Front cover draft/layout self critique

after coming across some ideas, due to lack of time and being unable to learn photoshop well enough in order to reach better quality for the magazine, and pretty much just grabbing a lot of ideas I already had and bringing them together in order to create something rather different and at the time considering the amount of preparation taken for this magazine, it was.. just about passable, but not even close to what I thought I was capable, but on the bright side of things I realised how.. mediocre it was within itself to the point where at the end after thinking about it I was disappointed a lot in myself with what it was, although even after recieving some positive feedback about the positioning of the pictures and text on the interview page, and some of the initial ideas for the front cover. The contents was very conventional, which I didnt like, bugged me quite a bit, coming to the conclusion I NEEDED another model in order to re-do the interview pages and probably add a few more things to the contents in order to reach some ideas I had gained from looking at a kerrang magazine, which had also inspired the last minute masthead which I wish to keep, anyway enough sidetracking on the layouts for the magazine here the first drafts are:

The front cover, the only few points of this I found that I actually personally enjoyed to like and found pleasing towards my eye and others who had a look at it. But the one thing that everyone had to say, and I had agreed with totally, was infact the colours I used, Blue and Orange.. Now blue I understood slightly why people may have understood it to be such as "unfriendliness". On the other hand, the orange complimented the blue and gave the image that orange was somewhat to do with fun, which is a primary element within a party, since when you go to a party you obviously intend to go and have fun, otherwise there's no point going at all if you wish to just sit in the corner and watch and neither socialise realistically. Plus there was no issue date e.g. February 2010 or price for the magazine.