rock writers on the teevee

Not interested here in rock writers in their current haggard state, of which there are innumerable examples on YouTube.... but rather, rock writers in their original pristine prime. These are much rarer, as rock journalism was not taken seriously by the gatekeepers of the mass media. 

In roughly chronological order   

There are some TV clips of the young Coon here amongst the looking-back stuff.

She also appears here from 14.35 onwards in this next clip, a TV program about The Alternative Society

Richard Williams (Melody Maker) presenting The Old Grey Whistle Test, with a natty mustache

Clip of Legs McNeil and the other fellow from Punk magazine which you'll have to go to YouTube to watch

Danny Baker, pre-NME, and Mark Perry, then repping for Sniffin' Glue

Apparently the Clash idolized Tony P

The earliest clip of me on the box is from The Late Show  -  a discussion of Jimi Hendrix. This must be about 1991 or so. I was brought on to represent the younger breed alongside more venerable rock pundits like Richard Williams and Charles Shaar Murray (during the long wait, he took me in the stairwell for a smoke and tried to ascertain how cool I was about weed. I certainly was not going to get stoned immediately before going on national TV - I believe it was live!). 

I have to say, I looked quite dreamy. Extremely soft-spoken, almost whispering through a cloud of long curly hair, as I unfurled my Dionysian patter: better by far that Hendrix burn up like a meteor across the sky, than for him to fade away, dwindling to an ember of his former blazing intensity, living on and on as a respected elder.  For what a bourgeois metric it was to measure a life in terms of mere duration - Jimi went through  lifetimes more "experience" in his brief transit, than we mere mortals eke out across our cautious, play-safe spans. 

Young man's talk, obviously! 

Not online but somewhere I have it on a VHS tape. 

But there is this.... from 1998. I don't look quite as terrible as I remember... When it was first screened in a movie theater, I was aghast. 

Kodwo Eshun in the middle of the Reynolds sandwich there, looking very natty indeed. 

Another Kodwo bit

 I remember being peeved that they used him talking about gabber, and not me!  

The full film - I think we are the only journos in it