Had a fun chat with Lawrence of Mozart Estate / Go-Kart Mozart / Denim / Felt legend, condensed into this pithy Pitchfork Q+A
Kieran on Kirkslop (it's what you think it is) for GQ
Did a bunch of interviews while in Argentina - this one by Romina Zanellato for Cenital is a good read (and can be easily flipped into English).
Another one worth a look is Carlos Priego's for Le Tempestad but somewhere between AI doing the transcription and AI doing the translation (I'm guessing but I'd be surprised if wrong), somewhere between those processes and condensation of the conversation for space reasons, the most marvelous error has been generated. For during an explanation of the reasons for writing Retromania, I am said to have uttered these words:
"I, in particular, had become addicted to U2, listening to all their albums and feeling like I was drowning in the past, so a lot of what I wrote had that feel."
It took me a while to realize what had happened - YouTube has been mis-transcribed as U2.
Except I wouldn't have said I had been addicted to YouTube.
What I might have said is that I was addicted to downloading albums off blogs. There had been a long unhealthy phase of OCD / manic greed I got caught up in. To this day I have thousands and thousands of never-unzipped, never-played files stowed away….
My tribute to Terry Hall, the scowl and the soul of The Specials. Not forgetting Fun Boy Three, who despite the name could be even bleaker. RIP.
RIP also to Martin Duffy, who played on one of the greatest songs of the 1980s, and one of the greatest songs of the 1990s.
And RIP to Thom Bell, the man behind some of the most beautiful songs ever made.
More mourning - a Coventry native's remembrance of Terry Hall from Neil Kulkarni, while another Melody Maker alum Bob Stanley tells the story of Thom Bell.
Lovely to hear Terry's light, gentle voice and self-deprecating manner on this 1985 radio show as he introduces a selection of his favorite records. Surprisingly, or not surprisingly - given the Colourfield's sound - the selection is fairly weighted to M.O.R. and soft-rock - Edith Piaf's version of "Autumn Leaves", Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" and Janis Ian's "At 17" all get played and Terry mentions en passant that he recently attended a Cleo Laine concert!. The two-hour show was originally done for Manchester's Piccadilly Radio at the invitation of Timmy Mallett.
Terry also plays the Colourfield's lovely cover of a song by The Roches, as also sampled by The Avalanches.
Thinking of Bell business like The Spinners "I'll Be Around" (below) and "I'm Doin' Fine Now" (as well as non-Bell creations of that era like Al Green's version of "Funny How Time Slips Away"), it struck me how elegantly adult these songs were when it came to things like breaking up, walking away, getting over, and otherwise making it to the other side of heartbreak with dignity intact. Casting my mind back, I wondered whether I had ever achieved such grace in similar circumstances.... I fear the answer is "not quite". Whether we heed their wisdom or not, these songs model how to be.
Typical really - you declare your intention to revive the long-lapsed custom of inter-blog conviviality. Only to (almost) immediately lapse back again into unlinking entropy.
Here goes with another effort. Starting with an interesting piece on the pop hologram phenom by Owen Myers at The Guardian. Featuring a few quotes from me about the exploitation of dead stars. Here also is the full batch of thoughts I sent Owen a week or two ago.
Also quoted in the pop hologram piece is Professor Robin James, who's been on a little tear of posts recently at It's Her Factory. Here's an analysis of Panic! At The Disco's "High Hopes" (oh how I loathe that song) in terms of the financial logic of the derivative, and a related post about Panic! singer Brendon Urine's team-up with Taylor Swift for the even more putridly self-empowered "ME!" and its promo atrocity. (And to think I once hailed "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" as the "Party Fears Two" of emo). Robin also identifies a mini-trend for "Brexit Techno."
Carl the Impostume with a short sweet paean to the Cocteaus and Felt's Liz-powered "Primitive Painters". I never got on with Treasure myself - too frou frou and frilly -but loved the Cocteaus on either side of that. Like Carl, I feel that, with Felt, "Primitive Painters" is the One - a pearly peal of heroic inadequacy from the howling heart of those Years of Exile - although there are a few other high moments in the discography, amid much over-exquisite filigree. (How right somehow that the primary instrumentalist in the group should be called Maurice - not your run-of-the-mill British rock name). Seems to be something Lawrentian in the air, what with this appreciation (Quinn Moreland on Forever Breathes the Lonely Word) that appeared only days ago in Pitchfork....
"and in the Eighties, there were wide-brim hats, there were... lots of wide-brim hats, there were.... lots of large wide-brim hats - indie-wear, indie-wear - everywhere"
"When the Owls Cry in the Night" is the peculiar Belbury Poly-ish title - never actually unpacked or even referenced during the piece itself, as I recall - of an interesting column by Rob Horning that recounts listening strategies he's developed in order to make music compelling in the face of the curiosity-killing overload. Tasks he sets himself to reenchant, or renarrativize, the vast accumulated past (a past that nonetheless seems way more alluring than the vast sprawling present). Always enjoyed Horning's meditations at The New Inquiry on the effects of social media, the internet, smartphones, etc etc on life, culture, mentality, mood, etc etc. Now he and some of the same Inquiring minds seem to be doing similar sort of now-analysis at a new-ish location: Real Life.
The idea of rationing one's exposure to music, keeping a distance from it, as a passion-protection strategy actually comes up over 35 years ago in this ancient radio interview with Sounds's Dave McCullough - a lost legend of the punk / postpunk / postpostpunk music press. He appears to have disappeared - nobody from that era seems to know for sure where he went after London or what he went on to do after quitting the rock press, most likely in a state of savage disillusion. I have written on one of my less-frequented blogs about how beguiling I find this unexpected discovery, this seemingly sole document of McCullough in the audio flesh.
McCullough in the photo flesh, strolling through Leicester Sq with the Clash
Must have listened to the show about four times now, entranced by his spiky yet silver-tongued patter, by the brittle and impetuous movements of his mind, by the texture of a different age - 1983. Even grown fond of McCullough's odd and motley selection of favorite records from his collection, which include Hall & Oates, Dory Previn, and contemporaneous releases by the Pastels, Microdisney, Hurrah, Peter Hammill.
One thing McCullough said that struck me as true is that reviewers - at least those with keen instincts and sharp sensibility - can tell by the first playing of the first track whether an album is any good or not. Which reminds me that I still haven't listened to Vampire Weekend's Father of the Bride all the way through - and that's because the memory of the first few tracks as heard several weeks back left an indelibly unappetizing after-aroma. This review by Lucas Fagen at Hyperallergic has the ring of truth: earnest maturity and emotional "depth" has turned to stodge all that was spring-heeled sprightly sparkly in Vampire's blithe and ravishingly superficial soundspirit. But it could be that I "agree" in large part because that gives me permission to shirk the chore of listening to all four sides of it.
Talking of the postpunk era, here's an interview with David Wilkinson, the author of Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure in Britain. Which I confess - scared off by the academic publisher price - I have not actually read, but I've seen Wilkinson give a conference talk and he has a lot of interesting stuff to say about the era.
Another book of note published relatively recently is Low End Theory: Bass, Bodies and the Materiality of Sonic Experience by Paul C. Jasen, who some in this parish will remember as the man behind this . With subsections bearing titles like "Spectral Catalysis", "Numinous Strategies", "Baroque Affect Engineering" and "Three Physio-Logics", it's some heady stuff ranging far beyond obvious compatibles like roots reggae and jungle and dubstep. More information and favorable appraisals can be checked out here.
Oh yes and I'm looking forward to reading the new book by Richard King, The Lark Ascending: The Music of the British Landscape - which looks to be the holloway connecting the two Robs (Young's Electric Eden, Macfarlane's Landmarks).
