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, both then repping for Sniffin' Glue

Apparently the Clash totally fan-boyed Tony P

Charles Shaar Murray

The earliest clip of me on the box is from The Late Show  -  a live-on-air 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, CSM 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 have to say, I looked quite dreamy. Extremely soft-spoken, almost whispering through a cloud of long curly hair, as I unfurled my Dionysian argument: better by far that Hendrix shot across the sky like a meteor than for him to have carried on, gradually dwindling to an ember of his former incandescent intensity.  Only the most bourgeois metric would measure a life in terms of mere duration. In his brief transit, shooting star Jimi burned through lifetimes more "experience" than we mere mortals eke out across our cautious, play-safe spans. 

Young man's talk, obviously... 

It used to be online but no more.... somewhere I have it still on a VHS tape. 

But there is this.... from 1998, the electronica doc Modulations. 

I don't look quite as terrible as I remember... When it was premiered in a movie theater, my bad hair blown up on the big screen, 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