Two iconic music media brands……nay institutions……reach landmark anniversaries in March 2012, having survived against all the odds in recent years!! BBC 6 Music celebrates it’s 10th Birthday mid month, whilst NME ( New Musical Express ) will find 60 candles on it’s birthday cake in March.

This achievement is all the sweeter for both BBC 6 Music and NME, who have recently been swimming against a tide of reduced funding and declining circulation and sales, respectively. BBC 6 Music was to be scrapped altogether a couple of years ago, until listeners successfully petitioned the BBC, whilst NME has been fighting for survival in the face of a digital tide that is fast eroding the cliff face of the print media!!

Thankfully BBC 6 Music and NME are both here to enjoy well deserved landmark anniversaries – deserved because throughout their respective histories, they have created a niche and a loyal following because of their individualism and integrity in an increasingly homogenised and sanitised world……Or put another way, each is an oasis of individualism in an increasingly homogenised desert!!

NME may have become more mainstream in recent times, but during the 1960s and 1970s in particular, it was a reasonably radical publication, carrying a torch for bands that were less commercial. Perhaps the music reporters who represented this radical culture best in the 1970s were Julie Birchill and Tony Parsons, supported by fellow revolutionaries Nick Kent and Charles Shaar Murray, who were big champions of the Punk / New Wave movement in the mid 1970s.

So raise a glass in March to toast BBC 6 Music and NME’s well deserved anniversaries, and let’s hope they are both around in 10 years time to celebrate their 20th and 70th birthdays respectively!!

If you have friends or relatives who particularly love music and have a significant Birthday or a landmark Anniversary coming up  ( ie a 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th, 70th Birthday OR a Silver, Ruby or Golden Wedding Anniversary ) – how about ordering their favourite vinyl record or CD; single, album or album cover; framed and mounted as a picture disc?

ORDER NOW by clicking on…….. http://www.myfirstrecord.co.uk/

THE PERFECT PERSONALISED PRESENT!!

( Regrettably we can’t provide you with a pink record player birthday cake, complete with Bay City Rollers single and tartan scarf!! )