where you once belonged

Here's a chat I had with Francesco Tenaglia for The Music Folder,  a talk-series curated by Archivio Storico Ricordi, which investigates the intersection of music, memory, and arts - audio here, transcription there. This was conducted earlier in the year, so starts with talk about Get Back, the 8-hour Beatles documentary series and the uncannily persistent dominance and prominence of the Fab Four in the cultural landscape (a topic newly topical given 80-year-old Paul McCartney's headlining of Glastonbury),. Then it moves on to issues related to curatorial and annotative culture, obituary and elegy writing, the deejay as archivist, completism and collectoritis, and more.  

Pistol whipping

For this New York Times piece - which appeared in the print + paper edition yesterday - I looked at  Pistol as a punk fan turned parent and pedagogue. What, I wondered, could my sons or my students find inspirational, or relatable, or even comprehensible, about the Sex Pistols saga? Are there any "teachable moments"  to be gleaned from punk in the year 2022?

(Interviewed: my 16-year-old).

(Here also is the missus's take for Vanity Fair).

(The other installments of my recent "punk trilogy" - McLaren and cultural terrorism at LRB, punk movies for Pitchfork)

(Plus ancillary blogposts - Jordan and the aesthetics (and ethics) of shock, "No Fun" versus "Gee, Officer Krupke") 

rrrrrrrrrright!

'ere we go now

a sociology lecture

with a bit of psychology

a bit of neurology

a bit of fuckology

no fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun

Rotten mocking and taunting in advance all professional analysts and understanders of punk as "valid expression of working class youth energy"!

The Incredible Sulk

Forty years since Sulk came out! 

For which occasion BMG has assembled a gorgeous anniversary edition, finally out this week. 

For which I was thrilled to write a liner note essay. 

For which I re-interviewed Alan Rankine and spoke for the first time to producer Mike Hedges, keyboard + backing vocalist Martha Ladly, and bassman Michael Dempsey, and in the process learned many new things about the making of this miraculous record. 

For full details of the extra material corralled for the 3CD+Vinyl re-edition, go here (but ignore the now outmoded release date)