I've posted here before about Mick Farren's famous "The Titanic Sails At Dawn" polemic. Appearing in the NME'sJune 19 1976 issue, the piece is legendarily claimed to have played a precipitative role in the punk uprising. It identified a malaise in rock: the loss of its connection to "the streets" and "the kids" that traverse them; the recline and fall of a rebel sound into mere showbiz. And in the process it birthed a mini-genre of explicitly or implicitly Titanic-themed jeremiads, which cropped up in the pages of the NME over the next decade (as well as the pages of zines populated by NME-wannabes).
I've also noted here that six months earlier Mick Farren had written a very similar - and to my mind, sharper - argument in the first NME issue of 1976. A piece that no one seems to remember, and for whatever reason, it didn't seem to have any precipitative effect. Timing is everything.
Talking about timing... Well, here's a funny thing: turns out Mick Farren wrote yet another similar piece almost a year before the first of those 1976 pieces. The complaint is the same: the Seventies so far is a wash-out and rock's new superstar aristocracy - aka the Uncle Toms of Teendom - have "taken Rock off the streets and into the penthouse".
And here's another funny thing - four years after "The Titanic Sails At Dawn", Farren rocks up yet again in the page of NME with a polemic about the music's aesthetic bankruptcy and directionlessness.
I suppose four handwringing thinkpieces across five or six years isn't that excessive.
At Monitor, I must have written two or three with that vibe in just two years / six issues.
David Stubbs wrote a piece on that theme in virtually every issue of Monitor - hilariously vivid evocations of impending entropy.
And then at the end of '86 we co-wrote a rather gloomy overview for Melody Maker (the editor complained it was a bummer way to wrap up the year). Not one of our most coherent efforts, but maybe I should dredge it up as a period curio.
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Not forgetting Mick Farren's entire book on this approximate subject.... from a few years prior to the 1975 piece "The Kids Are Not Necessarily Alright". With the word "Kids" in the title.
At that point - most likely writing the book in 1971 - Farren still retained some optimism about the radical potential of rock and youth culture. The tone of Watch Out Kids is defiant - the gathering decadence can be turned around.
The story of "how Elvis gave birth to the Angry Brigade" promises the jacket copy.
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This is a genre of rock essay - the dispirited measuring of Rock's vital signs.
Some of Lester Bangs's most famous pieces are in that mode, albeit always pointing to green shoots of vitalizing vulgarity that defy the overall atrophy.
No surprises here, but I personally love the "The Death of ________" essay.
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 quiteas 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
I am obsessed with the advertisements in the old music papers - the New Wave era is particularly rich for the semiotician and lover of graphic design trends, but then so is the Old Wave era. For a historian, it's almost as rich material to draw on as the actual journalism.
However that is not my subject today - my subject today is advertisements for the music press.
I'm going to start looking for the ink-and-paper versions, which I suspect are clueless in the extreme.
But for now here are TV commercials for weekly music papers, going from the early '80s to the 2000s.
These were posted by someone at ILM.
I wonder to what extent they were actually showed on TV. Perhaps some were used as cinema ads.
I remember a radio advert for Melody Maker during my early years of being there that was a really irritating jingle and the chorus went something "Read music, read Melody Maker" in a sing-song sort of matey voice. Or was it "love music, read Melody Maker"? Can't recall but the jingle is lodged in my brain like an indestructible tapeworm.
There was also a T-shirt floating around that said something like "Melody Maker - Tomorrow's Music Today".
In the actual music papers, you would get adverts for other music magazines sometimes - The Face advertised in NME regularly.
Monitor actually bought some micro-ads to run in the NME and also The Face, I think. We had come into some funding.
I can feel this post already extending itself towards future posts, including 1/ music journalists on television and 2/ fictionalized depictions of the rock press on television and in film.
There's quite a lot of the former - as a taster, I give you this ruddy marvellous clip of the Stud Brothers being callously anti-humanist in 1989
RIP Mr Kershaw... I didn't much care for his taste (and the underlying ideology) - as least as evidenced by his influential radio show - but here he reveals a solid talent for record reviewing.
Sadly I don't have the whole Mackenzie singles page, nor do I recall where it came from (the year must be around 1987).
Still, William is quite as flamboyantly caustic as his erstwhile chum Morrissey in decreeing these efforts to be really nothing.
Here in fact is Morrissey being harsher still on a David Sylvian single
In my class on The Artist As Critic / The Critic as Artist last week, assigned readings included Morrissey's singles columns of the 1980s - and I thought it would be fun to play some of the singles (with their appalling videos) in class and get the students to review them, before I read out the Mozzer verdict. Among them were Sylvian's "Pulling Punches"
And it was fun - they were a particularly bad batch of records, including Carmel's "Bad Day" and a twilight-phase Hazel O'Connor.
Although germane and acerbic points were made, none quite matched Stephen's barbs.
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I don't have many regrets - at least about the music journalism years - but one of them is never having got to interview Billy Mackenzie.
There was always a queue to interview him at Melody Maker and higher-ups would pull rank to secure their 5th or 6th sit-down with him.
Great Scots
Muriel could recite the phone book and I'd be enchanted.
Via the YouTube channelYesterday's Papers, a motherlode of musicians guest reviewing the Singles for Melody Maker and New Musical Express and Sounds - all from the 1960s or the early 1970s
Slightly reduced in impact by the host of the channel reading them out himself in his mild tones. I reckon he should have tried to imitate these rock stars - ribald Scouser for the Fab Four, irascible East Ender for Ginger Baker, etc etc. Perhaps he could get AI to do it now?
There's a huge number below and even more atYesterday's Papers, along with many other goodies.
Also included below are some examples of musicians
a/ reviewing big deal albums (Ray Davies on Revolver, with George Harrison doing a riposte the next week)
b/ musicians reviewing their own records!
First up all four Beatles get a crack, or multiple cracks
Picking up on the "mean review" thing, as with the Tin Machine II beat-down... it struck me that music journalism is much closer to real-life fan (or anti-fan) chat than it is to literary criticism or other forms of arts reviewing. (Not that these are completely devoid of no-holds-barred, personally insulting take-downs).
But rock writing is closer to vernacular shit-shooting of the kind that goes on in pubs, living rooms, bedrooms, or any place where friends gather and talk about the things they are mutually into. And this kind of discourse - whether it's about music, or sports, or movies - is not particularly fair-minded. It's prone to overstatement and it rather often strays into ad hominem abuse.
Think about the way you discuss performances and performers with your pals, or your partner, or in the family situation. The commentary is not measured or fair-minded - precisely because you are looking to extract amusement out of the subject.
This kind of talk has drifted into the public sphere with internet forums, social media, etc.
But rather than point to any of the millions of forum threads and tweets out there, my evidence for "critics are no meaner than anyone else" argument is a particular subgenre of music journalism: the singles review column done by a guest pop star or indie cult figure.
It's startling how bitchy and dismissive the comments can get.
“A man with two hernias screaming through sewage” - Lemmy, reviewing a single, 1984
Sometimes these guest singles pages are written up by the guest in writerly language. Mostly they seem to be transcribed and tidied from a chat hosted by a journalist from the paper in question.
Usually the paper in question is Smash Hits or Record Mirror, although there was a period in the early 1980s when Melody Maker would get guests in to do the singles. Sounds had famous guests do it in the mid-1970s, including Eno. And back in the 1960s you might see George Harrison or Paul Macartney or Scott Walker doing the singles now and then.
(For some reason, NME - at least after it stopped being a pop paper for teens - kept the singles review column as the preserve of the professional critic, with just a few exceptions: John Cooper Clarke, Ian Dury, Mark E. Smith - now all added to this selection).
"A drummer with gout, a guitarist with hiccups, and a singer who sounds like a thousand mice being garroted. The B-side is better, but still awful" - Bruce Bruce (of Samson), reviewing a single, 1980
Amazing how nasty the musician-on-musician swipes can be. Surprising too, because you'd think these musicians would be more tactful and diplomatic: surely they knew there was a good chance they'd run into some of the people they'd slagged-off eventually, backstage at Top of the Pops, or at some record industry event. And people have long memories for bad reviews, let me tell you.
Knowing how hard it is to make a record, the work that goes into writing and recording a song, you might imagine the musicians would be less dismissive... Is there any compunction, any allowances made? Not at all. And nor should there be.... any more than I should pull my punches when reviewing a book, given my inside knowledge of the amount of effort it takes to bring a book into existence.
The critic - like the consumer - responds to the finished object, whether it's a dish at a restaurant or a movie on the screen.
“One does not wish to be deliberately cruel to quite obviously dedicated musicians, but in the interest of general public health, cruelty becomes necessary” - Morrissey, reviewing the singles, 1984
Here below are an enormous number of singles review columns done by musicians. I've frontloaded it with the bitchier examples. It's no surprise to see Morrissey appear multiple times here - although his warm feelings expressed for a Duran Duran single might widen your eyes.... Also unsurprising how caustic are the comments of Paddy Macaloon and the Prefabs and Green from Scritti, given how defined and refined their aesthetics are, and how they've a way with words.
"This is another good example - out of the Valley of the Dead Ears - of 'anonymous music'. I think the listener is not as stupid as these people think, and will not buy this rubbish any more" - Dieter Meier, reviewing a single, 1989
Later on in this selection, it gets to be a bit more kindly and even-handed. Strangely gentle are the verdicts of Kevin Rowland, who you'd reckon to be scathing and scowling. (Of a Tiffany single, he says meekly "Not my cup of tea but that of millions of others" - a long way from that Dexys advert that railed against pop as foul-tasting bubblegum). Ian Dury is not as prone to taking the piss as you'd expect.
Sometimes the magazines seem to be scraping a bit with their guest reviewers. For instance there's an inordinate number of ones done by members of the Bluebells, and one by a Commotion rather than a Cole.
Update 3/11 - bunch more added including Ian Dury and John Cooper Clarke from the NME. And a bunch in video form from the 1960s - George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul Macartney, Keith Relf, Tony Iommi, Ginger Baker, Keith Emerson, Roy Wood, Steve Winwood - courtesy of Yesterday's Papers YouTube channel.
Update 3/12 - now added Rat Scabies and Brian James of Damned review singles April 1977 Sounds, and Paul Simenon (and Roadent!) of The Clash reviewing the singles in Sounds, June 1977... and Michelle Fowler from Eastenders (who is quite acidic)
Update 4/ 9 - Steve Currie from T. Rex in MM and Budgie from somewhere (Banshee rather than Welsh rock group) and a few others - now all added
"William sez these were really nothing" - Billy Mackenzie swipes (sadly I don't have the full singles review pages)
Ginger Baker - now this should be truculent!
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This is around 1988, circa his first solo album The Wanderer, when drugs and failure appear to have kicked the stuffing out of Kev. With his constructive comments here, he sounds like nothing so much as one of the judges on New Faces circa 1974.
C.f. the vitriol and invective of this advert
bonus musicians reviewing stuff
Not musicians - but not professional reviewers either
Lovely Muriel not quite cutting the grade as a music journo - just a bit too arch in tone
in a category of its own
conceptually clever singles review column where the column itself acquires consciousness and reviews the singles without the need for human participation
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