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.
Nabokov on music
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“Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of
more or less irritating sounds.”
- Nabokov, *Speak, Memory*
"I have no ear fo...
that's why they call it a...
-
Missed this 2016 tune, nodding back to / riding on a 1997 tune
that's some folk-memory persistence
some contiNUUMity
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ooh a U...
Corduroy Psychedelia
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Interesting piece at *Split Infinities *on a band that is getting talked
about at the moment but written before all the are-they-or-aren't-they buzz
"Am...
The Red Hot Chilli Peppers
-
In honour of the new RHCP doc, which is focused on Hillel Slovak, their
tragically-died-young guitarist, and in further honour of Flea's jazz
album, here...
Glam bandwagon jumpers (1 of ??)
-
Is this undignified, or just Donovan reclaiming the small debt that Bolan
owed him?
Visconti-ish strings.
Here he performs "Cosmic Wheel" sitting down a...
The Deep Purple Of ________
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The improbable existence of this book of scholarly essays on *Deep Purple* fer
fuck's sake made me re-contemplate this band's deep u...
Futuromania - the paperback
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The paperback edition of Futuromania has just come out
Older eyes will recognise the graphic design's nod to this best-seller of
the 1970s
...
Books of Note
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Far be it from me to encourage you to buy any music book this year that
isn't called Still In A Dream.... But I concede that there are some other
interesti...
Sad Songs
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Quite some time ago, Glen Goetze asked me about sad songs, for which
publication I cannot remember,
*1. What are your earliest memories of music?*
The ...
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