remastered and with extra tracks.  Some are better than others.

Buyer’s Guide.  They’ll focus on a particular band (this issue: Todd Rundgren) giving two Essential (Classic) albums, Superior (reputation cementing), Good (worth exploring) and AVOID, which is what they consider the band’s worst album.  I find the latter to be fun to read.  Occasionally they concede that even the band's worst album is still worth listening to, the rating simply being relative. 

Live.  Big portions for music festivals like Download (today’s Donington Monsters of Rock) and lesser entries for regular shows, though I notice they’re seeing shows in the US and not just the UK. 

Heavy Load.  Tacked on at the very end. Here they ask rock stars some deep and heavy questions.  Not necessarily embarrassing, but they do give the star an opportunity to cop up to regrets and wrong choices.  Give them credit for tailoring the questions to the specific star.   Gene Simmons:  “There is no negative to being Gene Simmons.”

PROG.  Apparently they had enough material on bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Yes, King Crimson, etc. to warrant an entire spinoff magazine.  Rick Wakeman has a highly entertaining column, which itself could be argued is worth the price of the magazine.  Generally they review something like 30 albums of this genre alone, of which I might recognize 5 bands.  I used to buy this regularly, now I only do so if the cover story (Camel, Opeth, Pink Floyd) catches my attention. 

Bonus Disc.   Now they simply have a link for a download, but until recently you actually got a physical CD with material.  I’ve accumulated dozens of these, far more than I can actually listen to, and sadly 80% of the material are new bands slavishly copying the same bands we’ve known for years.  If you have the patience you might find one or two tracks from a CD which prompt further investigation.   By now I’ve stopped bothering.

Source of Inspiration.   With Facebook around these days, Classic Rock might as easily be a source for me to put down more albums on my Amazon.com wishlist, as be reviewing albums I already purchased on my own.  I’ve noticed that the UK and Europe are more widespread in their attention to different forms of music.  In the US the mainstream only focuses on bands which would play the Grammys.   But in Paris, Brant Bjork’s new album was front and center in the vinyl racks at FNAC, and Hawkwind get a review in Classic Rock magazine, even if they’re not nearly as big as they were during the 70s when Lemmy was still in the band.   Hell, Clutch get strong attention from CRM, though as yet no cover story.