Drowned In Newcastle #1

and if you're talking about bands who people from outside the city pay attention to you forgot bands like Lavotchkin.

but hey, this wasn't quite the horrible Narc. piece i thought it might be so that's okay.

Seen them (accidentally)far to many times, and when they were Freerunner too, there's absolutely nothing special about them at all. Mediocre indie tripe pretty much, and a shockingly dull live band too.

But hey, nice to see a piece on the North East, and Manilla Chapter are pretty ace!

flowers of evil have been going for about 8 years and sound like fucking Placebo.

What's wrong with Narc, anyway? Top quality interviews, it's really easy/un-intimidating to get involved with, covers loads of local and national bands. If they don't cover a band you like, why not email them with a piece you've written yourself?

"flowers of evil, men of rock" or course they're fucking shite, mate.

the nepotistic way friends always get good reviews, often ill-informed pieces, poorly written. and it looks really ugly too, all that blank space and tiny print.
the guy who had a column where he just ranted about stuff was fun but that just felt like it was the occasional blog entry taken directly from his blogspot and printed in the zine.

oh, and printing reviews of gigs/bands when the writer wasn't even present. I can remember that happening fairly often back in the day.

I don't have any friends and I write for NARC. In fact I only make friends with people who got good reviews in it...

I got reviewed by someone who wasn't at the gig once. It happens in all the magazines I've written for, soz.

was one of a Horrors gig that had been cancelled and the rescheduled date hadn't been played yet, but it raved about how awesome they were... surely just don't bother printing something like that or at least find out whether the gig went ahead?

I reviewed Flowers myself and know for a fact MASS and all related bands are covered. So you're just putting the blinkers on. There's also a regular clubs section now, so I don't know what kind of 'thing' NARC is?

I just don't see the point in slagging the only decent mag in the north east, let's face it it pisses over The Crack from a great height for reviews and interviews. If you don't like it start your own zine, there's plenty of DIY ones around.

But if you think that's a rare occurence in music journalism you'd be sorely mistaken.... certainly from my experience.

You'd also be mistaken in thinking NARC hired 'good journalists' in it's first year. I've been writing since issue one and at the time I was fresh out of university with only the uni entertainments rag on my CV. Writers are volunteer contributors and I think Claire would agree with me that NARC is very much about giving promising talent an opportunity to develop their writing, and that has certainly been my experience.

The guy who reviewed a solo gig I did and who wasn't actually at the gig doesn't write for it anymore. Like I say, it's just one editor so she isn't always going to keep on top of people who aren't attending gigs.

If you haven't read it in 4 years you might want to pick up a copy and see how the writing and layout has improved since then.

with regard my opinion on NARC having read all of this I admit it has been quite while since I read it and I may need to give it another go. :)

I am very much involved in the scene and it could be easily better if people got off their highhorse.

certainly didn't think it was shit or anything like that.

Sorry if thats how it came across.

There’s always going to be a faction that are cynical, especially in a small City, but even registering that helps perpetuate it. Action & positivity are the perfect antidote.
I don’t think the grass is necessarily greener elsewhere, you just don’t see the full 360 degrees of a scene without living it....and no matter what industry you’re talking about, or where you are based people will always make it about who you know and not what you’ve achieved- just make sure those people you know have an opinion you respect, and to hell with the rest! Highhorses are designed for falling off.
Yours optimistically x

If you've never heard her music?

She's actually a lovely person.

They're among the finest bands in Newcastle at the moment. There's so much good music around here right now that I couldn't cram it all into my first column, though. Give it time kids...

i'm not really a narc fan and generally i'm embarrassed by the whole 'north east scene'. apart from field music. and kenickie. chyeahhhhh

if she doesn't hurry up and get her album done sometimes i worry that she'll be over taken by some kind of laura marling inspired wave of twee-female singer songwriters and get lost in the crowd.
which would be a shame because she's one of the more promising 'indie' acts around town.

It's nice to see Newcastle get some more coverage, and if this is just an introductory piece that sets things up for something slightly more in-depth next time around, then fair enough.

Without wanting to start up the NARC debate again though (as a contributor to it, it's been nice to known that someone's reading it, even if they think it's a load of old shit...), it's a bit annoying to see the same old names again and again in any Newcastle coverage, be it local or national - I mean, surely we can do better than Let's Buy Happiness? Had the mispleasure of seeing them at the Evolution Festival launch, and they're like a watered-down Bombay Bicycle Club (now there's a sentence I never hoped to write!). NARC's far from perfect, and there are definetely a few bands, good or otherwise, it's seemingly illegal to write negatively about, but for a free magazine focusing on a small area, the scope of the thing's pretty damn impressive: just looking at this month's issue, going from major acts like Broken Bells to smaller acts to local acts to arts coverage ain't no small feat. There's things it misses out on - certainly, the lack of punk/hardcore coverage is pretty notable. But as long as people keep boycotting the magazine and not writing for it, it's not going to change, is it?

Back to DiS though: nice to see some more regional coverage (and if, as I'm assuming, this is a format to be expanded into other cities, then possibly a really useful tool for local scens across the country), but if it's going to work, a bit of depth could be useful. I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but I really, really could do with never reading about Frankie and the fucking Heartstrings for as long as a live. Best of luck with this though, it's a pretty neat idea.

Names and myspace addresses please, also maybe a list of some events that they've put on or been part of over the last few months? And I don't mean playing the Head of Steam at a Too Far North gig. If your friends' bands really do deserve to be heard then I'm sure Narc just need to be told about them.

agree with all you've said. Toby Rogers is great and I reckon this column is going to end up being brilliant. The Narc-hating is laughable, criticising a magazine for not covering music scenes whos' members refuse to even consider writing for Narc in the first place. The only problem I have with Narc is that they cover too many national and international bands these days, they should focus on the regional scene and promoting local events a bit more. Also, less Sunderland coverage, as don't they already have Manifesto magazine?

Lots of Narc reviews are positive because, as you say, it's a small city and it's impossible to really lay into bands like national magazines do cause you'd be pissing on the guy next door, so to speak.

I do think that the bands mentioned here are kinda predictable but it's just a fact that they're the biggest bands from Newcastle at the moment and therefore are the sensible introduction to the Newcastle music scene. Cause as much as I am not keen on Little Comets (being v careful with my words here) you can't ignore the fact that they're signed to Sony. Or have they been dropped??

Are Ryoga the beardy guys who play mainly instrumental stuff? Saw them a few months back, amazing!

just that it in relation to this column its somewhat parochial nature would mean it a mistake to think that its coverage is the authoritive endnote on the newcastle scene.

i'd agree with you that they cover too many national bands - but thats something they'd need to do to get people to pick it up, whose going to grab a magazine with dressed in wires on the cover and think this is going to be a great casual read?*

since you ask my friends who are most involved with music have been putting on and playing shows with fairly notable artists like chuck ragan from hot water music as well as bands like dillinger four, leatherface, lemuria, defiance ohio, and bridge & tunnel over the last year or so. so no, not some no mark grey student indie like i think you where slyly hinting at.

this column should be great and i only started this to say that i hope the writer doesn't fall into the easy (and lazy) trap of thinking that something like Narc and its bands are the be all and end all of the exciting interesting stuff that's happening up here and just writing about that bands it regularly covers.

as mentioned above theres been some great extreme metal, doom and grindcore type stuff too but thats even more at the fringes most of the time.

*dressed in wires did play some pretty cool shows though

...members of each of these band are now spread across two new bands: Manila Chapter and Lost Riots.

But I don't think it's what DiS stands for and what they would ask from their writer.

I also think that bands like DSC, Little Comets and LBH kind of surpass the NARC stratosphere in that they've mostly received national attention prior to any major coverage in the magazine. They get covered by this site and NARC now because you can't deny they are at the forefront, nationally, of bands that represent the north east whether you like them or not.

I just don't agree that the bands/scenes you refer to don't get covered, because I read about them in there a fair bit, otherwise I wouldn't know about them. Certainly not as the main coverage, but there are columns and live reviews that cover the more alternative stuff that goes on... and if they've chosen not to get involved in the magazine, when it's based on local contributions, then that's up to them.

NARC has no agenda, no backhanders from anyone to cover their bands or any particular scene. If you're that into the bands and the music and you can write then there's no reason not to get involved rather than be jaded about it.

Most of the best north east bands are playing this:

http://www.solutiongroup.co.uk/testing/nse_poster/poster_web.jpg

When's the next column Toby??

mainly just headline acts like sunn0))) but there's no reason for it not to dedicate an issue of this column to what we've got going on