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A great critic, but one whose work I have not read much of And when I have read it, more often than not I disagree. But that's fine - I don't need to think you are right to get a buzz from how you make your argument. Whether it's opposition to something I hold dear or support of something that mystifies or repels. Like the Monty Python sketch, I am looking to have an argument. I think the very…
Here's what Brian says about Bryan Ferry's "You Go To My Head" And here's another occasion on which he reviews the singles, for Sounds
Yes, it's Mr. Cutler - fixture of the Underground, a regular on Peel, friend to the hippies and the rockers - despite being a member of the Noise Abatement Society and a foe of amplification. So someone at Melody Maker in 1971 thought it would be funny to get him to review the singles - or rather a select (and rather interesting) handful. Actually looking closer, it's not actually singles - it's…
From 1987.... Smash Hits , I think... Surprisingly kindly to the new releases, is Shane His unnerving laughter is phonetically spelled out - and even commented upon by the laugher.
Now here's a thing that puzzled me for a while... The Soft Boys recorded a song titled "The Lonesome Death of Ian Penman" (which I've only just realised is an extension of Robyn Hitchcock's Dylan fandom - "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll") (and which I seem to remember was once findable out there, but doesn't appear to be anymore). But then I came across what looks to be the very first NME…
My time at Melody Maker overlapped with the final year or so of Brian Case being on the staff. I don't think we exchanged more than a few words - he was pretty fed up by that point, barely in the office (the jazz section had been discontinued some years earlier, he was writing entirely about film for his last few years at MM ). Soon he left to become the main writer about film - his other great…
I've posted here before about Mick Farren 's famous " The Titanic Sails At Dawn " polemic. Appearing in the NME 's June 19 1976 issue, the piece is legendarily claimed to have played a precipitative role in the punk uprising. It identified a malaise in rock: the loss of its connection to "the streets" and "the kids" that traverse them; the recline and fall of a rebel sound into mere showbiz. And…
Not interested here in rock writers in their current haggard state, of which there are innumerable examples on YouTube.... but rather, rock writers in their original pristine prime. These are much rarer, as rock journalism was not taken seriously by the gatekeepers of the mass media. In roughly chronological order There are some TV clips of the young Coon here amongst the looking-back stuff. She…
I am obsessed with the advertisements in the old music papers - the New Wave era is particularly rich for the semiotician and lover of graphic design trends, but then so is the Old Wave era. For a historian, it's almost as rich material to draw on as the actual journalism. However that is not my subject today - my subject today is advertisements for the music press. I'm going to start looking for…
RIP Mr Kershaw... I didn't much care for his taste (and the underlying ideology) - as least as evidenced by his influential radio show - but here he reveals a solid talent for record reviewing.
Sadly I don't have the whole Mackenzie singles page, nor do I recall where it came from (the year must be around 1987). Still, William is quite as flamboyantly caustic as his erstwhile chum Morrissey in decreeing these efforts to be really nothing. Here in fact is Morrissey being harsher still on a David Sylvian single In my class on The Artist As Critic / The Critic as Artist last week, assigned…
Via the YouTube channel Yesterday's Papers , a motherlode of musicians guest reviewing the Singles for Melody Maker and New Musical Expres s and Sounds - all from the 1960s or the early 1970s Slightly reduced in impact by the host of the channel reading them out himself in his mild tones. I reckon he should have tried to imitate these rock stars - ribald Scouser for the Fab Four, irascible East…
Picking up on the "mean review" thing, as with the Tin Machine II beat-down ... it struck me that music journalism is much closer to real-life fan (or anti-fan) chat than it is to literary criticism or other forms of arts reviewing. (Not that these are completely devoid of no-holds-barred, personally insulting take-downs). But rock writing is closer to vernacular shit-shooting of the kind that…
Apparently there is a new documentary on David Bowie - I think it's about the later years of his life, making a case for his continued creativity - and at one point, they present the journalist who wrote the brutal take-down above with his own words. Which he hadn't seen in decades. Startled by the disrespect to the (inter)national treasure and immortal icon, he recants it. Or at least expresses…
At the event in North London for Rip It Up and Start Again in 2005 , I remember a voice in the audience piping up - apropos of absolutely nothing that the panel were discussing - to cry out: " ABBA were better than the Velvet Underground! " A poptimist, obviously - responding to an uncontrollable contrarian urge from within. At the time I thought that - alongside its Tourettic quality and…
Saddened to hear of the death of Jack Barron - who wrote for Sounds and then NME among other places - after a long illness . I didn't know Jack well but I really enjoyed the couple of encounters we had. The first was when we were both sent as representatives of our respective music papers ( Sounds then still, for him) to Warsaw to cover the first ever East-meets-West festival of alternative music…