Do you remember that campaign back in the 1980s that proclaimed “Home Taping Is Killing Music”? It was launched by the British Phonographic Industry who were freaked out by rising sales of blank cassettes, quite correctly assuming that easy access to the means of reproduction would dent sales of legitimate vinyl and cassette tapes.
There was some money in knock-off bootlegging but the campaign also sought to discourage pesky youngsters from pirating music for nefarious purposes like making mix tapes to impress girls. Home taping was illegal, and the BPI solemnly reminded the guilty of their crime. It was surely a gateway offence with money laundering, people trafficking and extortion being just a hop, skip and jump away. If you couldn’t experience this particular moral steer by choosing or simply failing to live in the UK in 1980s, regional variations applied and I assume you may have been advised to “Stehlen Sie keine Musik”, “musiqani o’g’irlamang” or “musa ukweba umculo”. Actually, scrub the last two because in many parts of the world pirating was a necessary way of life due to a lack of branches of HMV.
Home taping may have seemed like the end of the world in the 80s but then the internet came along and really tipped the apple cart over. In these modern times where everything is available all of the time, pressing Play and Record on a few blank C60s is like comparing an apple scrumper to Bernie Madoff. The internet and file sharing have made it easier to find an audience but paradoxically more difficult to achieve any financial return as an artist. At one time there was only one sales chart, compiled weekly on a national basis. To achieve a place in the top 20 meant tens of thousands of people had trudged to the shop that very week specifically to buy your single. Now with the proliferation of different charts you can achieve, for example, a top 16 record in the Indie chart without needing more than a handful of people actually buying it. I know because I have been a backing singer on such a top 16 record and I am still waiting for Smash Hits Magazine to call up and conduct a searching interview to confirm whether I prefer cats or dogs and what my favourite colour is. The internet has stolen my chance of music fortune.
It’s much the same with print media. Motoring journalism has never been a route to untold wealth apart from in the case of a lucky few whose names you could write in large font on a quarter of the head of a pin. The internet has democratised the ability to produce and publish content to force on an unsuspecting public (hi there, thanks for coming), but it’s also massively increased competition for those persisting with print. Some stalwarts manage to keep it all together but titles come and go. When the internet permits free and easy access to more information than you could ever digest, some of it even being occasionally semi-accurate in a limited way, why pay for a hard copy? The thing is, you should keep supporting those who go to all the trouble of firing up the press every month and seek to stack the shelves with glossy covers. I can say this because the two media are not mutually exclusive and car magazines offer a different experience to internet sites, even ones as well rounded and interesting as ViaRETRO. I like the feel of the paper. I like the weight and the droop of the pages. I don’t like the way the print rubs off the covers onto my fingers, smudging the edge of whatever car has been granted a full bleed image to tempt the punters. Or perhaps I just have hot fingers or something. But magazines, good ones which aren’t completely up themselves, are great.
If there is one drawback, it’s that they take up far too much space. The laptop on which I can access the greatest library of knowledge and half-truths ever known to man is even thinner than my dinner (which for reference is a thin crust pizza, not a full roast peacock or anything). Magazines on the other hand, take up lots of space. Loads of it. I’m supposed to be having a clear out and whilst I can get happily rid of old furniture that I got for free in the first place, shoes that technically have holes in but still qualify as garage wear, and even parts of old cars that I no longer own or never owned at all, old magazines are more difficult to dispose of. I’ve got hundreds of volumes covering new cars and classic cars from the 80s onwards. Interestingly, classic car magazines from the 80s and 90s include features that could have been written today. Buying an MGB as your first classic? They had only been out of production for ten years! I’m not sure why I keep them but I somehow imagine they are a valuable archive. Perhaps in the future when I’m decrepit and alone I’ll seek comfort in re-reading a road test of the newly launched Gallant Sapporo, or be keen to be reminded of the tale of Mr Trellis rebuilding his Triumph Herald in a concrete sectional garage on a North Wales council estate in 1991. I could use the new-fangled internet to check if the Herald is still on the road and find it spectacularly failed its MOT in 1992, never to be seen again. You wasted your time Trellis, you absolute bodge merchant. I bet your wife wasn’t happy. Perhaps I could get in touch with some people looking for help through the letters pages, but to be honest if Bobby Ballcock was that bent out of shape believing facelift Ford Sierra brake lights were unacceptably bright and simply must be fog lights wired up incorrectly, I don’t think I can help from a distance of 30 years. It’s probable that with such irrational anger in the face of all available evidence he’s probably ended it all by now anyway. RIP Ballcock, you madman.
After I’m dead I imagine the council will organise some sort of convoy of skips, or maybe the house will be demolished, or perhaps encased in concrete like they’ve had to do at Chernobyl. That would be cool. But until then, it seems I’m forced to haul all of the old magazines from house to house, like some mad hoarder who hasn’t yet progressed to keeping old margarine tubs and used toilet roll. I do keep old ice cream tubs though, very useful things and you really can’t have too many of them. So whilst print isn’t dead, it could well kill me. I may be found under a stack of Autocars, the tower having toppled with fatal consequences, robbing me of the last opportunity to check what the scribes really thought of the new-for 1987 Lada Samara. At least the internet lasts for ever so you already know what happened…
