successor to Shock and Awe whose feed no longer seems to be working properly - original blog + archive remains here: http://shockandawesimonreynolds.blogspot.com/ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ the blog of the Simon Reynolds book about glam and artpop of the 1970s and its aftershocks and reflections to this day
As powerful - and as political - as Spacemen 3's "Revolution" (Don't be too quick to understand that sentence) The Monkees perplex - when the results are as a pleasing and potent as the "real thing", does intent / content / context matter? And how "real" is the real thing anyway? "Street Fighting Man" had completely different words up until almost the last minute, you know.
Strangely no mention of the Blondely Ambitious one in this piece about ambition in pop and "a certain monstrousness" of the popstar personality. Published in the winter 2009 edition of GQ Style, it's a Madonna-free zone, Also absent is her inheritor Lady Gaga. With the long lead times with a quarterly magazine, I must have written it the late summer. I hadn't heard The Fame , was barely aware of…
Here's an entry from The Biographical Dictionary of Film in which David Thomson rehearses some of the concerns about "movie" addressed in the new book A Sudden Flicker of Light : Fortuitously - but purely accidentally - timed for the tenacious Madonna's return to visibility with an alleged return-to-form album. But what if the form being returned to is of no concern or interest to you? Or even…
David Thomson has a new book out, A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies, in which he convinces himself that the artform to which he has dedicated his entire life is actually corrupting civilisation and profoundly responsible for the current political hellscape. In a New York Times profile titled "Did Movies Ruin Everything?," A.O. Scott , himself a distinguished film critic,…
What tarts! Gene Loves Jezebel must have seen Love and Rockets enjoying Stateside sucksess with the T. Rexy "So Alive" and they thought " we'll ave summathat, eh boyo? " That said, I do really enjoy "Motion of Love" as sound + vision in all its effrontery and fakery The phasing on the backing vocals... It's less "going glam" in the '70s T. Rexy sense and more glam as in glam metal, hair metal... I…
Some of this 1984-85 iD i magery is genuinely cool, really chic e.g. this one below Or just fun But some of it is a hot mess ' And some edges into Nathan Barley territory iD always had this thing of pushing style to a sort of jolie laide point - and then beyond into outright unpleasing to the eye That's what makes it interesting as a magazine and why I would dearly love to have the complete run of…
Ever the performer, President Trump has lately been putting on a show of indifference. …..Beneath all that bluster and makeup, he’s sweating. - Frank Bruni The NYT sees itself not as a defender of journalistic principles or a champion of democratic values, but rather a theater critic for political actors. There are no real-world consequences here, no pain or suffering for the common people who…
Is that bended knee meant to suggest an enormous deformed erection? Not a good look - in both the clothing/coiffure sense and the steely gaze he's giving us, like some kind of cruel-eyed Dutch hardman. Both photos are eyebrow-less
Hauteur Theory #1: Unfamiliarity breeds Contempt I thought I had heard everything - but the munificence of all the vintage Top of the Pops episodes on YouTube supplied surprise Here, in 1977, savagely behind the times, a group I never even heard of: a late glam / artpop outfit called Contempt . I suspect the influence palette includes Queen, Sparks, Roxy, possibly 10cc, possibly Cockney Rebel,…
Hubert Parry: "in true folk-songs there is no sham, no got-up glitter, and no vulgarity" Folk is associated with naturalism - the idea that there is no artifice involved, no element of show. Performance, stripped of performativity or exhibitionism. The singer as the ego-less vessel or conduit for the people's consciousness. Green Gartside on Anne Briggs: "The beautiful melodies Anne sang…
Interesting reflections on the Robert Elms book Blitz: The Club That Created the 80s over at Michaelangelo Matos 's substack Beat Connection Although he takes a poke or several at the Elmscentricity of the Bob universe (" has no problem tooting his horn ") and he firmly sides with the ravers against the nightclubbers (" I.... have no patience for anybody’s door policy "), Matos is more generous to…
Is this undignified, or just Donovan reclaiming the small debt that Bolan owed him? Visconti-ish strings. Here he performs "Cosmic Wheel" sitting down a la Tyrannosaurus Rex, stripped of the record's adornments. Mickie Most produced the Cosmic Wheels album (Most of course wsa Donovan's original producer in the Sixties but by 1973 one of the kings of glamglitter production) Suzi Quatro supposedly…
Don't want to do any spoilers but this pettishly flirtatious encounter between Russell Harty and Adrian Street takes a dramatic turn... An earlier post on the glam wrestler A kind of sequel post , connecting Ken Loach / Barry Hines's Kes and Roxy Music's Avalon ... Son and father, glitter and coal dust
Donald Trump’s Pantomime United Nations The Board of Peace might be destined to fail, but it still threatens to undermine an international system in which the U.S. was once the linchpin. - Ishaan Tharoor , New Yorker ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ and some trope detritus from recent months... Trump reserves his energies for his own interests and those of his allies. Everyone else — a majority of our fellow…
Things have been too grim for me to do these posts, but then this one came along (the theater kids being the (mal-)administration, if that isn't obvious)
Interview by Javier Mattio for La Voz del Interior of Córdoba 1) The visual exhibitionism of glam rock reminds of social networks and Instagram (inevitably joke: instaglam). Indeed, you point out in Shock and awe how Carlyle wrote long ago about the current “cult of one self”. Do you see any connection between both worlds? Does the context (as the end of countercultural ideals did in the 70’s) has…
There's an exhibition at the Design Museum in High Street Kensington dedicated to the New Romantics and the club scene of Blitz and Billy's and Le Beat Route . On a recent visit to London I checked it out. I thought it was well done, informative, and fun - worth a visit for sure (it's running until March 2026). But, but, overall it did rather confirm my Secret Thesis about glam, which applies…
I have noted here before the low regard for plastic in post-WW2 highbrow culture - which was transvaluated into a positive by Warhol and other Pop Artists, and in turn espoused by Bowie as an anti-authenticity riff (his Young Americans mode of "plastic soul"; he also described Ziggy as a “plastic rocker”) Sort of “synthetic and proud of it, me!” “Guaranteed not the real thing”. In this eerie 1962…
This piece by Rick Wilson on Trump’s desecration of the White House is limned with theatrical metaphor The East Wing Obscenity Trump's Ballroom Is a Tumor On The People's House There’s a way the light falls in the White House on Autumn afternoons in Washington, thinning with the waning of the year, slanting, a dull gold the color of old parchment, that makes you feel you’ve slipped into a country…
From the NME 1974 Annual - which as is the wont of annuals, is really a survey of 1973. Sorry, don't want to trample on any memories here, but this is just hideous
". ... hundreds of serving generals and admirals were summoned from their postings around the world for a televised meeting on Tuesday with Trump and Hegseth, at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. “Central casting,” the President said, beaming at the officers in the audience, who sat listening impassively, as is their tradition. He praised his own peace efforts, particularly in the…
Truly one of the immaculate TOTP appearances The Subotnick-level electronics, the haunting refrain, the xylo tingles... the drumlessness .... the hair... the white mask of Sylvian's face... the beauty of the other Japaneers.... even the shirt Sylvian is wearing and the incredible video FX, still futuristic after all these years It's quite amazing the way that the Top of the Pops camera crew and…
"The Clash were, I am fairly sure, playing the Apollo — so if it was the Apollo... you were only too aware of the way this small but potent punkish enterprise was scaling itself up rapidly and quite aggressively. The group were evidently no longer an organic continuation of their scrotty urban environment, existing somehow independently of the cogs and flywheels of an egregious industrial machine…