VENUE MAGAZINE

Venue magazine started up in the early 80's and was a What's On guide similar to London's "Time Out" but catered for the South-West region. Bristol was its main centre of activity but it also included nearby towns such as Bath, Gloucester, Swindon and a couple of others.
Along with the regular cinema reviews, theatre life, art galleries, local events and so on, music was high on their agenda with lots of coverage in the form of interviews, gig reports, clubbing updates and record releases.
The magazine kept going for 30 years, up until as recently as 2012 in fact, when they stopped the mag format but retained the online version.
The cover at the top dates from 1991 and in this particular issue, not only was there an advert for Massive Attack's "Blue Lines" debut album, there was also a review of it - getting a thumb's up on their home turf.
This was also the time when the band ditched the word Attack from the group name for a short while and the ad above shows this change, while my cassette of it is a reminder that they did of course use the full Massive Attack wording on the album cover.

BIG DADDY MAGAZINE

"Big Daddy" first hit the magazine shelves back in 1999 and was in circulation for 4 years approximately.
Its main coverage was the independent hip-hop scene and so the mag was loaded with record & label info, historical old school stuff alongside the latest hot produce, artist profiles & interviews, charts & playlists, not to mention showcasing lifestyle items like graffiti, computer games, fashion and so on.
Big Daddy championed other music styles associated with hip-hop too, which meant lots of articles on funk, soul, reggae, latin and leftfield experimental types - all were thrown into the mix.
The magazine cover at the top dates from 2002 and contained a feature on the history of cut 'n' paste.
Some issues of Big Daddy came with a free CD and the item under the cover is one such freebie that came in a later issue in 2002, a compilation called "The Showstopper".
Finally, highlighting that there was more than hip-hop that cropped up in the magazine, here is a full page ad from an issue dating from 2001 for a reggae compilation album called "Studio One Rockers" released on Soul Jazz Records, and the CD to go with it is out of my collection.

ENLACE FUNK MAGAZINE

Hailing from Madrid in Spain, "Enlace Funk" magazine first appeared in 1996.
Although it is heavily into funk (both the original 70's and the latest contemporary variety) it also touches on various other music styles that come into contact with funk, such as jazz, soul, hip hop, latin and so on.
The cover at the top here dates from 2006 when they were celebrating their 10th anniversary.
Inside this particular issue marking their tenth year, they featured all sorts of "Top Tens" - for example their top ten Jazz albums, top ten Brazilian albums, top ten music books, top ten record labels etc.
So to give you an idea, I have included 2 pages above that contain their top ten bizarre record covers from the soul scene.
The cover in the No1 position is the 1973 Skull Snaps LP and to go with it is my vinyl copy, which is, as you can see, a gatefold sleeve.

JAZZ FM MAGAZINE

There are plenty of articles on the Internet about the history of UK radio station, Jazz FM, therefore I won't need to delve into that aspect here, so most of the items above relate more to their magazine.
At the very top however, are 2 cuttings that contain news about the launch of Jazz FM in 1990 - the one on the left is from Echoes music paper and the one on the right is out of Straight No Chaser magazine.
Jazz FM magazine started up around the same time as the radio launch and the cover above was their very first issue. Needless to say it consisted of lots of artist profiles, lots of record reviews, gig reports, tour dates, along with a few other features such as a historical overview called "Century Of Jazz".
Their radio station was also given quite a high profile in the mag of course, and the item under the cover is a sample of their first radio schedule that had the likes of Gilles Peterson doing a 4 hour Saturday afternoon spot.
An example of the kind of record review they had in the first issue was the one featured here - "The Mambo Kings Play Songs Of Love" released on Caliente.
The album came out the same time as the book and both were reviewed in the mag, with the album getting a much better write-up than the novel, as you can read for yourself.
I didn't bother with the book but did end up getting the LP on vinyl which is the final item above.

GROOVES MAGAZINE

Grooves was an import magazine from the USA that cropped up on the scene at the tail end of the 1990's and continued through to the mid 2000's.
It specialised in electronic music of varying styles - from experimental to dancefloor and so content consisted of pages & pages of record reviews, gig reports, artist profiles and record label overviews. Along with this it also included other bits & pieces of related material such as DVD releases and lowdown on the latest computer software.
Although Grooves ceased publication of the magazine in 2005, it didn't disappear off the radar, it simply just moved onto become an online presentation.
The top image is the cover of the very last issue of Grooves in magazine format.
Under it is an example of a typical record review, this one coming from the same issue.
Accompanying it I have grabbed a copy of the reviewed album out of my collection - this being the CD release of Caro's "The Return Of Caro".

HIP HOP CONNECTION MAGAZINE

UK based Hip Hop Connection magazine started up in the late 1980's and was in circulation for over 20 years. It embraced the whole hip hop culture so not only did you get the music content, you also got the fashion pages and the graffiti pages that went with it.
The music coverage itself cropped up in the shape of artist interviews, record reviews, charts, playlists, tour dates and clubbing events.
The top image here displays 3 mag covers dated 1989, 1990 & 1991.
The advert under it for HHC comes from an issue of Echoes newspaper dated July 1989.
An example of the kind of album reviews they'd publish in HHC is shown in the item in the middle which dates from 1990 and is for the Jungle Brothers LP "Done By The Forces Of Nature".
Lastly, I've raided my own record collection and accompanied the review with my vinyl copy.

BAR-F-OUT MAGAZINE

Bar-F-Out was a music & youth culture magazine from Tokyo that hit the import shelves in the UK in 1992, and although most of the content was printed in Japanese text, there were small bits of it written in English too.
It was a very visual publication, ranging from stylish fashion shots, cool art graphics, to offbeat cartoon doodles. Subjects included books, cafe life, travel, films, hobbies, nightclubbing and so on, with a large chunk of music in the mix. The music it touched on included stuff from the indie, hip hop and pop world, but the genre most associated with the magazine was the acid jazz scene.
The cover image at the top is dated Winter 1993.
Below the front cover is a review of Bar-F-Out that was published in USA magazine, "On The One" in 1994.
Bar-F-Out had help from a few well known names along the way and one such example was the contribution in the middle item above, a piece written by Tadashi Yabe from United Future Organization.
Finally, I have finished the sequence with one of UFO's albums out of my CD collection - the 1994 release "Taboo" - the reason.... it features a track on it called "Bar-F-Out".