'Rock Candy' Magazine: Old School Time Machine
Saturday, March 3, 2018 at 12:01AM Today's post is from our friend HIM.
Many readers of Bring Back Glam! are surely aware of Rock Candy Records. It is one of a select few holdouts that keep the flame alive, releasing rare and well-remembered music from the golden age of metal, glam, and hard/classic rock. Based in the UK and helmed by Derek Oliver (formerly of Kerrang! and Atco Records), the label churns out a wide array of reissues often packed with tons of goodies: Dokken’s Beast from the East, Jetboy’s Feel the Shake, and Lillian Axe’s Love + War being amongst the most recent.
The same-named magazine is a similar feast of déjà vu. Also led by Oliver, the list of contributors reads like a fever dream of the grand past: Howard Johnson (Metal Hammer), Malcolm Dome (Metal Forces), and a host of others associated with the (often) British side of the sleazy side of music. Did you like Hit Parader, Creem, Circus, Metal Edge, or the other dog-eared magazines of yore? If the answer is yes, then you will like Rock Candy Magazine. Oh, and there is a digital version, which I have never looked at over my year-long subscription.
The magazine is a heady mix of new and old. The new includes interviews on topics ranging from bands from the past to the production of classic album covers (question: did you know that the eponymous Boston album cover originally featured a scene of Boston being attacked by aliens before hastily being changed to the cosmic scenescape we know and love?). The old includes snippets from classic reports (often from Kerrang!) on bands and follow-ups on how well the reporting matched the subsequent history of the bands, albums, live shows, and so on. It also features reappraisals of bands and their output. Why did White Lion not break bigger? Was Black Sabbath’s Born Again misunderstood?
The magazine also includes longer-form sections that approach topics from varying angles, ranging from Canadian Metal to Randy Rhoads, always featuring a wonderful array of photos, short essays, and interviews. The back of the magazine highlights the latest releases from Rock Candy Records, but also other metal and classic rock releases—from books to box sets—that caught the eye(s) of Oliver and Co. Even when the magazine induces cringes (some pixelated copies of backstage passes found in the center of each issue are as amusing as they are memory-jogging), it remains a feast for the eyes: full color, packed with information, a reminder of things we forgot, and sometimes a lesson in things we never knew.
This is clearly a product that is chasing dreams, not dollars. I am not even sure how they can pay the costs for producing it. A somewhat troubling wrinkle is that they are now offering only six month, not full year, subscriptions. Still, it is a nicely produced, bi-monthly, 100-page magazine that will soon be in its second year of life. It is large form, "perfect bound" (meaning: glued, not stapled), and awash in photos. The cost here in the States is £6.99 per issue, or £17.97 for three issues, plus shipping of £5 per issue, though they are promoting new distribution channels here that would remove the shipping costs by placing it in brick and mortar stores.
Rock Candy Magazine is an outlier. Proudly so. Defiantly so. Readers of this site are likely the target audience. Vote with your money, read with your eyes, and delight in the chance you have to catch glimpses of the world that used to be. How long will this last? Who knows? But I always feel better after flipping through this magazine. I suspect many of you will feel the same.
