RIP Mark Stewart

Well, that is gutting news about Mark Stewart, going way too early. 

I always really enjoyed talking with Mark - and unusually, for a musician, he said that he really enjoyed talking to journalists. Even, or especially, journos who challenged him (as with a famous face-off between I Punman and Pop Group / Slits / Y tribe in 1980). He thrived on the exchange of ideas. 

The pic above is by Richard Bellia and was taken in November 1987 when I first met Mark. It was a Melody Maker interview about his great self-titled album of that year. We chatted in this canal-side pub down the road from Mute Records. No idea who this old bloke in the photo is - someone on the street that Mark roped into the shot!  

Apart from the thrilling sounds he made in The Pop Group and solo (not forgetting his collaborative role with Tricky and others), his never-ending enthusiasm for new things in music, the West Country accent he kept all his life, the main thing that springs to mind thinking of Mark Stewart is how fucking tall he was. Literally - as well as postpunk historically - a giant.

Elsewhere - xenogothic pays tribute and helpfully samples / links to other people's tributes

The above is the first Pop Group record I bought (double A-side with The Slits's fabulous "In the Beginning There Was Rhythm").  Chic meets Gramsci's "pessimism of the intellect / optimism of the will".

"Don't Sell  Your Dreams" came close to being the title of the postpunk book but was pipped at the post when a chap called Jonathan O'Brien suggested Rip It Up and Start Again (in this book-naming competition I did on this blog - scroll down a bit here). But it would have made a fine and era-emblematic title, I think. 

Now I think about, Mark's song on the first New Age Steppers album, "Crazy Dreams and High Ideals"  would also have made a great title for the book-that-would-be-Rip-It-Up.

As indeed would have the title of the dub version, which has the words the other round: "High Ideals and Crazy Dreams" 

Now I do not agree with the sentiment in this song (we are not equally culpable and complicit in the Shitstem) but I love the ferocity with which The Pop Group put it across. 

The first time I heard "Thief of Fire" it was actually Loop's terrific (differently terrific) version.

Robert Hampson had that whole pre-Loop life as a postpunk experimentalist, into 23 Skidoo and that kind of thing. Which he semi-reverted to with Main. 

Another group who early on were audibly scarred by The Pop Group, also Pere Ubu, was The Birthday Party. Famously they came to the UK expecting all groups to sound as intense as "She Is Beyond Good and Evil"....

You can hear it in the screech-squawk vocals, the paroxysmic punk-funk

Even the title Prayers On Fire is very Pop Group 

разорви это и начни снова / энергетическая вспышка / roztrhněte to a začněte znovu

                                  

This month will see the publication in Russia of Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84 by Shoom Press.  Translation by Ilya Miller. 

A virtual discussion of the book -   the author in dialogue with the critic Alexander Gorbachev -   organised by the British Council is happening on March 11 at 19-30 Moscow time. Details about how to attend here.

In other news, later this year  - late summer I believe - Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture is also coming out in a Russian translation, through the auspices of the publishing program of  the museum V-A-C (which stands for ‘Victoria – the Art of being Contemporary’). 

Finally, completing the penetration of the post-Communist East, there will be a Czech language version of Rip It Up coming out in a few months time via the publisher Volvox Globator. 

book news

Rip It Up and Start Again has been repackaged in a new virulently glowing pink edition as part of the series Faber Social Greatest Hits, alongside books by Viv Albertine, Barney Hoskyns,  Nick Kent, Rob Young, and Kim Gordon. 

The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion & Rock 'n' Roll is coming out in a German translation on Ventil Verlag in the early summer of 2019.  It contains a new foreword that reframes the book in the light of the current anti-feminist backlash, a bonus section of pieces by me and Joy Press on various female artists from the last 25 years since the book was first written, and the reincorporation of  a chapter cut out of the original text for space reasons that looks at rock criticism and its gender-political biases. 

That revamped and expanded version of The Sex Revolts is also coming out in a French translation at some point in 2020 through the publisher La Découverte. 

Finally, a collection of my electronic music writings is being published in Italian by minimum fax. Titled Futuromania, its contents range from rave to ragga, synthpop to musique concrete, EBM to trapedelia. Out sometime in 2020.

Out soon, on Caja Negra Editora - the Spanish translation of Rip It Up and Start Again.

book news

The new expanded / updated edition of Energy Flash is out now.

Check here for further information about a London E-Flash event (Monday June 24, Rough Trade East) and a Bristol E-Flash event (Thursday June 27th, Rise).

I'll also be in Glasgow Saturday June 22 to give the keynote speech at Tomorrow Never Knows: 'The Future' Symposium. More information to follow.

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In other book news:

Energy Flash is coming out in a Spanish translation via the Barcelona based publishing house Contra.

Rip It Up and Start Again is coming out in a Spanish translation via the Buenos Aires based publishing house Caja Negra Editora.

Rip It Up and Start Again is coming out in a Polish translation via the publishing wing of Krytyka.

Retromania is coming out in a Russian translation via White Label Publishing.

Retromania is coming out in a Korean translation via the Seoul publisher Workroom.

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