"Divine Decadence Darling!"

I had a lovely time talking with Jeremy Gilbert and Tim Lawrence for their triffic music + politics podcast Love Is the Message. Our chat covered glam and punk and postpunk, themes of suburbia and boredom and the political economy of 1970s Britain. You can listen to the deftly-condensed and music-illustrated conversation at Apple or Spotify or Patreon

glum + glam =

In celebration of World Goth Day, here's my Los Angeles Times piece on Cruel World, the festival of Goth and mope-rock that takes place just up the road from us in Pasadena. It's also a mini-thinkpiece on the perennial allure of Goth as a subcultural option and style identity. 

It's a sequel to last year's blog report on the debut Cruel World. 

Last year, the main draw for me was first-time sightings of PiL and Devo, plus Morrissey (not seen since his solo debut in Wolverhampton in 1988). This time round offered the opportunity to see Siouxsie (but not the Banshees) for the first time; Iggy Pop for the first time since 1988;  and Echo & the Bunnymen for the first time since 1984. It would also have been an opportunity to see Adam & the Ants for the first time since 1980 (the very eve of Antmania) except he pulled out at the last minute, to be replaced by the not very Gothic or mopey Squeeze. As for my first-time Human League live experience - another attraction - their excellence was truncated by an extreme weather event! Headliners Iggy and Siouxsie got rescheduled to the next day, which resulted in the oddness of my first-time and second-time live encounters with Gary Numan occurring on successive days (for unknown reasons he got to play a whole set again). Unfortunately he was shit both times. 

With a lot of these acts, you can't help thinking morbidly that as well as the first time or first-time-since, it's most likely the last time - either they'll snuff it, or you will. 

Offcuts and further thoughts: 

The nostalgia pitch of Cruel World is a little odd, if you think about it – remember the good old days when you felt so bad? When you thought about suicide, wrote tortured poetry, dressed in black to externalize your despair, and imagined you'd never have a girlfriend or boyfriend? When bands like the Smiths, the Cure, and Joy Division were lifesavers? It’s a form of fidelity to the younger you, a refusal to grow out of it and leave it all behind. To stay connected with the purity of that period of doubt, dread and anguish. 

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One song  Echo and the Bunnymen played was “Lips Like Sugar”, the nearest they ever came to a hit in America. It’s always struck me as a killer chorus looking for a verse and pre-chorus.  Love and Rockets likewise felt like a great guitarist looking for a matching rhythm section and some decent tunes.  Just like with last year’s Bauhaus show, Daniel Ash’s gnarly but intricately textured racket, as heard on tunes like “Mirror People”, was a highlight. But everything else in their package was a mid or low light.

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Iggy's shirtless physique is fascinating in its combination of muscle and wrinkle. You can't tear your eyes off it, the way the flesh ripples, seems to simultaneously tauten and sag. The skin looks like a topographical map of the Rockies, the snake-like squiggle of distended veins on his chest resembling dried up gulches seen from far aloft. It makes him seem monumental: like he's been carved into rock’s equivalent of Rushmore – then broke loose to keep on marauding stages across the world.

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Unlike Iggy, who understands the strengths of his own back catalogue, Siouxsie repeated the Numan Error.  Instead of using her extended set time to disinter classics from A Kiss in the Dreamhouse or play the Goth National Anthem “Fireworks”, she played no less than four songs from the little-loved solo album Mantaray. There was a tune off the Batman Returns soundtrack and a pair of duds from 1986’s sparkless Tinderbox.  One unusual choice that did entrance was “But Not Them” from her percussion-and-voice side project The Creatures.  

It’s noticeable that the video projections oscillated in quality and imagination in parallel with the tunes – “Christine” came with a mesmerizing psychedelic kaleidoscope, whereas Batman tune “Face To Face” clunkily deployed cat’s eyes. 

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Goths as victims of violence: this I remember only too vividly from attending a show by Killing Joke  circa Fire Dances (supported by Play Dead).  Inside the theatre, it was all menace and apocalypse. But outside the Queensway Hall, the fearsome-looking Goths dispersed peaceably, and it was a gang of ordinary lads, hooligans with no subcultural affiliation, who looked around for someone who looked punky but weak enough to attack - and saw me. I got chased all across Dunstable, bottles whizzing past my head at intervals. It was only through the intervention of a burly middle-aged bloke who sized up the situation instantly (no, I had not "bottled some cunt" as the instant false accusation rang out!) and held them off long enough for me to make a getaway, that saved me from receiving a good kicking. I sprinted back to the center and rejoined my younger brother, sheltering in the protection of a kindly black-clad crew. We waited for our mother to pick us up in the car. 

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On the perennial allure of the look - although closer to a Bunnyman in appearance in those days, I married into the tribe. 

Mask On

Here's a piece that was fun to write - a history of people in pop who wore masks or otherwise heavily disguised their appearance with make-up, including the late MF DOOM, the five-years-late David Bowie, The Residents, Slipknot, Daft Punk, and more. For Tidal.com.

Futur choc

 Excited to announce the publication of two books in translation!

       
 

On November 16th, Audimat publish Le choc du glam, the French version of Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, translated by Hervé Loncan. More information here. 

On November 19th, Minimum Fax publish Futuromania, a collection of my writing about electronic music (dance + non-dance), translated into Italian by Michele Piumini. More information here. 

 

extinguished

Went to bed, after watching Leaving Neverland, feeling troubled...

Woke up uneasy, to find out that Keith Flint has died.

Every week there seems to be some new sickening blow (as if the actual news-news wasn't sufficiently distressing).

What a performer, an energy force.



As Andrew Harrison noted in  New Statesman, "the best pop stars are cartoons – instantly recognisable, bright, bold and primary-coloured, and in their simplicity far larger and more thrilling than life."

Keith Flint's commitment to his 2D role gave it an electrifying conviction. 



I always liked to compare the cross-over era Prodigy with The Sweet - pure excitement for its own sake, a perfectly wrought storm of hooks and hysteria.

That analogy doesn't quite work because Howlett and crew were an autonomous unit, rather than puppets - writing and producing their own material, fully in control of the hit factory.

But perhaps another punk-before-punk parallel does fit: Alice Cooper. A band that worked perfectly as pop-with-edge for teenagers, while grown-ups might enjoy them without being able to take it seriously. And yet, and yet... for all the vaudeville aspect, a band that in moments actually conjured - purely through sound and structured frenzy  - a sense of apocalyptic drama and danger.



Another in that lineage would be Adam and the Ants.

All the Young Droogs

Here's my Pitchfork review of a new Cherry Red box set compiled by junkshop glam archivist Phil King - All the Young Droogs: 60 Juvenile Delinquent Wrecks, Rock’N’Glam (And a Flavour of Bubblegum) From the ’70s. 

It's an excellent 3-disc trawl across the second strata of the glitter era, from punk-before-punk to Cockney'n'roll boogie to fey dandies with chronic Bowie-damage. Amazingly, Droogs doesn't repeat any of the track inclusions on the early junkshop glam collections like Velvet Tinmine, Glitterbest, Boobs, and Glitter from the Litter Bin, although some of the names - Iron Virgin, Hector, Hello - are familiar.

Here also is an interview at Goldmine with Phil King by Dave Thompson on the whys and wherefores of the compilation and the history of the whole junkshop glam retro-actively invented genre business.

Some of my favorites from the junk trunk.

obituaries and bitchery

An essay I wrote for Stanford Live about the death of David Bowie, our culture of public mourning, and the challenge of writing an honest eulogy.

EUROPE TOUR APRIL 28 - MAY 12 : AUSTRIA, GERMANY, POLAND, U.K., SPAIN

SATURDAY APRIL 28  - KREMS an der DONAU, AUSTRIA

Donaufestival: endlose Gegenwart (endless now)
2pm - "Absent Futures, Present Past: Temporalities in Today’s Music" - panel discussion with Jens Balzer and Christian Höller 
Location: Kino im Kesselhaus 
information

THURSDAY MAY 3 – , WEIL am RHEIN, GERMANY / BASEL, SWITZERLAND

Vitra Design Museum

6.30 pm - talk about techno, rave, and electronic dance music
Location: Depot Deli, next to the Schaudepot 
Information

SATURDAY MAY 5  / SUNDAY MAY 6 - OBERHAUSEN, GERMANY

Internationale Kurzfilmtage 

Saturday 5th – 10 pm - jury member for announcement of prize-winning music videos at Muvi Screening & Award Ceremony 

Location;  Lichtburg Cinema

Sunday 6th - 10 AM - "After YouTube: Music Video after the Internet" - panel discussion with Marisa Olsen and Christian Höller

Location: Festival Space, Langemarkstr. 22, 46045 Oberhausen

Admission: Free

information

MONDAY MAY 7^TH – WARSZAWA, POLAND

publication of Retromania: ak popkultura żywi się własną przeszłością by Kosmos Kosmos

Launch event -  "a meeting with readers": discussion led by Jarek Szubrycht, with Filip Łobodziński (translator of Retromania), followed by Q+A

Time: 7pm

Location: Plac Zbawiciela (podium in front of Plan B Café) 

WEDNESDAY MAY 9 - WALTHAMSTOW, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

Rock 'n' Roll Book Club "My Life in Pop": video-illustrated talk on TV epiphanies + Q+ A. 

Time: 6pm to 8 pm
Location: Walthamstow Library
Tickets:  Eventbrite. 




Spain mini-tour for Como Un Golpe de Rayo (published by Caja Negra)

THURSDAY MAY 10 – MADRID, SPAIN 

Primera Persona Festival 

21.00 horas - talk about glam rock and its legacy with videos + Q+A
Location: La Casa Encendida 
Information

FRIDAY MAY 11 –  Málaga, Spain  

451: La Noche De Los Libros Festival 

21:00 horas | talk about glam rock and its legacy with videos + Q+A

Sala 001

La Térmica

Avda. de los Guindos, 48

information

SATURDAY MAY 12 – BARCELONA, SPAIN  

Primera Persona Festival

21:00 horas | talk about glam rock and its legacy with videos + Q+A
Location: El Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona 
Information

GLAM BOOK TOUR - DEUTSCHLAND + ITALIA - DECEMBER 2017

         

Pulling my gloves, scarf and woolly hat out of SoCal retirement as I head off to snowy Germany and only slightly less shivery Italy for the publication of Shock and Awe - titled GLAM in the Ventil Verlag edition (translated by Jan-Niklas Jäger) and Polvere di Stelle in the minimum fax version (translated by Michele Piumini). 

Details below on this whistlestop tour of  readings + riffing, records + videos, questions + answers.  

GERMANY

Berlin - Sunday December 3 

doors open 7 pm / event starts 8pm - Humboldt-Universität Institut für Musikwissenschaft und Medienwissenschaft, 

Georgenstr. 47 (S- und Ubahn Friedrichstraße), romm: Medientheater

Writing as Performing Pop. A Conversation with Simon Reynolds

panel with Sonja Eismann (Missy Magazine) and Bodo Mrozek (ZZF Potsdam). 

moderation: Stefanie Alisch. 

introduction by Dahlia Borsche and Fabian Holt. 

deejaying Marc Weiser (Palais Wittgenstein)

Berlin - Monday December 4 

7pm -  HAU2

Hallesches Ufer 32, 10963 Berlin.

7pm - 8pm readings + riffing + videos

break

8.30 - 10-30 „Plattenspieler“with Thomas Meinecke (FSK) - chatting about fave records of our lifetimes

Bremen -  Tuesday December 5th 

7PM - Schwankhalle

Buntentorsteinweg 112/116 28201 Bremen

readings + riffing + videos / Q+A

presenter Tobias Levin

Frankfurt - Wednesday December 6 

8-15pm - Milchsackfabrik

Gutleutstr. 294, 60327 Frankfurt am Main

8.15 pm - 10 pm – conversation with Klaus Walter + videos / Q&A

Köln - Thursday, December 7th 

9pm - King Georg

Sudermanstraße 2/ 50670 Köln

readings + riffing + videos  / Q&amp - presenter Mario Lasar 

München - Friday, December 8th 

8PM - Kammerspiele

Kammerspiele / Kammer 3 / Hildegardstr. 1, 80539 München

readings + riffing  + discussion / Q&A

Mainz - Saturday, December 9th

8pm -  Capitol Cinema

readings + riffing /  + Q&A with the audience

ITALY

Milano - Monday 11 December

11 am- 1 pm - live on Radio Raheem - playing favorite records recent and old + chat 

9.30 PM -  Santeria 

BUZZ: a discussion moderated by Fabio De Luca / Q&A

Bologna - Tuesday 12 December 

7 pm -  Gallleriapiù

riffing + videos  / Q&A

Catania, Sicily -  Wednesday 13 December

8.30 pm  - Sal Catania  (a Leggo.Presente indicative  production)

readings + riffings + music 

Roma -  Thursday 14 December 

7 pm - “Polvere di stelle Big Christmas Party” @ minimum fax

interview with Francesco Pacifico

deejaying from SR 

interesting book (a series) #1

kicking off a new, sporadic series, about interesting books, mostly but not exclusively music-related :



All the Young Dudes: Why Glam Matters by Mark Dery

Boing Boing's first-ebook, this fascinating 8000-word monograph uses Mott the Hoople's Bowie-gifted signature anthem to unpack the meanings of glam, ranging from the etymology of the term "dude" to the "20s-style cover" of Mott's album and its evocation of " the coded homoeroticism of the ‘20s magazine illustrator J.C. Leyendecke", and all sluiced through the memories and p.o.v. of an Anglophile "growing up glam in  in ‘70s San Diego". Get it here.

On which subject, check out also Mark Dery's recent  e-book treatise for Thought Catalog on the history of American Anglophilia: England My England: Anglophilia Explained.