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.
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"[Baudrillard's] vision of contemporary society exhibits a careening of
growth and excrescence (croissance et excroissance), expanding and
excreting eve...
“archives of resistance”
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In June I went to Bristol to do a *Still In A Dream* event at Strange
Brew. Wandering around, we saw all these posters for jungle raves and drum
and ba...
The Old Musical Express
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*New Musical Express *on the 1983 reissue of *Charlie Gillett*'s 1971 book *The
Sound of the City. *
Reviewer *Paul Du Noyer* notes that "*in...
Applause without ears
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Came across this review of *Shock and Awe* online and was reading it,
nodding along and thinking '*this is rather perceptive'* and then realised
it was ...
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...
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