When I was getting into music, there were a lot of tribes, and it wasn't just based around the music that you were listening to. Fair enough to say that you were a Goth, or a Mod, but the paper that you read was also a good indicator of your taste, and although I did read the NME and Sounds, I was always a Melody Maker reader. Partly its because they had writers who were allowed to be exuberant and pretentious. Partly its because it had glossy covers which made it stand out against the bland newsprint of the NME, but mainly it was because of the music they championed. I bought 'Surfer Rosa' on the back of a glowing review in the Maker, and I never looked back. There's a chap on Twitter who has been posting the contents of both MM and NME over the past few years, and looking back, I can see how many of my favourite LPs were originally shown me by Chris Roberts, Simon Reynolds, or Jim Arundel.
Does it stand the test of time? Obviously some of these bands are not as well known as others - thirty-odd years later, I'm still not blown away by the Weather Prophets, for instance. But, as a snapshot of its time, it's a great example of the ethos that the magazin was pushing at the time, and I've enjoyed listening to it, even though I'm a tiny bit older.
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