APRIL FOOL

[Rich Hero]

One of the first conversations I remember ever having with Matt concerned a thread that ran in the NME about 7 or 8 years ago. Every week they banged on about the New Wave Of New Romantic or 'ROMO' (I can't now remember why they called it that) - basically a New Romantic revival scene in London. This was long before any ShoHo ironic trendiness and consequently the paper seemed to spend as much time slagging it off as reporting. And then one Easter, in the April 1st issue, they reported a big bus crash in Europe (Italy, I think) in which many of the scene's major players were killed, effectively taking the nascent revival with them.

Anyway, to get to the point, I always assumed that this was an elaborate set up for an April Fool (twisted cynic that I am) but Matt had taken it at face value until I mentioned it. So does anyone else remember this and, if so, whaddya reckon?

[bigdaddydan]

Bloody ####.
Almost turned into Popbitch round here for a minute.
Anyway, I'm sure it was a hoax - I can't remember the details exactly but I think they outed themselves as hoaxers in the Christmas special of that year, if not sooner.
The reporting of Romo started off as positive, but soon became split between two camps of journos at the NME, some of whom hated the contrived nature of Romo with a passion - thus they effectively finished the scene by writing bitterly about it and then creating a Buddy Holly ending.
Anyone got any more info on this one ?

Oh, and the NME's not as good as it used to be (like everything).

[bongolia]

having been to a lot of the gigs, Romo was definitely 'real' (although it was a Melody Maker thing really if i remember, probably one of the reasons the NME disliked it), but i don't remember any crash...