Reflections on Plan B magazine

I’m just catching up on the collapse of Plan B, very late. I stopped writing for music magazines some time before Plan B imploded, but wrote for every issue during its heyday, mostly record reviews. I started writing for Careless Talk Costs Lives, the publication Plan B emerged from which gave itself twelve months to take over the established music press, beginning with issue twelve, counting down to one, or zero, it was never clear which really, but this issue was to be the storming of IPC’s winter palace. The winter palace still sells 350 million magazines a year outside its seemingly strong walls, Yachting News, Woman and Home, Living etc (who calls anything ‘Living etc’?)

Plan B was so different, as David McNamee points out in The Guardian:

‘When I was 22 I was invited to become the editor of a national music magazine. The money was non-existent, the glory hypothetical. The man who asked me was Everett True, and this was the summer of 2003. That magazine has now ceased to be. Its name was Plan B.’

Everett True (not his real name, that’s Jerry Thackray) was the editor for the much-missed Sounds at one point. David McNamee was and is a great writer and a gentleman (well, to me at least). In his Guardian memento he says he was clued up about the music but ‘…I didn’t know enough about people…’ citing this as a reason for leaving. For the record, all my copy blips were handled by David with generosity, humour and insight.

Everett rang me in the summer of 2003 to take over as reviews editor. I had been reviews editor for Ptolemaic Terrascope for five years-ish, unpaid, except for promos, the record-junkie fix. This sounds like a long time, but we only put a handful of issues out, the pace of the thing was, well, like listening to ‘Dark Star’ by The Dead in an appropriate condition, I suppose. The Terrascope is worthy of a lengthy, future blog, for its unsung heroes alone, Steve Pescott particularly.

When Everett rang I was staying with a friend in a dingy flat in Selhurst, South London, as the post-grads had been put out of Batavia Mews, the notorious rat-holes of residence for Goldsmiths College in New Cross. I was finishing my MA. His flat was depression in architectural form, dark, oppressive, but a real saving grace in times of desparation. My mobile went. Everett asked me to be reviews editor, which all seemed straightforward, and initially I was flattered to be asked, despite there being no pay. But at the end of the conversation Everett said something along the lines of:

‘…oh yeah and if you get stuck for copy there’s this guy called Steve Hanson who cranks loads of it…’

I did, and still do. But it left a funny taste in my mouth. Either a) Everett was taking the piss b) he forgot who he was asking to reviews edit momentarily and had a cringe moment after he put the phone down or c) he didn’t care who he was asking as long as the job got done (fair enough).

I did it for a month or so, I got a byline on the website, but never made the print issue. I emailed and declined the role. I was over ten years older than David McNamee at that point and had done enough voluntary media, particularly the Terrascope, and actually nothing was going to beat that. The Terrascope was known as ‘the parish magazine of the underground’, Peter Buck of R.E.M. sent a blank cheque in when it looked like it might sink financially. Rough Trade staff, label and shop, fought over the issues when they came in. The Terrascope was something else, but it was becoming clear that the new elite in Plan B world operated through volunteering. The ability to float over the world unpaid and fabulous (old money, new money, doesn’t matter, money) was the ability to do things other people could do if they didn’t have bad shifts at Tesco.

I carried on writing though, Everett emailed – sensing my very genuine sulk – and said ‘you can still write for us, you know’, which was sweet of him. I was pickier though. I had a column called ‘Doppler Shift’, which I thought was a real goer. You had to re-pitch columns each time, which actually made the term ‘column’ redundant in every way except as a description of a layout convention. And my column was a page. This was the maverick strength of Plan B though, they weren’t going to allow some boring old fart moan on in the same old form week after week. I mean Jesus, look at this blog. McNamee understands the difference well:

‘Plan B was almost called The Music That We Like. It was only going to cover female artists, it wouldn’t listen to PRs, its writers were to be from fanzines and blogs and were going to pseudonymously “steal” the names of famous music journalists.’

I stole and inverted the name of a famous music journalist, as well as writing under my own name, the Luther Blissett Situationist game. It was kind of indulgent, I suppose. McNamee mentions that:

‘…in its early issues, some of the reviews looked more like diary entries or manifestos than descriptions of music, which infuriated people. As writers we weren’t afraid to empty our hearts and list in aggravating minutiae exactly why a piece of music was so special.’

But it seemed to me a certain core of people could do that, others couldn’t, or would be sidelined to web content if they did. There was an A-list at Plan B, Miss Amp, the Special People. They Who Could Be Emotional and Lengthy. Miss Amp used to run the wonderful fanzine ‘Amp’ (which I reviewed at The Terracope) and is actually called Ann-Marie, or was, before she attempted to morph into a kind of Paula Yates to Gonzales’s Michael Hutchence. Most of the A-list went to parties in Brighton and are now immortalised in Kieron Gillen’s graphic novelisation (including writers like David). A friend of mine used to log on to the website (when you could do so, it didn’t last long, perhaps he is partly to blame) and write things like ‘…you bunch of bleeding pebble-bashers’. I never encouraged him to do any of this, he just had (and has) a nice line in surreal-but-cutting harangues. He can make basic description into a character assassination.

The London-Brighton-centrism had its positives though, if Everett is to be believed I got sent to Iceland because he couldn’t be bothered leaving Brighton any more (see my blog on the Airwaves festival elsewhere on this site). I certainly enjoyed the benefits of utter obscurity, time-warp little towns with cheap(er) rent and the ability to order pretty much what sounds and gigs I wanted for free.

I remember Plan B fondly and will try to upload my entire cache of writing for them here, in its original form, to avoid pointless duplication.

The depressing state of print media looks unlikely to change any time soon and I feel lucky to have been involved, at whatever level, with such a range of great music publications. We’re all on blogs now it seems…

Notes

McNamee (2009) ‘Plan B magazine remembered’, in The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jun/04/plan-b-magazine-remembered [accessed 03/10/09]

Postscript

Everett got in touch to correct my strop over the phone call to invite me to be reviews editor, see below and his post at http://everetttrue2.blogspot.com/2009/10/reflections-on-plan-b-magazine.html#more

Post-postscript

Psychoanalysing the music writer: At Walsden Junior School a fellow pupil who must remain nameless told the headmaster I could read music, beginning life as he meant to go on, as a compulsive liar. Lunchtime. The headmaster was at our table, he called me to account, I told him I could read music, to try to save face, which of course, I couldn’t. And of course, was incredibly stupid. The headmaster then later gave me a cornet to take home. My parents were very alarmed as they couldn’t afford to buy me a musical instrument, my mother worked in a sewing shop and my father in a textiles factory, producing printed material for Top Shop. I had to take it back, the head lent me one, I went to practice at Calder College, it was hard. I stopped after a couple of weeks. I think this led to my obsession with music later, trying to re-prove a connection… But ultimately who knows… I mean, I like music, a lot…