Keep right on 'til the end of the year.

2019 has come and gone, and with it music releases that I found and missed. As usual this is about the stuff I picked up on this year rather then what was actually released in 2019. 

Lonely Robot: John Mitchell's trilogy concluded this year with 'Under Stars' following Please Come Home (2015) and The Big Dream (2017). If you like updated traditional style Prog Rock then this is for you. Good tunes, good playing and enough "modern" to stand apart from the 70s pastiches.

Jazz has had a bit of an off year for me. With much of Jazz Journal's website disappearing behind a paywall, and off cuts of Miles and Coltrane being touted as earth shattering events I'm struggling to find much to recommend. However The Comet is Coming. 

Work Of Art are an AOR/Melodic Rock group who in a parallel universe are the biggest band in the world. While still not quite equaling the highs of second album 'In Progress' 'Exhibits' is still the best of a cracking year of releases from genre leading label Frontiers. I'm going to be talking in detail about this unfashionable corner of music soon so will save some more suggestions for then.

I've done a couple of round ups of what I was listening to as the year went on, in September and March. My views remain pretty much unchanged on those records, although I may be a little less harsh on the Miles Davis disc having listened some more, still not a classic though. I did a review of the Americana world, which has had a classic year HERE. Visit my colleagues Jonathan and Helen's opinions on 2019 as well, clearly more music to pick up on in 2020. In fact read the whole of Americana UK from top to bottom.

One artist I have rather lost track of this year is Bill Nelson. His new website is slow to load, hard to navigate and thus I have largely stopped visiting. The forum is not the lively place it once was, and judging by the number of off topic posts those who do post are not finding anything to discuss in Bill's recent work.

Thanks for continuing to read my ramblings. The first couple of months topics are already planned, so let's see whats out there...

Will the last reader please turn off the lights

The December 2018 issue of Jazz Journal was the last print edition after 70 years. We are constantly hearing about the hardships of print in the face of the online world, but your local WH Smiths has hundreds of magazines on the shelves, presumably selling in quantities good enough to keep going. So why did Jazz Journal fail and what lessons can we draw from it for the wider print world.

To jump off the shelves a magazine needs a certain amount of kerb appeal, something to engage the casual reader and prompt an impulse purchase. Compare Jazz Journal’s gloomy often black & white images and subdued colours to the big bright glossy images of its nearest competitor, Jazzwise, and other niche music titles all shouting their wares and it seems almost designed to sit on the racks. I recognise this was a cost issue as was the cheaper paper stock, and the frankly skimpy page count, but no attempt seemed to be made to make the magazine attractive to anyone other than the committed reader seeking it out. 

It’s worth comparing Jazz Journal to another niche music magazine, albeit one catering to a different audience that has adapted and certainly appears to be thriving, Fireworks - Rock and Metal. This started in 2000, and having bounced between monthly and bi monthly the publishers settled on a quarterly magazine sometime ago. Since then the magazine has grown to 150 pages, and a cd with mp3 and PDF files on it. Plenty enough to read for three months. As many of these types of magazines are part time ventures this takes away the pressure of deadlines or providing a news service, leaving space for articles, interviews and reviews to stretch out. The magazine title has shifted, the original Fireworks is a very obscure album title reference, and the original strap line “The Melodic Rock Magazine” (a niche within a niche) has been replaced with the current on "Rock and Metal" being larger than the title, beating its potential audience over the head with the message. Better covers, better design, better writing as well, make the magazine an attractive proposition both on the rack and leafing through it.  

Jazz Journal stayed rooted in 1966, appealing to a long-term core readership that dwindled with each passing year. Recent attempts to update were too little too late and met with vitriol from the readers. The casual Jazz listener, me, found nothing in it except complaints about change, and nostalgia for the way things were. In the end unwillingness to compromise with the audience killed it. Oddly with the resurgence in Jazz over the last year or so the market for a Mojo style legacy magazine covering Jazz is probably larger than ever, and Jazz Journal could easily have become that, republishing material from its past in much the same way as Uncut exploits the Melody Maker archive. 

The importance of an online presence to back up the print edition can’t be overstated. Fireworks works with the Rocktopia website, adding unique content to the site, which also acts as a news resource for the magazine. That coupled with an active, colourful social media presence, and being active in the online community means the print magazine is always reaching out to its audience. Jazz Journal’s sporadic mostly text only tweets and Facebook posts are another light under bushel moment. 

It sounds like I’m being harsh on a magazine with a long and distinguished run, but it’s the market that decides who survives, and it has delivered a judgement on Jazz Journal. The message is clearly; adapt and survive, stagnate and fail.