The Kaiser Chiefs and us: a short history of Charm magazine

“According to their ‘we’re already stars’ style press release, Leeds’ Runston Parva are aiming to ‘instill a new way of life into the hearts of the nation'...Although there are no excuses for writing daft lyrics and wearing your 60’s/early 70’s allegiances like luminous green velvet jackets, Runston Parva are strangely original ”

James Littlewood on Runston Parva (aka Kaiser Chiefs), Charm magazine, issue 8, February 1998.

“As he (Ricky Wilson) swirls and twirls in time to the organ sound, I swear I can see the band (Runston Parva) mutate into The Yardbirds with a front man who acts like Mick Jagger but sings like the Small Faces"
Steve Marriott”

Graham Chalmers on Runston Parva (aka Kaiser Chiefs), Charm magazine, issue 9, March 1998.

No one predicted big things for the Kaiser Chiefs, not ten years ago, or even five for that matter. What we saw was a nice set of guys who were chatty and likeable and great at parties. In the immortal words at the time of Charm’s James Littlewood after bumping into them at yet another launch night, this one to mark Leeds indie label Mook‘s new studios, (they produced indie band Rudolf Rocker, AKA TV’s League of Gentlemen), the Kaiser Chiefs were “better at ligging than being a group”

Charm first wrote about the Kaisers way back in February 1998 in the days when bands sent us cassette tapes rather than CDs, downloads weren’ t even on the radar and this ambitious young band called led by Ricky Wikson were known as Runston Parva. The review of the band’s three-track demo was typically balanced but scarcely effusive in its praise. How would you like to be compared to Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple and The Who? Well, you wouldn’t have wanted to back then. Charm was never scared to write what it thought. Equally we were never about scoring points to make ourselves look good.

Produced from a tiny bedsit in Harrogate each month from May 1997 until its final issue in November 2000, Charm had no full-time staff.
Although the A5-sized magazine quickly attracted a whole host of amateur writers from the Leeds music scene and beyond, the writing, design and distribution was handled at nightime and weekends primarily by editor Graham Chalmers and fellow Charm stalwart James Littlewood, while they both fulfilled full-time jobs during the day.
The aim was to produced a music magazine that belonged truly to its writers and didn’t follow the herd.
We weren’t there to ‘keep local music live’, look cool or blag free CDs and tickets.
When Sony’s northern area plugger periodically pulled into town, opening up the back of his estate car to reveal choc-ful of boxes of CDs by Sony acts, we would apologise profusely and tell him we’d rather buy albums we wanted from a shop.
We were there to tell the truth , as we saw it, about the music we heard and the bands we saw.
By taking local music seriously but without rose-tinted spectacles we hoped to make the Leeds scene awaken to its own potential in a realistic fashion.
Local bands had to earn a front cover slot by their achievements whether we liked them or not, though we did have favourites.
By giving trying to set national standards for the local music scene we hoped to help rejuvenate a city which had made little impact outside its own boundaries musically since the long-gone 1980s with post-punk (Gang of Four) and goth (Sisters of Mercy).
We were a little sniffy about the music and proud of it.
At one point, as judges in Bright Young Things, we nearly cost The Music their place in the final of a battle of the bands competition where they were to find their manager as a bunch of ambitious 16-year- olds called Insense.
The fresh-faced but earnest youngsters had plenty of presence but absolutely no flair with actual tunes, we thought. We really didn’t rate them much and still don’t.
And you already know a bit about us and the Kaiser Chiefs.
We liked bands like Landspeed Loungers and Percy and Cognac and Mama Scuba, all of whom touched the fringes of success before falling away.
It didn’t make their sounds any less great that they didn’t get signed by Sony.
With a distribution that hit a peak of 3,000 in 1999 but still achieved 1,500 at its lowest ebb after losing some crucial advertising, Charm quickly attacted a loyal readership.
One reader once described us “behaving more like a band than a magazine“, which we took as the ultimate compliment.
Scheming and conniving to interview some of our favourite bands - Jesus & Mary Chain, Ben Folds Five, The Beta Band was great. Having the freedom to write 3,000 words on what later became the Carling Festival at Leeds in the days when the national press ignored the event in favour of wall to wall coverage of the Reading Festival was a blast.
And we did a proper job on it.
Wedding Present indie stalwart David Gedge took a shine to Charm so we asked him to write a personal column for the mag which he dutifully did each month for more than there years while touring the UK, the USA and beyond.
But the exciting journey came at a price beyond the sheer sweat and man hours.
Charm’s very popularity created a monster beyond our means. More phone calls, more letters, more reviews, more of everything.
When faced with the choice of finding more time to concentrate on revenue at the expense of producing a great magazine we plumped for the latter.
We would not put money first. We would have to get by.
What was the point of doing your own magazine if you had to give priority to advertisers?
We turned down offers to have the magazine sponsored. We would not cosy up to the bigger venues or be in hock to record shops.
We trudged the streets giving out the magazine to 90 outlets in the Leeds, York and Harrogate area in wind, rain and, occasionally snow.
As a result we truly knew our audience in a way today’s corporations don’t. We knew the music scene at a street level not at boardroom level.
And we slowly racked up the personal price.
Doing Charm magazine each month cost editor Graham Chalmers one girlfriend, two jobs, one car, a flat and more than £20,000 in cash over the years, much of which wasn’t his to lose.
Eventually ill health also kicked in.
We were the literary equivalent of those doomed rock stars who went too far one time to many.
It had to end and it did in November 2000.
All that was left was to try to get our lives back together and answer the question whether it had all been worth it ultimately?
Every penny. Every minute. Every victory. Every defeat.

Graham Chalmers, 2008

© Modern Music Review (2008)