or possibly the full context of John McMahon's comments.

I might well agree with him depending on what exactly he means.

In any case it's nice to hear someone from the NME is writing passionately about music...

but this seems a bit like the pot calling the kettle black; don't the NME revel in pseudo-Dickensian, 'beauty-in-squalor', (most probably faux) working class tripe these days?

Seems to me this article was probably a reaction to mags like the NME glamourising 'working class' music, when really it should be a non-issue

does it matter. Its by no means a forefront music publication really, its reader ship cares about Fall Out Boy and the next big hyped band, not a critque of music tastes and what is perhaps good or bad about the state of indie today.
Theres a place for the mundane and the fantastical in msuic, thats the whole friggin point.
Its about self expression and what you personally feel, hopefully connecting you to other likeminded people, thus creating a fan base.
People are just so narrow minded sometimes to realise that all aspects of this supposed art form are valid and at best astounding.
As I write this I'm listening to a classical composition featuring a full orchestra, on the way home from university I was listening to the Mars Volta and yesterday night I was blissed out to Lightspeed Champion. Theres a place for everything.

"There has always been a place in rock'n'roll for cerebral outsiders, from the Velvet Underground to Pulp via the Smiths. And 'indie' has always been their badge."

Spot on actually, I hate that 'indie' has been misappropriated by what can easily be described as 'lad-rock'. BLAAAAAH

here:
http://tinyurl.com/yp7amz

Is run by middle classed boys who can only relate to the working class if they fit all their cosy stereotypes. They can't cope with a working class kid who prefers to read a book than get pissed up on cheap lager.

I can't believe you sold Mr Jam out like this! I'm personally outraged you little scamp!

are total jokes to be honest

"For one thing it was seemingly written by an idiot whose politics and ideology have been formed by books rather than life experiences and emotional toil."

From a man who writes about music for a living

Its utterly pointless. In a few years time they will do a similar article about bands emerging who favour emotional intensity and simplistic music to stagnant, self-aware cerebral music, and the cycle will continue

when nme started marketing the ordinary boys as literate library-dwelling types who were going to save us all from lout-rock?

back in your box, nme.

to fit all of that in a text message??

The guy who wrote the OMM article likes intelligent rock music. The NME chap doesn't. This is just a difference in opinion. The real issue here is how a guy who says "might of held" becomes the editor of anything, let alone a magazine title with the NME's stature and distribution.

Maybe he's against intelligence full stop, not just in rock music.

neither mcmahon's or the observer's points are made very clear. is the observer saying that because yr working class you can't be clever and you can't make clever music? and in the actual article there seems to be an emphasis on geekiness. working class people can be geeks too. it just seems all quite confusing.

anyway, i always thought music was supposed to be able to unite people over classes, races, creeds blahcetera. however, music journalists seem to revel in breaking everyone into a million different subsets. "if you like math-hyphy post-dub rock made by this band of middle-class youths, you can't like this ear-humping hardcore soweto noise-rock made by african tribesman with electricity." it's all just a bit bollocks.

Over to OMM and These New Puritans;

OMM: What's your opinion of bands with a very retro sound, like the Courteeners or the Enemy?

George Barnett: I've never heard them, but they're too obsessed with reality.

Jack Barnett: And love songs.

GB: We live in a different world. There should be more magic.

It's a music journalism contest, but no-one knows whose hand is on their cock.

all of those bands are public school educated.
And I'm pretty sure the article was just an angle! It's nice to hear bands with something to say

article doesn't really seem to be about class. There are undertones but I suspect the NME has its own agenda. The OMM article is pretty awful to read, mind. And the NME are twats.

but the NME response is beyond idiotic. He says it "reeked of inherent fear and disgust of the working classes". I'd say his reaction reeked of (an) inherent patronising attitude to the working classes, and an underlying middle class guilt that is perhaps a sign that he doth protest too much.

the bit denouncing "intelligence" in "rock" was seriously fucking stupid. I'm used to black and white journalism from the NME, but even with that in mind the response is ridiculously short-sighted

Without reading the OMM article it's hard to comment on how it comes across. But, as passionate as McMahon's rant is, I take issue with his proposal rock music "shouldn't be about intelligence." If he has any taste in music worth celebrating, McMahon would probably find that most of the bands he loved (from The Smiths to Joy Division to The Beatles) married instinctive, emotionally powerful ideas and melodies to very intelligent and creative arrangements and compositions. And "the working classes" whose taste he professes to defend are positively in love with intelligent art and intelligent music - there's a reason that Radiohead and The Stone Roses are more popular than The Pigeon Detectives or The View. "Maths, science and architecture are the enemies of rock music..." Let me give you the names of some of your enemies then; Louis Pasteur, Alan Turing, Frank Lloyd Wright...

Of course, McMahon knows all this and has done his paper and himself a world of good by stimulating this particular debate...

Long live nerd-dom!

Selling Ox. Eagle. Lion. Man. as 'eccentric' is an affront and an insult to anyone doing anything interesting or challenging in music at the moment.

They are a fuck-awful band with a lead singer who struts around the stage trying to look dark and interesting, clearly wanting to be an interesting, menacing and compelling frontman in the manner of Nick Cave or Mark E Smith but lacking any threat or charimsa whatsoever. Ox. Eagle. Lion. Man are neutered, edge-less and a diluted CD:UK version of something far better and interesting. The Birthday Party for people who find the Birthday Party too intense, David Cronenberg's Wife for someone who finds subversiveness too much to take and wants an imitation of subversiveness instead, The Fall for bland people.

The fact that anyone can rate is this band at all angers me more than anything else in the music scene at the moment. Even more than people buying Scouting for Girls records.

Jarvis would probably describe himself as working class (from my understanding that would best describe his upbringing) but he was educated at St Martins and is most definitely an intelligent man. As a result the best Pulp songs deal with working class life in a sensitive, intelligent way. The same could be said of a smattering of Arctic Monkeys material (although this might be pushing it a bit).

The Enemy write songs about getting pissed, promote a 'small town' mentality and champion a tabloid-reading, living-for-the-weekend lifestyle. They do not, from my point of view, speak about 'working class' (read: crap job, little money) life; they merely glamourise mental stagnation and the obstacles such self inflicted retardation creates.

I don't like the assumption that one who reads cannot be working class, which seems to be the logic the NME is following these days. Since the Beatles, working class people have made intelligent pop music. If John and Paul had sung about working as a docker and getting lashed, I don't think we'd still be listening to them now.

End of rant.

...

I'm going to compromise and stop listening to indie music - 'intelligent' or otherwise.

Now I am superior to everyone.

As someone who recieved this text message I feel I must interject here as some readers seem to have missed the point.

A) James (not John) was writing from his own perspective and passion, NOT that of the NME. Therefore comprisons between NME and OMM are redundant no?

B) The OMM article WAS utterly sychophantic drivel that seemed to miss the point that bands shouldn't be held up as messianic figures. And that trying to shoehorn pseudo-thoughtful statements from bands wittering on in an interview as prophetic quotes does not make for enjoyable or interesting reading.

C) Did DiS actually check to see if it was cool to make this into a fucking news story?

We had a long talk about music once, emphasis on once.

At one point I said it was a close thing between Ghostface, Iron and Wine, Panda Bear and The National for my album of 2007 and they replied "Who?"

Almost as shocking as them not knowing who Slayer was.

As far as class goes it's irrelevant unless it's made an