Defunct musical instument & mucisian magazines

Beat Instrumental
Monthly UK print magazine intended for musicians and music industry audience, started in May 1963 as Beat Monthly, changed its name to Beat Instrumental Monthly in 1965 and to the shorter Beat instrumental in 1967. In the early years it had coverage not to dissimilar to the music magazines of the day with chart positions and articles about sales in addition to the usual record reviews and industry gossip.

The magazine was published by Beat Publications Ltd. that was started by Sean O'Mahoney who later famously published Beatles Book Monthly and the Rolling Stones Book, but O'Mahoney edited all of these under the nom de plume of Jhonny Dean.

The magazine billed itself as "The World's First Group & Instrumental Magazine" and where it differed from the run of the mill was that the interviews conducted with musicians often talked about the gear they used and the business environment rather than just what sort of Y-fronts they wore and their views on society, it also featured musician gear and instrument reviews that was something of a novelty for a consumer magazine and it also had industry features such as factory visits and so on, but at that time it was unheard of outside of trade magazines.

While the music coverage in the magazines early years was wider than most other popular music magazines of the day it was still mostly covering pop music but in in the late 60's the mag became more and more rock orientated with less pop content and in the mid 70's it was so deeply involved with progressive rock that it almost bordered on obsession, this makes the magazine collectable amongst prog-rock fans but must have made it less interesting in its day to those involved with pop music.

By the late 70's the magazine had become more like what you would expect from a modern musician rag, more emphasis on reviews, technical and editorial articles and less on records and record sales, adverts from record companies that had been so prevalent in the early days of the magazine had all but disappeared and although there were still record reviews, they tended to be short and sweet at a time when reviews in other rock oriented magazines were becoming longer and more insular.

The magazine disappears somewhere around 1980, it may have been incorporated into another music magazine but memory fails on what mag that was, in the world of post-punk BI felt a bit anachronistic and in addition the market place was slowly filling up with magazines like International Musician that covered the same ground as Beat Instrumental did but skipped the music content for the most part and thus seemed to be taking sides less than mags like BI, but in an environment like the early 80's UK what you listened to almost seemed to define your world-view and political standing, silly as that may sound now.

The Beat Publications company itself survived into 2003 mostly on the continued income from the resurrected Beatles Book Monthly

Interviews: A short article on, and an interview with Frank Zappa, from the January 1972 issue of BI. — Soft Machine, April 1969 — Robert Wyatt, Player of the month March 1971 — The New Seekers, July 1972 (Issue 110), pages 70-71.
Reviews: 1977 November issue, a review of the Pack Leader Guitar by Martin Barre.

Modulus Newsletter
A UK based quarterly print newsletter for those interested in building their own modular synthesisers, self-published for 2 or three years by noted synth freak Paul Maddox in the mid 90's.

Resources: Most of the newsletters downloadable in a PDF format.

Organistablaðið
Icelandic magazine for church organists issued by the country's Church Organist Association (Félag Íslenskra Orgelleikara), start of publication was in 1967 with the first issue having the date 1968 and we believe there were 4 issues a year. Allegedly folded into a semi-scholarly church magazine called Kirkjuritið in the late 1990's but we have never actually found any editorial material from Organistablaðið in that publication.

Defunct music magazines

E-Mix
Originally founded in the early 80’s as a fanzine dealing with the then burgeoning but mostly underground UK Electronic scene and pretty much took over the mantle left by Mirage Magazine when it stopped publishing around 1983 or so. E-Mix got quite large for a fanzine by 1984 both in size and numbers printed but never managed to get a proper distribution via the conventional channels which limited its income considerably, but the UK newer really had a publication like Eurock that covered underground music and had a reasonable distribution.

The proprietor of E-Mix announced in 1995 that he could no longer justify the time he spent on the mag and shortly thereafter newly founded record label AMP Records bought the publication and they continued initially to publish it in the same form as it had been for the last couple of years prior but in a thinner format. After a couple of years the fanzine had become more or less occupied with the artists that AMP was releasing and had lost much of its interest but it continued on as more or less a private fanzine for Mark Jenkins and his friends until 1997, he turned it into a webzine in 1999 but it saw very limited updates and the last tickle of life we saw from the magazine was some CD reviews uploaded in 2002. Mr Jenkins resurrected the name in 2008 for a series of blog postings but they like the webzine edition see rather infrequent updates -- E-Mix Magazine blog.

Mirage
A fanzine that dealt with electronic music run by Martin K. Reed and run from his home in Bristol in the UK. Started in the late 70's but Mr. Read had already been distributing the USA based magazine Eurock for some time previously, started releasing cassettes in 1980 largely featuring then unknown artists like Ian Boddy and Mark Shreeve, by the mid 80's the outfit was more a label and a distributor for other small cassette labels than a magazine, the mag had in fact gone on a short "hiatus" in 1982 that it appears to never have been restarted, however that kick-started a number of other individuals to start their own fanzines such as E-Mix.

Mirage started releasing LP's in 1985 but seems to disappear in the latter half of the decade, Mr. Reed was still living in Bristol around 2003 but had by then no known connections to the music industry anymore.

Primyl Vinyl Exchange Newsletter (En-USA)
Bimonthly USA based newsletter or fanzine commonly referred to as just "Primyl Vinyl" or PVX, and had the slogan "The Audiophile Record Collectors Newsletter". Founded in 1996 by Bruce Kinch and was published from Chestnut Hill in Massachusetts, but in a typical newsletter fashion Mr Kinch edited and wrote nearly all of the magazines content with the remainder coming from subscriber submissions. The mag catered to the record collecting audience and in particular those interested in classical music and jazz, there was the odd rock and pop review in there as well but it was firmly American artist and mainstream music plus the usual dinosaur rock you will find in any audio related publication.

While you might infer from the publications slogan that it reviewed audiophile pressings it actually did so very seldom but instead focused on what they referred to as "audiophile-oriented" records which is frankly something of a misleading, personal and meaningless term depending on your viewpoint and to be honest the record reviews and features were actually the least interesting aspect of the magazine. What made the newsletter interesting where the features but they included audiophile tweaks, modifications, repair and set-up tips plus reviews and chatty articles about turntable and vinyl related paraphernalia such as record cleaning machines and so on and even the odd simple DIY article (build your own record rack, etc.).

Also noteworthy were features on things like vintage record making technology, comparisons between different pressings and formats of records, how to shop for vinyl in XXX and high end pickup/phono cartridge reviews, those featurettes often saw the past through somewhat heavily rose tinted spectacles, but that did not make reading them any less fun (if you are so inclined that is, doubt the average Dubstep fan will get much out of back issues of Primyl Vinyl). The magazine got quite well known amongst the vinyl aficionados of the USA in particular but around 2000 word had started to spread about its existence in the rest of the world primarily via the Usenet, but the magazine the suddenly stopped publication in the summer of 2000 for reasons unknown.

Vital (Industrial music zine) See --> Vital weekly

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