This week's wearied NME gripe

The self-directed backslapping, arsekissing and cocksucking continues apace. Oh yes. It seems as though NME really has undergone the fabled operation to have those pesky couple of ribs removed. It's not enough to pat outgoing deputy editor James Oldham (he of the often nauseatingly gushing features - see that horrific Vines issue from a few months back) on the head. Oh no. They have to let us all know, in a news item, that he's landed an advisory A&R job at the Wall Street Journal, a paper which recently proclaimed that (trumpet fanfare please!) the NME seal of approval is increasingly being taken by US record companies as a measure of a band's talent and worth. Well, hooray for NME! It's just one big fucking corporate love-in. Even worse, though, in a separate piece of 'news' we find the revelation that Oldham has set up his own label, Loog Records, and that the first signings are a band called The Hiss (bet Oldham soiled himself in excitement when he found an unsigned band with a 'The' in their name). It really is coming to something when the corporate saturation is so complete that adverts are shamelessly allowed to masquerade as news items.