RIP Peter Shapiro

Shocked and saddened to wake up yesterday and learn that Peter Shapiro has died. 

I used to know Peter in the '90s and we worked together occasionally. He did some stuff for me at Spin (including a piece during which he explained what a dubplate is to an alt-rock readership and visits Music House in London to see the process of making one). And I contributed a piece on Krautrock for Modulations, an anthology of writings about electronic music that Peter edited. 

His magnum opus is Turn The Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco, which is the definitive book on disco as an ever-expanding and mutating musical form.

The Peter Shapiro byline will be familiar to people who read this blog most likely from his contributions to The Wire, although he wrote for all kinds of places. He carried on contributing to Spin after my one-year experiment at being an editor came to its natural conclusion, and amongst other things wrote a memorable reported piece about an Air Guitar World Championship in Finland - he took up the gonzo challenge of living the story and entered the contest himself and actually came fourth!  

Peter was a brilliant writer who pulled off the harder-than-it-looks double thing of being illuminating and funny at the same time. 

Sadly but shrewdly he quit freelance music criticism and became a lawyer, eventually specializing in intellectual property rights and media. 

Here's some more about Peter extracted from a tribute written by close friend and onetime fellow Spin contributor Mike Rubin:

"Peter was a native of Larchmont, NY.... His work appeared in URB, Vibe, Uncut, and The Times, The Wire, where he wrote cover stories on DJ/Rupture, Kool Keith, Kid 606, Talvin Singh, Anti-Pop Consortium, Quannum Projects, the "Illbient Alliance" (let's not hold that against him), A Guy Called Gerald, Coldcut, Stereolab, Jah Wobble, and Natacha Atlas. In addition to oodles of album reviews, he also frequently quizzed artists for the magazine's listening-test column "Invisible Jukebox," including Tom Moulton, Super_Collider, El-P, Mike Patton, Bill Laswell, Lemmy, Caetano Veloso, Alec Empire, and LTJ Bukem. A glance at the partial list of topics he wrote Wire articles on should give a sense of the dazzling breadth of his interests: artists like Larry Levan, Dabrye, Mike Ladd,  Anticon, Fog, Playgroup, Q-Bert, Phil Cohran, Dan the Automator, Phoenicia, Dr. John, Mark the 45 King, Graham Haynes, Jungle Brothers, Prince Paul, Stacey Pullen, Omni Trio, Cristian Vogel, Larry Heard, LFO, & Emergency Broadcast Network; "Primer" listening guides to US hardcore punk, turntablism, James Brown, Fela Kuti, & P-Funk; genres like cosmic disco, Latin freestyle, mutant disco, psychedelic soul, and the new Americana; and topics like bootlegs, mixtapes, and machine beats.

"He penned several volumes of the Rough Guide series, including surveys of hip-hop, drum 'n' bass, soul, & R&B, before authoring his magnum opus: TURN THE BEAT AROUND: THE SECRET HISTORY OF DISCO (2005, Faber and Faber). He also edited MODULATIONS: A HISTORY OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC (2000, Caipirinha Productions). "

And here's a tribute from The Wire with much  more on his involvement with the magazine - I forgot that he had been living for years in England, then moved from back to NYC in the late '90s. Also that he had worked on the staff of the Wire for a few years. 

They mention a particular piece (below) which Peter did, kicking off their long-running Epiphanies column in January 1998, about rock riffs. It captures well a familiar arc - the writer pursuing the minutiae of electronic dance music culture (or some other ultra-hip, super-intricate area of music) and then tiring and turning off it, or just finding diminishing returns, and returning to the reliable thrills of dumb riffs. (Which could be find in dance music itself obviously - Big Beat) I remember going to a hipster bar in the Lower East Side regularly in the 2000s premised on this scenario, or at least that's what I assumed had happened. Instead of the trendy audio-trickly stuff that you'd expect and would have heard at similar bars in the late '90s, the audio fare was all classic rock riffola, James Gang and The Guess Who and "Jump Into the Fire" . It really felt to me like a recovery space for the jaded cool-hunter. I loved it - it was like when we would go on a car trip, renting a car and then starting out playing all the music we'd brought with us, CDs and mixtapes... but inevitably, after a day or so, we'd find ourselves tuning into the classic rock stations on the radio and sticking there. It suited the open road, just as in this bar, it suited drinking beer better than Kruder & Dorfmeister or Kompakt or whatever. 

My own later versions of this "I've seen the future and I've left it behind" epiphany: "nifty groovers" and "brockism" (aka the hard rock continuum) and "my kind of rap"

Sounds writers with silly pseudonyms

There is a tradition among U.K. rock writers of taking up an amusing nom de plume, arresting alias, or enigmatic pseudonym. Or a single word moniker that stands out graphically.

New Musical Express had a bunch - Penny Reel, Liz Neer, Biba Kopf, Jane Solanas, X. Moore, Dick Tracy, James T. Kirk, Miles, Bolshie Vic, G G Barabajagal (a one-off for the purpose of reviewing a 1981 Donovan concert), The Vidiot, Windy Miller,  Beverley Hills, Jean Disrobespierre, An Unwitting Victim, Gaye Abandon,  A Breton...  Many of these only appeared once, though: possibly because a staffer wanted to use aliased anonymity momentarily to evade consequences for a particular opinion. (Or just for a laugh - Barnet Housewives)

 At Melody Maker, we had The Stud Brothers – originally The Legendary Stud Brothers, no less. Which inspired a female duo who went as... Sara + Jayney, I think. Then there was the fellow who chose a Welsh-language alias guaranteed to drive the copy editors up the wall: Sgrifnach Agrwnr, or something like that.  Not forgetting Everett True, who prior to that had gone as The Legend at NME and in his fanzine of the same name. 

Even The Wire had Jakubowski, Hopey Glass, possibly others.

However the paper that really went to town with this was Sounds.  No idea why, but it seemed to become almost an institutional fixture. 

Below is an inventory of daft aliases deployed by Sounds writers from the punk era onwards. Organized into categories. Let me know if I've missed anybody.

Surreal / enigmatic 

My favorite out of all the ones I found - indeed the one that got me pondering this phenom - is Tibet. 

This was the Sounds byline of David Tibet, as in Current 93. Yes, he had a parallel career track, writing about the sort of thing you'd expect (industrial / esoteric underground) but much else besides (Saxon!)

As well as looking good 'n' stark on the page, TIBET as a byline has a whiff of Anglo-surrealist comedy, making me think of a Monty Python sketch maybe, or perhaps Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy.  A nation-state given the humble task of reviewing a Robert Haigh piano release or sent to interview Doctor and the Medics. 

"Tibet" is also prone to inadvertently – or advertently – amusing juxtapositions, when it comes to the deks / standfirsts to pieces. Lotsa scope for copyeditor malarkey. 

Like this one - which sounds like a country being subjugated by an invading religion

Tibet in the pages of Sounds as a journalistic object not subject

Rare occurrence of his full name being credited in Sounds - a piece on Derek Jarman

(via Feuilleton) 

Another odd, enigmatic name: Luaka Bop

Which we all know as the name of the world-music (and other things - A.R. Kane!) label cofounded by David Byrne.

According to Wiki: 

Byrne took the phrase "Luaka Bop" from the inner packaging of a specialty tea which is sold in England. Luaka is the name of a tea importer. Their "Broken Orange Pekoe" is packaged in a silver foil block; when the sleeve is removed, it reveals a white label that reads "Luaka BOP". Byrne found the phrase to be “strange, but musical”, a combination he liked

"Strange but musical" - it does sound like the name of  a style of dance music from a Polynesian island or a small country in Latin America. 

So that's clearly where this Sounds scribe got it.

Another odd one I scribbled down on sight, but didn't save the piece in question: Granuaile

Then there's RAB 

Now that might just  be the initialization of an ordinary sort of name like Robert Andrew Brown.   But without any periods between the letters, it takes on a certain baleful anonymity, like the acronym of a terrorist group

 

new addition August 6 - Ear and Ear

new addition November 28 -another odd one - Murun B

Your guess is as good as mine

Punky

A cluster of monikers that give off vaguely seditious vibes or are faintly offensive, the kind of name that a punk singer might adopt. 

Ralph Traitor

John Opposition (occasionally Johnny Oppo)

Aha, update 12/6/2024 - "John Opposition" is the journo alter ego of ranting poet Attila the Stockbroker  - a.k.a John Baine. This makes him the exact counterpart of NME ranter-turned-writer (but really still just a ranter) Seething Wells aka Susan Williams aka Steven Wells

Here's Attila / Oppo / Baine interviewed by Dave McCullough

And here's Stand Up and Spit - a blog now dormant but long maintained by Attila as a valuable archive of music paper reviews and interviews plus assorted memorabilia to do with ranting poets, agit-prop rock, Rock Against Racism / Anti-Nazi League, skinhead culture, Oi!, 2-Tone and ska revival. In other words, the Sounds-y end of punk and after-punk activity, kids on the street as opposed to art schoolers in the studio.

Jane Suck 

(later, having switched to the NME, she became Jane Solanas - a sedition-by-association name (Valerie also idolised by Malcolm McLaren)

(now RIP)

I wonder if "Suck" was a semi-homage to Germaine Greer's underground-press sex-paper of the same name? 

It does sound like the name of the bassist in an all-female band called The Castrators. 

Jon Savage 

(which I believe is a twist on his given name Jonathan Sage - that was what was on his Maida Vale doorbell when me and the Monitor crew traipsed up to London to pay a visit in 1985)

In an alienation effect / stylistic tic, Savage would sometimes write about himself in the text of his pieces using an anonymized third-person, referring to the Writer, or the Critic, or the Journalist. All part of the demystification politique of those New Musick days.... 

Angela Ripper 

Presumably a psycho twist on Angela Rippon, the  BBC newsreader. Could conceivably be one of those jarringly odd olde-Englishe names, though. 

Vic Havoc

Postpunky / New Musicky

Hal Synthetic, a byline that materialises in the famous, legendary New Musick issues of winter 1977 issues to write about Kraftwerk and Brian Eno. Presumably a homage to HAL in 2001, A Space Oddity? 

Literary

Another cluster of pseudonyms involve references to characters from novels - obvious, oblique, or genre-specific.

Jack Barron – a plausibly real name, but I knew Jack a bit and I am fairly certain this was not his actual moniker. Presumably it's a reference to the TV journalist character in Norman Spinrad's science fiction novel Bug Jack Barron 

 

Winston Smith –  from 1984

 

Culture Referential

Curt Vile (long before the musician of the same pun) 

Popcult Referential

Betty Page

Betty (real name Beverley Glick, podcast guest with Rocks Back Pages here) wrote a lot about the Futurists and New Romantics, so presumably this campy alias indicated an interest in glamour and dress-up games. 

The errant "E" - miscredited as Betty Pag in this live review of the rising Spandau Ballet

Jack Spratt - as in the nursery rhyme "Jack Spratt, could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean..."

Rose Rouse (I assume this is a reference to Rolls Royce...  I suppose it could be a real name )

Valac Van Der Veene - this certainly sounds like it's borrowed from a literary or dramatic character.... a cruel aristocrat in a Nabokov novel.... a cop in a set-in-Amsterdam detective series.  

T

A

Valac Van Der Veene (RIP apparently) actually played in a punk band called Rikki and the Last Days of Earth - not sure which of these is him, I think the guy to the right of Rikki. 

Bathetic Whimsy

These names relate less to punk than the New Wave / pub rock interface, or maybe the comedy-punk end of things (what Garry Bushell at Sounds called punk pathetique - Max Splodge and the like). 

With this sort of name, the daftness deflates the pretensions of the critic - self-inflicted wound, or honorable levelling gesture?  

Mr Spencer  (makes me think of Some Mothers Do Have Em)

Chas De Walley  (strong whiff of Stiff about it – Wreckless Eric and the like. Kursaal Flyers)

Des Moines (groan) 

Real name Ian Burnham, the compiler of this regional postpunk comp

Biro Penman 

(no relation to Ian Penman – and funnily enough didn’t Sounds actually have someone genuinely called Ian Penman, but who wrote as Ian Ravendale? Yes indeed https://ianravendale.blogspot.com/p/about.html)

There was also later a Karen Penman writing for Sounds.

Goffa Gladding  - your guess is as good as mine

 

Flying Your Flag

Names that identify the writer as a genre specialist 

Heavy Metal Heather

Hey look, accidentally caught another silly pseudonym - Kelv Hellrazer - along with the Heavy Metal Heather byline

Heather  reviewing  Girlschool -  the perfect conjunction of hard rocking chicks.

The humorously mangled alias 

Geoff Barton having a laff

Finally, some Sounds bylines that are borderline - a little bit peculiar, probably the writer's real name but enough to make you wonder

Maxwell Park (could be a real name I guess but also the name of a park in Glasgow)

Eugen Beer

Ron Rom

Edwyn  Pouncey (seems to be from another century - a character in a Dickens or Fielding novel) (Pouncey has a proper alter-ego in his cartooning mode - Savage Pencil)

Andrie Jus Lasys

Marguerite Van Cook

Adele-Marie Cherrison 

Giovanni Dadomo (okay, probably quite a normal name in Italy, but in the context of the UK rock press, it seems flamboyant and conceivably chosen to stand out from the pack).

Another Sounds scribe with a double life in a band - The Snivelling Shits, later known as The Hits

Parody punk, sez Torpedo the Ark

Here's Giovanni Dadomo being sceptical about punk and the Pistols on Nationwide, 1976

Of course, the flamboyance of the name doesn't necessarily correlate with the writing style. Some of the most eccentric and stylized critics at Sounds  had common-or-garden sort of names: Chris Roberts, Dave McCullough.

Then there were those who expressed their dandy tendencies with just a single shift of letters within an otherwise sensible name:

Jonh Ingham

A mannerism echoed, presumably in homage, by

Jonh Wilde  

(like Chris Roberts, originally at Sounds before moving over to Melody Maker)

 

(See also Jhon Balance - apparently that's a spelling popular in Latin America)

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Straying beyond Sounds, here is the inverse category: sensible-seeming name but actually an alias for a wild 'n ' crazy writing personality.

Susan Williams

That's the prim pen name initially used in NME by Steven Wells (who already had a more accurate, "what it says on the tin" performance alias Seething Wells for his identity as ranting poet)

 

Well, I think I knew this but forgot it - Seething Wells is a place - a neighborhood on the edge of Surbiton, in SW London.

It sort of sounds like a sign-off to an angry letter to a newspaper: Yours faithfully, "Seething", Wells, Somerset. 

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Sometimes I think I should have taken on a more exciting alias – or a one-word, just-a-few-letters, eye-grabber of a byline - but I’m too narcissistically attached to my given name.

But I did once write as Julie Kristeva – twin homage to early influence Burchill and later influence  Kristeva.  

This was when I was at MM but did a few moonlight reviews for a short-lived monthly spin-off of Time Out - called, if I recall correctly, 20/20.

I also adopted a pseudonym - Ian Tarr - for the publication in Melody Maker of a profile of Tricky. I think I had written about Tricky in the Village Voice at more or less the same time, so didn't want to piss them off. 

I must have just read the Wyndham Lewis novel Tarr. It’s also a sort of pun on “enter” maybe? Who knows what I was thinking. ...

 

Oh, and here's another alter-ego - Jisbella McQueen. Adopted so that I could review a fanzine that featured an interview with me

I have a feeling this band "Vulva" are actually a contribution to the grand long-running zine tradition of interviews and reviews of imaginary bands. 

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 (Not that this is a uniquely U.K. phenom - America has its own tradition of this kind of thing – Lester Bangs, Metal Mike Saunders, Legs McNeil...

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Big up Soundsclips and  Zounds Abound for all these clips

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Bonus pseudonym from New Music News, a short lived publication that leaped into the weekly rockpaper vacuum left by NME and MM when IPC publications went on strike.

Teen Pheels 

Conceivably, this alias is because the writer is moonlighting and is actually normally employed by NME or MM.

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Bonus bonus - the mysterious 1981 issue of Sounds when bylines  were left off every single review and feature! New - but quickly abandoned  - editorial policy? Punishment from on high? Reprisal or go-slow like tactic from the staff.  Will I ever know? 

Yet another 1981 issue posted with no bylines so I asked Zounds Abound and got this helpful reply: 

"There was a 6 week or so writer’s strike and the management themselves cobbled together whatever they could, to get something out. They either bought old articles in, had some writers contribute incognito or just wrote themselves.

Clearly, the writers were supported by the art & production editors because the page layouts are a joke at times as well."