I have plenty of time to reflect on Monday’s ICA discussion on the long and nauseous journey to the place where I do my part-time job. Really, I think, shivering from the after-effects of the ICA’s generous free wine supply, it was like that thing after you’ve had an argument and then you think of the thing you should have said, only much much much worse. Much worse. But that aside, it had been fun, talking with people about stuff and getting drunk for free on a nice balcony.

The only thing that really keeps coming back to me, once I’ve cured the hangover with tea and proofreading, is the flurry of anger I provoked in a fellow journalist.

The flurry seems to happen like this. The journalist, who has been sitting quite quietly up until now, although she has been darting angry looks in my direction, suddenly accuses me - and here I can’t remember her exact words - of saying something I haven’t said, not as an accusation per se, but as a starting point for a grievance of her own, like she can’t just have her grievance without it being a response to something someone on the panel’s said. Well, I haven’t said whatever it is. I’m so freaked out by having words put into my mouth that I jump to my own defence with a distinct lack of dignity, squawking ‘I never said that!’ like the fishwife I fear I might actually be. It shakes me up and I lose all my focus, but it appears she’s angry with me for, well, being me, and for editing a magazine that focuses on the ‘underground’ (god, let’s just call it the underside, that’s much nicer, like the underbelly of a tiger or something) in music as opposed to the ‘mainstream’. The poor mainstream, in the face of such a thing, is feeling beleagured. Why does Plan B hate it? What has it ever done to us?

Now, I wouldn’t mind, but - and I know I talk some shit sometimes, but on this particular night I have reined myself in considerably - I’ve just spent a good few minutes explaining how, much as I adore all that’s peripheral and odd, much as I love the blogosphere and the zineworld and so on, I recognise the limitations and restrictions of such spaces. I know their hermetic nature and I appreciate that it’s hard to find a way in. I’m a bit old, me, and I almost remember the generosity of the older NME and Melody Maker, how they were approachable magazines that guided you down new paths, and I also sense the ridiculousness of even making those underground/overground distinctions in the face of music itself, which is what we all seem for a minute to forget we’re talking about. I do Plan B because I want to communicate with people. I want to have a dialogue between us, the music and the readers, and that dialogue can be just as important as what the actual music is.

I’ve already said, when asked about Plan B’s coverage of major label acts, that we cover the things that we like. Major label, indie label, no label - do we like it? Does one of our writers feel the need to write about it so hard that they’re prepared to do so, beautifully? Yes? OK, it’s in. Full stop. Yes, sure we want to cover things that no one else has: what would be the point otherwise? That’s not just an ideological stance, it’s a commercial one too. When you can get all the info you need on the Kaiser Chiefs from your daily paper, why are you going to fork out £2.95 for a bimonthly that tells you about them all over again? Unless you know it’s written by someone whose writing is so exciting and valuable to you that you need to read their words (and that is a totally valid reason, btw, and one that I hope our readers take into account when buying the mag, because I sure as hell do when I’m commissioning - and yes, that goes double for the more well-known bands).

I’ve said some of this, bar the bit about the writing. I wish I had said that bit about the writing, because it’s fundamental to Plan B, but I’m thinking on my feet here, and I forget that people need telling how ace our writers are (sorry writers!). So with that in mind, it is just plain weird to be shouted at by someone whose main point seems to be that the Arctic Monkeys were great live and everyone knew the words to their songs, and that I am a snob because I run a music magazine that probably hasn’t featured them yet. I say probably, because I don’t think she has read Plan B.

The Arctic Monkeys come up a lot in this panel discussion. Careful listeners - and I’m sure there were some - will notice I did not at any point say anything negative about them, or about any band. I just want to make that clear. I do question their status as indicative of a new music revolution just because they used Myspace to get their music around, and ask that we don’t get so caught up in the medium of communication that we don’t listen to or talk about the music that ensues from this.

But I don’t even say this in the discussion. I don’t even want to talk about it later, but the journalist (who works for a daily broadsheet newspater, I only find out at this point) and I carry on talking about it anyway, each of us speaking an increasingly different language. The thing that bothers me – other than that I am a little bemused at being harangued by someone who works for Rupert Murdoch for the way I choose to edit a very small circulation music magazine that sets its own agenda – is that I don’t see why she’s so angry.

I am still not sure. It’s like, the underside or the underbelly or whatever godawful snobbish hole it is in which I dwell is warm and fun, but I do look out occasionally. I read the papers every day, I’ve a bit of a soft spot for the theoretical side of my trade, and I’m fascinated by all music, whoever makes it and within whatever commercial structures. Plan B is a commercial product, it’s not an art project, it’s not a fanzine. I know about her world, I make it my business to, but I don’t think she even has the slightest idea about what mine is like, or even what she might think it’s like. Yet I’m not angry. I’m pissed off about the retrogressive nature of a lot of current music, but you all know that, and I get a bit fired up about the lack of women involved in music, but you know that too. But should I be angry there’s a broadsheet music press in existence that covers some bands that I don’t really want to cover?

I mean, that would just be dumb, right?

But reverse that statement, and you’ve got her anger at me and Plan B.

In my confusion, I adjourn to the telly, where David Attenborough will tell me something amazing about creatures who are much more fascinating than we are. I have often thought that there’s no confusion that can’t be cured, or at least alleviated, by watching ants.

Posted on Wednesday, December 14th, 2005by Frances May Morgan