Not sure which publication this was in - probably International Times - but this could be the start of a sporadic series: reviews in which critics don't perceive the significance of something at the time of its release.
Interesting, though, that the one track Farren digs and praises is "We Will Fall" - the track that most Stooges fans find tedious and interminable.
Contradicting his own point, it also the one with the least "live" energy.
But he's right - "We Will Fall" is a great track, precisely for its droning narcotic lassitude - the absence of kinetic-ballistic energy. Attributing it all to John Cale strikes me as unfair, but it does indeed resemble The Marble Index relocated to Michigan.
Personally I never had any problem with its protractedness or inertia - always loved it. Plus it functions similarly as side-one ender to "Dirt" on Fun House.
It's an atmosphere to sink into. An ambience somewhere between an opium den and a temple. Sinister ceremonies, rituals of annulment. It could go on for ever.
"Ann", on the flipside, starts with a similar kind of limpid limpness - before erupting (erecting) with rampaging desire.
What's this "Dance of Romance"? Presumably an ironic title - courtship, wooing, seduction, cloaking the animal reality.
Possibly the accusation - "Emotional Fascism" - seems in retrospect a little harsh, considering what Dexys soon became (jolly jigsters circa Too-Rye-Aye.... harmless has-beens / heroes-to-some thereafter...). Also in light of Rowland's evidently troubled soul.
Still, as a real-time reaction of repugnance, this is forcefully argued, I think
For the June 29 1996 issue, Melody Maker investigated the phenomenon of "Yob Rock", convening a round table that has a number of people representing ladpop and ladette-pop but also a rather large contingent of Romo musicians and Romo-writers, who deplore the Loaded-ladded culture.
There's also a sort of historicising thinkpiece about the yob tradition in British rock by Taylor Parkes
The Yob Rock debate - Orlando members and Romo-in-spirit Placebo singer plus Simon Price critique the ladpop, while Ben Stud + some lad and laddette performers retort that this is elitism and snobbery and stereotyping
I think is actually the UK music press at its best - purely ideas-oriented and ideals-oriented argumentation - flashbacking to similar debates about e.g. Synths in Pop, or the New Mod, that Sounds might convene.
It gets pretty fiery.
Ben Stud: "Romo.... was a comprehensive failure" from the most acrimonious bit of the exchange
You might draw some discomfiting conclusions from the fact that in this Lads versus Dandies furore, the women present barely get a word in edgeways.... suggesting that Cavaliers versus Roundheads is just a fratricidal battle within the Patriarchy - Sons versus Sons.
In following weeks the surviving Romos out there bite back at the Yob Champions
- but futilely.
And then Oasis have the front cover for two issues in a row - Loch Lomond and Knebworth
Followed, with a week's interval (Ash) by The Stone Roses
(At Knebworth, John Squire joined Oasis on stage)
And then this!
A brief flicker of Romo-adjacent ambiguity
And then Oasis again!
Ladrock's grim hegemony maintains
(1996 was really a dead-arsed year when I think back to it - outside of dance music and R&B)
This is the maxi-version of this earlier mega-post at Shock and Awe on Romo as the Re-Renaissance of Glam
I remember Romo fondly as the last blast of the old-style weekly music press - a scene willed into being, semi-fictionalized, born aloft on the rhetorical efflorescence of its champions
The product of hype in its purest sense - the job we music journos do for the sheer sport of it
The original Romanifesto, penned by Simon Price and Taylor Parkes, is a classic of the genre
Wilde at heart!
Nothingelseon, heroic scanner and tweeter of the UK weeklies, has recently gone through that period and what has surprised me with each weekly deposit is the extent to which Melody Maker continued to throw its weight behind the movement through late '95 and deep into the following year
There was a MM-associated tour of the UK with the leading lights
There was a cassette, Fiddling While Romo Burns...
The big groups on the scene got double-page spread interviews
Also what surprised me is the controversy - the letter page Backlash was full of, well, backlash... romophobia ran rampant... the debate raged right through into the spring of '96
Here, below - because I am little insane - is pretty much the entire run of this twilight-of-the-inkies phenom - from the earliest twinkly inklings, through the Special Issue, and on to the continued coverage .... Singles of the Week.... letters pages fizzing with disapproval, Parkes and Pricey taking turns to fight back ... the big features... a report on the tour from Simon P.... and then finally a backlash, in the form of the Yob Rock issue and subsequent acrimony.
I was in America and missed almost the entire thing, although I do remember on a visit to UK going to a concert at which three of the most touted groups played... I think it was Dexter and Orlando and maybe one other... one group seemed rather Duran Duran circa Rio... overall I wasn't swayed as much as I'd have liked./ I do remember being quite taken with Minty and picking up one of their singles or EPs...
But it hardly mattered if the music substantiated the hype, really... the point was to put the ideas out there, shove them into the mix... and make that grand gesture against the laggardly ligging laddishness of post-peak but still dominant Britpop
A bit of context:
The things that Romo defined itself against, rebuked, flashed garish against the dowdy flock included aforementioned Britpop (now in its Bluetones / Cast / Shed Seven / Northern Uproar / Sleeper phase).... there was also still grunge around... bands like Garbage, superficially brighter and poppier but essentially Viggist... Bis... Skunk Anansie... and there was the faceless brainfood or footfood of drum & bass, post-rock, IDM, Mille Plateaux...
But there were fellow travelers with the Romos in terms of a move towards sharpness and image: Pulp (in their ascendancy)... Moloko.... the EZ listening initiative (the Ratpack-homaging Combustible Edison + Mike Flowers in the charts, travestying "Wonderwall")... the modder faction within Britpop: Gene, Menswear.... neo-glam (70s rather than 80s) flickers from Denim and Earl Brutus... neo-mod suit-wearing from Ian Svenonious's new groop The Makeup.... old glam gods lurching back into action (David Bowie, Boy George, Mark Almond, Human League) and then right there in middle of pop, accidentally aligned with Romo, there was Babylon Zoo... and poking through towards the end of this phase, Placebo
So some kind of gathering rejection of post-grunge and post-Britpop ordinariness was being disparately mounted
ROMO - THE BUILD UP
The first mention of Romo I could find is from June 1995 in this Pricey review which makes Sexus single of the week.
ROMO - THE MELODY MAKER FRONT COVER
x
ROMO RAGES ON (AND ON)
Tips for 1996
By June '96, Romo has pretty much petered out - making for a year of livening up the pages of the paper, since it was June '95 that Pricey's made Sexus's "Edenites" Single of the Week
A few diehards don't want to turn the page
August 31 1996
And Simon Price still flies the flag now and then
That's September 1996
But it won't be until electroclash circa 2002 that Romo-ish ideas get back in the ascendant (and even then they don't go mainstream)
The mainstreaming would come with the re-re-renaissance - and it would be female-led - Gaga, La Roux, etc
Elected! Rejected?
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*first in a series of posts related to the last time Trump ran for election
(rather than for reelection)*
*Article for MTV.com, 2016, On Alice Coop...
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One of the mysteries about pop is its repeatability. The way that
repetition of a song doesn't dim its power, or only at extreme degrees of
repetition (...
my own personal Blow Up
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So I was watching an ancient episode of *Revolver*, from 1978.
Boomtown Rats closing the show with a buncha boppy hits, including "She's
So Mo...
laughing gas - but this is no laughing matter
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Kieran Press-Reynolds with a fascinating story for GQ about Galaxy Gas, a
flavored nitrous oxide product that's all the rage and whose cute packaging
reca...
haunty ha-ha, haunty peculiar
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Sometime ago, *Vic Reeves* posted this on Twitter - if I remember right,
it's artwork for a tour poster that was nev...
50 Favorite Songs
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(for an Italian publication, 2009)
The Eyes -- "When the Night Falls"
The Beatles -- "Strawberry Fields Forever"
John's Children -- "A Midsummer ...
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...