I was wondering when you would get to this in your McCullough retrospective. It is notorious, of course. As I remember it, Tony Wilson and the surviving band members were furious. And there is no denying that the last two paragraphs - in particular, the first sentence of the penultimate paragraph - are catastrophically ill-judged. But I think overall it is better than its reputation suggests. He's writing with raw feelings that are genuinely powerful, and incline me to forgive the points where he gets carried away and goes too far. And he situates Curtis in a place and time better than any other writer before or since. A work of flawed genius.
reading matters
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Chal Ravens has written a lovely in-depth review of Still In A Dream at
London Review of BooksThere's even an LRB playlist so you can listen as you
readKie...
Tellus a story
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Death Is Not The End takes avant-garde LPs originally released by a New
York artist-owned label and reissues them as cassettes.... *Earth
Libraries* tak...
RIP Tim Curry
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A glam icon obviously for his *Frank N Furter* in *The Rocky Horror Picture
Show*, a movie much darker and more interesting than I had first imagined
and...
A Telex from yesterday's future
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An example of what I call "the rhetorics of temporality" - the way critics
compulsively position and reposition things they like, or are...
Michel Gondry - Snowbound (1993)
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Peak pop video?
Probably not (some of the most expensive promos were made during the late
'90s, the Hype Williams era - e.g. Busta and Janet's astoun...
RIP Frank Beard
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Would you believe, I have actually written about ZZ Top? I reviewed their *Greatest
Hits* along with a Lynyrd Skynyrd box set.
*ZZ TOP, Greatest HitsMe...
faves of the 2010s
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(Tracks not full lengths)
Ke$ha – “We R Who We R”
Ke$ha - “Backstabber”
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, "Round and Round"
Rangers – “Golden Triangles”...
angel delights
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https://rada-ve.bandcamp.com/track/saturn-rings-songs
*Go on* - listen to that gorgeous bubble bath of synthtronica!
Another vintage release, with a vi...
I was wondering when you would get to this in your McCullough retrospective. It is notorious, of course. As I remember it, Tony Wilson and the surviving band members were furious. And there is no denying that the last two paragraphs - in particular, the first sentence of the penultimate paragraph - are catastrophically ill-judged. But I think overall it is better than its reputation suggests. He's writing with raw feelings that are genuinely powerful, and incline me to forgive the points where he gets carried away and goes too far. And he situates Curtis in a place and time better than any other writer before or since. A work of flawed genius.
ReplyDeleteYes it's overwraught but absolutely forgivable in the circumstances I think - and authentic in its heroizing impulse.
ReplyDelete