34 years ago, I was 18 years old. But more importantly, I held in my hands for the first time the most beautiful rock magazine ever. I’ve never seen anything better since then, never experienced anything quite like it before (despite the efforts of New Musical Express, Melody Maker, or the French “Best”).
So yes, only The New Musical Express, with its A3 format and loads of records we couldn’t find in France at the time, not to mention indie rock concerts that often didn’t make it to France either, gave me the thrills. I remember a school trip to Paris, to the Louvre Museum, and me sneaking off to a nearby newsstand to get a copy of NME. It was a “wow” moment, access to another world.
I also remember the old K7 copy of My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything that a friend gave me in high school, telling me it would “change my life.” And it did, except, as we speak, I can’t remember who that friend was. It’s like a mystery now.
But what truly changed my life, and the lives of two of my best friends (whom I later met at a concert and at the public library during university), was Les Inrockuptibles magazine, along with the Bernard Lenoir radio show of the same name, broadcast every evening from Monday to Friday.
Even if we didn’t yet have access to many records (I had to fly to my parents friends house in Dundee, Scotland, to buy them), we could at least listen to the radio show, record songs on K7, and read about them in Les Inrockuptibles.
Les Inrockuptibles magazine from that 1991 era should be listed as Rock “UNESCO Heritage”, it simply doesn’t exist anymore (the magazine is still published weekly today, but… hum):
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164 pages (!) in black and white, with beautiful photos mostly by Renaud Monfourny
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Published every two months—the wait only made it more magical
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10-page (and longer) interviews, like the one with Francis Ford Coppola in this edition
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Introducing the first singles of the most important rock bands—now praised with 10/10 ratings on Pitchfork and other webzines—like Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, or Ned’s Atomic Dustbin
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Clear, focused journalism—not political at the time, just exploring what music, cinema, and literature could bring at their best, from true underground to mainstream when it made sense
Sadly, ask ChatGPT, nothing like it exists today. Maybe The Wire comes close, but I no longer fully belong to the tribe of music discoverers, so I might just be disappointed.
Still, I’ll dig in, explore my Les Inrockuptibles collection. That golden era lasted until 1993/1994—less than three years of pure joy, before the magazine began to disappoint (though it eventually made money), changing its format and content, and becoming something else entirely…
