If only SELECT were still going

Crap, did I ever love the British magazine and Britpop chronciler SELECT!

There was more well-written, funny and intuitive snark in a single issue than in a whole year's worth of American counterparts.

Anti-grunge screeds! Four pages features on obtuse British sitcoms! 36 page special articles on Oasis in the studio [this when such things were light-hearted and, indeed, mattered]. I'm a fucking geek so I have every issue (barring two - November 1993 and one from 1995, I forget which) from the one at left to close of business...

It was all too magical to last, of course. By the end, ca. 2000, coverage of dreck like Slipknot and Blink-182 were signs that the ass-end of American civilisation [sic] had made inroads into mighty Blighty in ways that were stronger than the UK public's needs to see what the latest plucky new-wave-of-new-wave four-pieces were up to. The magazine size shrunk (a la Rolling Stone today; hmm) and eventually ceased publication. Shame, too: they stopped short of being able to slobber on the Libertines!

Sometimes, at night, when sleep is elusive, I lay awake thinking of what could be even now, and make up pithy, punning titles for articles that could still lay ahead of us all like "Vampire Weakened" [Vampire Weekend loses drummer, yet soldier on] or "Tsar Crazy" [reunited Suede with both Bernard Butler and Richard Oakes plays colossal one-off to christen Moscow mega-venue]...