Task 6 Research the history of the chosen genre

Debut

• Kerrang! Magazines initial debut launch was on 6th June 1981 and its first editor was Geoff Barton.

• In the early years, Geoff wanted to focus the magazine on the new metal phenomenon as it saw the rise of hard rock artists.

• These artists included the likes of AC/DC and Angus Young, from AC/DC appeared on the front cover of the first issue of Kerrang! magazine.

• Originally, the magazine was to be published and sold on a fortnightly basis, and later in 1987, it changed to a weekly issue.

• The first publisher was a company called United Newspapers.

1980’s-1990’s

• The magazine continued placing mate; artists on the front covers of the magazine like Bon Jovi, Metallica and Venom, however, as the years went by, other forms of rock music were making their debut.

• To keep up with the preference of the target audience, Kerrang! Magazine discarded the original bands like AC/DC and began to include these artists on the front cover.

• This sub genre in the rock music included grunge artist such as Nirvana.

• However, many readers have criticised the magazine for abandoning music trends for new ones.

The New Millennium

• Due to the criticism received off the target audience, the magazine began to see a fall in the number of sales, therefore, in the year 2000, the magazine hired the editor Paul Rees.

• After the new editor was put in place, the company saw a rise in magazine sales and their popularity increased.

Editors…

• The magazine has seen a few editors over the past decade some have already been mentioned such as Paul Rees and Geoff Barton and in the following years from 2003-2011, more editors have been in place.

• 2003-2005 Ashley Bird took over the editors job as Rees left to edit the magazine Q.

• However, the magazine saw a drastic decrease in sales and in May 2005, Paul Brannigan took over the role of editor.

Revamped!

• With the editor Paul Branningan in place, the music industry saw the arrival of the new sub genre of rock music: emo and metalcore.

• The editor again, revamped the style of the current magazine and heavily emphasised this music trend.

• Again, the new appearance to the magazine was not favoured by the target audience, however, Paul saw the magazines most successful commercial period with around 80,186 sold copies.

2008- Present

• In 2008, the publishing company EMAP sold Kerrang! To the Bauer Media Group and in 2009, Kerrang! Said goodbye to Paul Branningan and welcomed the new appointed editor Nichola Browne.

• For the final time to the present day, the editor, once again, changed.

• Nichola Browne stepped down and the deputy editor for GamesMasters, James McMahon, began as the new editor on June 6th 2011.

• James had already been the editor for the popular NME magazine and

Artist For the Front Cover

These are some of the bands that I would use for my front cover, because they are they types of bands that the target audience listen to, and would more likely draw them in to buy the magazine.

Mise-en-scene

I have picked the studio as a location, because it’s a nice familiar scene to not only the band, but the target audience as well. The studio is where the music is made and therefore, I thought it would be a suitable location. For the other locations, I've seen similar backgrounds in some of the magazines I've seen. Also, in the interviews you will see, you can see that the bands are very friendly and casual. This means that these locations reflect that personality.

Clothes

I would use these types of clothing, because it’s the type of clothing that rock bands would wear and I have seen it on the front cover of rock magazines. Also, two of these pictures are bands themselves, so it would make sense to use these type of clothes.

Make-up

For rock bands, dark colours are used for make-up, as it is stereotypical for them to wear these colours. Also, naturally the bands wear these type of colours.