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.
Cale versus Cale
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Flicked past this mellow fellow's elpees in the racks so many times over
the years, always faintly intrigued, but never enough to li...
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Art as conjuror of the dead.— Art also fulfils the task of preservation and
even of brightening up extinguished and faded memories; when it
accomplishes ...
lost in the schaffel
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Minimal house was in such a rut by the early 2000s they tried to juice it
up with some glammish boogie swing in the form of the "schaffel" fad
...
Hinterlands of Memory
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Here's an interesting book - a specifically Canadian perspective on
hauntology, exploring the nexus of nationality, landscape and memory in
the 1970s...
Naffrofuturist (slight return)
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Around this time, *Sounds* actually had a Futurists Chart in their charts
page. Initially it was compiled by Stevo of Some Bizzare f...
"jumping iz not a crime"
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Kieran Press-Reynolds with a guest piece at Shawn Reynaldo's First Floor,
while the main man takes a vacation. It's a report on "the holy hell of
cursed j...
Mashupmanship ("lameness on the horizon")
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*LAMENESS ON THE HORIZON*
*(from 2001, Unfaves, off the old website A White Brit Rave Aesthete
Thinks Aloud)*
I was enjoying the Avalanches show at SOB...
four favorite riffs
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Not actually my four absolute favorite riffs (Lord alone knows where I'd
start with that) but four *of* my favorite riffs, commented on for The
Wire's *G...
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