Issue number 145 of the legendary London underground newspaper International Times was the first published in 1973, and it’s a wonder to behold.

For starters, on the cover is an interesting creation by an artist named George Snow, a self-referential image highlighting the means of production involved in ... creating a cover for IT. The image is craftily “pixelated” in a way that suggests (of all things) desktop publishing of the late 1980s, and a font card for 42-point Aachen is also featured as a design element.

The issue also included a two-page installment of “Fritz the Cat” by R. Crumb, and there’s an additional bit of Crumb art tucked elsewhere in the issue. There’s a wonderful advertisement for “Climax Books” (a Danish publisher of smut), and an incredible subscription offer—anyone willing to shell out £4.80 for a year’s worth of IT would also receive Hawkwind’s new album Doremi Fasol Latido.

The cover blandly promises a look at “How Melody Maker Hit Rock Bottom,” which is scant preparation for the savage four-page parody of the UK music rag to be discovered in the pages within. They call it “Monotony Maker”.....

It would take someone with a clear memory of the Melody Maker of the 1970s to unpack the myriad of now-forgotten references. On Twitter, Syd Barrett biographer Rob Chapman refers to the parody as “libellous,” which we’ll get to in a minute. The cover featured a fanciful tale of David Bowie becoming the first male rock star to give birth, while also reporting on a forthcoming Moscow production of the Who’s Tommy in which “guest soloists are believed to include everyone in the Soviet Union.”

In a tweet I can no longer find, Chapman also draws attention to the wicked wit involved in the otherwise innocuous-seeming cover headline “Beatles to Split?” which in 1973 addressed the deep-seated denial in the UK music press. On the parody’s second page there is a scurrilous gossip column called “The Raver” that is surely the item IT’s attorneys would have scrutinized most carefully, seeing as how it contains references to an Ian Anderson tax exile in Switzerland, cocaine shenanigans with Jimmy Page, and Marc Bolan’s likely stint in a looney bin.
 

 
The “Payolagraph” item affords an opportunity to engage in some takedowns of Ono/Lennon, Neil Young, and the people trying to wring the last quid out of Jimi Hendrix’s legacy.
 
Read the whole thing after the jump…....
 

 
A young “Steve” Morrissey (he would have been 17 years old at the time) writes in the July 24, 1976 issue of Melody Maker:

The Ramones are the latest bumptious band of degenerate no-talents whose most notable achievement to date is their ability to advance beyond the boundaries of New York City, and purely on the strength of a spate of convincing literature projecting the Ramones as God’s gift to rock music.

They have been greeted with instant adulation by an army of duped fans. Musically, they do not deal in subtlety or variation of any kind, their rule is to be as incompetent as possible.

For a band believed to project the youth of America, New York - suburban life, anti-conformism, sex and struggle, or whatever, they fail miserably. And in the sober light of day their imperfections have a field day.

The Ramones make the Stooges sound like concertmasters, and I feel that the only place for their discordant music is the sweaty downtown Manhattan dives to which they are no doubt accustomed.

The New York Dolls and Patti Smith have proved that there is some life pumping away in the swamps and gutters of New York and they are the only acts which originated from the N.Y. club scene worthy of any praise. The Ramones have absolutely nothing to add that is of relevance or importance and should be rightly filed and forgotten—Steve Morrissey, Kings Road, Stretford, Manchester.

This issue of Melody Maker is on eBay with a “Buy It Now” for $35.00.

With thanks to Christian Paris’ FB page

 
Music journalist Neil Kulkarni is one of the UK’s premier writers on hip-hop. He writes regularly for the Quietus, and readers of a certain age might recognise his name from the mid-90s, when he wrote about rap, and lots of other music, for Melody Maker.

Kulkarni has recently put together a mixtape of some of his favourite hip-hop tracks from the 90s, which he stresses is “not definitive”. It features music from the well known (Ice Cube, Cypress Hill, Camp Lo, KRS-1) to the more obscure (Cru, E-Bros, Don Jagwarr), and tracks from some of the most respected names of the era (Showbiz & AG, Kwest The Madd Ladd, Gravediggaz, Nas). On his blog he reflects on the artists and the tracks featured with some amusing anecdotes like this one about Jeru The Damaja:

Nastiest fucker I ever interviewed. Straight up racist. Once he figured out I wasn’t black, [he] clammed up, got surly, treated me like I was an idiot. I may have been, but fuck you very much Jeru and thankyouforthemusic, the songs I’m singing.

Shame to hear that Jeru is/was racist, as his tunes still sound great:

Jeru The Damaja “Ya Playin’ Yaself” live @ Rust, October 2010
 

 
You can hear ‘90s Hip-Hop Vol 1’ (and download it, once logged in) over at Mixcrate.

 
Charles has created a superb blog Archived Music Press, which contains scans of old copies of the UK’s N.M.E. and Melody Maker from 1987-1996, featuring articles on Public Enemy, The Happy Mondays, Radiohead, Pulp, Kurt Cobain and many more. As Charles explains:

I recently retrieved a large pile of old N.M.E. and Melody Makers from a dusty attic. Most of my copies are from around 1987 to 1996. Somehow can’t bring myself to throw them out so I thought I’d start scanning in some of the more interesting covers, reviews and articles at a decent resolution so they can be linked to, read, printed and generally preserved for posterity. I figure someone’s bound to have a use or interest in this stuff if I keep at it. If I feel particularly inclined I might write a few words about the musician, band or journalist.

It’s also my way of saying thank you to all the people who’ve taken the trouble to upload material I’ve gratefully found on the web over many years. All pages will be scanned full size at 150dpi. In simple terms this means you’ll be able to re-produce any page you find here to good quality on A3 size paper.

Check Charles blog, Archived Music Press here.
 

 
Bonus classic covers from Charles’ site after the jump
 
With thanks to Damien Smith