WITH most music magazines you feel like you're caught up ill an unasked for war between EMAP and IPC, as both fill out the newsagents with titles of vastly vary ing degrees of quality.
The only consistently good music magazine over the past few years, and the only one free of the "more ego than talent" hack brigade, is the extraordinary and exquisite Volume, which used to be very hard to track down but thanks to some new deal or something is now widely available.
This issue they're celebrating five years of independent minded music journalism by giving away two CDs with 30 exclusive tracks (and when they say exclusive they mean it) which add up to more than two hours of music. There's also a 192 page book of interviews and stuff, plus a free CD Rom which you can gleefully throw in the bin while laughing hysterically to yourself.
The great things about the tracks on the CDs (apart from Bjork, who does another bloody re mix) is that they're all from yet to be released albums (as in Elastica), people doing strange cover versions (as in Elvis Costello covering Sleeper - one of the best tracks on the compilation), stuff from bands you had long since thought broke up (as in Curve) and other music that our DJs just don't seem to have the time to get around to playing (as in Bill Janovitz, Mindless Drug Hoover and System 7).
There's also a chance to catch up on some long lost friends (as in the Cocteau Twins) just to see if they've gone all Jungle on you all of sudden (the answer is no) and you can check out this year's highly tipped new bands (as in Geneva and Drugstore). And there's still loads more from Divine Comedy to Gallon Drunk and Alabama 3 to The Auteurs.
The accompanying book is whizzo, written as it is by people who are more interested in writing about music than they are about themselves, and all the funny bits in the middle section are written by Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan. You may want to know that Volume also produces a whole range of titles covering the more specialist areas of dance, drum `n' bass, country and metal.
ON a similar note: one of the more depressing aspects of how the media interfaces with the music industry is how a band, or bands, can produce quality music year in, year out and still never get the message across to the wider populace, thanks to the constricting consensus of, the mainstream.
Two acts in particular, Babybird and Divine Comedy, both released a whole body of fascinating work that remained ignored until, by one of those complicated twists of fate, they were picked up by ex Radio 1 DJ Chris Evans who played You're Gorgeous and Something For The Weekend off the airwaves, put them on his television programme and watched on as the rest of the media collapsed like dominoes and rushed to embrace two acts they had previously wilfully ignored. It says a lot about everything that one very irritating mouthpiece can make or break a career.
The latest act young Evans has been championing, The Longpigs (signed to U2's Mother Records) has yet to make the requisite leap into the, charts (tunes fellas, you need more tunes) but you can have a gawk for yourself when they play the Olympia Theatre in Dublin tomorrow night and the Limelight in Belfast on Sunday night.
IT would be a tad cruel to say that Ocean Colour Scene are Britain's answer to Hootie And The Blowfish - but there's no doubting their massive popularity that was ushered in, partly by the triumvirate of Paul Weller, Noel Gallagher and Paolo Hewitt and partly by massive record sales. Sixties, retro, Traffic soundalikes they may be, but they have still stuffed out (and you can't get a ticket anywhere) the Olympia for two nights on February 14th-15th. Such is their wide ranging appeal (my dentist likes them) they have just been added to the Heineken Weekender (lovely refreshing beer and reasonably priced too) that's on in Galway in two weeks. Ocean Colour Scene will play Leisureland on February 13th, and if that doesn't put a few more thousand people into Galway, nothing will. Personally I blame Jools Holland for all of this but it would take too long to explain why.
