Agree totally. Then again I know for fact the weekly press were sending negative U2 reviews back to be rewritten in the mid 80s. So it is nothing new.

I guess it depends on what drugs you were taking at the time and who with. There were MM and NME writers from the early 70s who hung out with bands, shared their stash and subsequently rarely if ever said a bad word about them in print. The Madchester thing had the same dynamic and E is the worst possible drug for messing with your critical faculties. Reduces everything to varying shades of attractive wallpaper. Which is why so many of those acts couldn't write a song worth humming and there were so many cover versions or direct lifts from 60s acts.

Why are they now untouchable? A lot of people who were 20ish in 1990 and writing about that scene for the music press are now bona fide media / social commentors on tv and in the national press. It's the same kind of nostalgia that I have for going to the Roundhouse on a Sunday in the mid 70s. I am sure most of what I saw was crap but I remember it as being a glorious and vibrant scene. With the exception of the likes of VdGG and Man few of the records back that up. It was mainly cobblers.