Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Andrew Ridgeley special

 












September 15 1990 and David Stubbs here imagines an earlier documentary tribute to the Wham!ster .

This satire inspired by the South Bank Show that was actually shown that month on George Michael (clearly coordinated as another prong of his campaign to be taken as a Serious Artist - a Bragg-voiceover-worthy subject like the Smiths and Talking Heads - alongside the singles "Praying for Time" and "Freedom '90", and the album title Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 --- "please please please take me as more than a hunk in bronzer and tight jeans")






















Can't also help thinking that Stubbs must have had in the back of his mind the Stud Bros profile of Ridgeley from some weeks earlier - on the occasion of Randy Andy's debut solo album - in the course of which they exalted him as some kind of hero of getting-away-with-it, the ultimate pop star, excelling at the playboy part of the job without getting his fingers grubby and calloused through the workmanlike side of actually producing work. Perhaps a sort of Bez avant la lettre.

Which immediately provoked this harsh corrective from Chris Roberts 







Tuesday, June 20, 2023

David Stubbs - Elvis Costello and the Confederates - live - Melody Maker - February 7 1987

 

It was this review by Stubbs  - not the one he did of Costello and the Attractions a few weeks earlier - that triggered the reprisal from Elvis. Fuzzy on the precise details - the gist of it is that a large fish, wrapped in newspaper, was delivered to the Melody Maker office and placed on a radiator, which given that it was the dead of winter, was on full blast. Nobody noticed its arrival. But soon a warm stench of putrescence pervaded the whole room. 






Thursday, June 15, 2023

David Stubbs - Elvis Costello and the Attractions live at Royal Albert Hall - Melody Maker - January 31 1987

 

























Possible explanation for the lyric that befuddled Stubbsy? Not this case but something similar... 



Monday, June 12, 2023

Happy Stylo Day


 






Possibly the first ever feature on Happy Mondays?

by Paul Mathur for Melody Maker, August 2 1986




Friday, June 2, 2023

Steve Sutherland - Scott Walker - Melody Maker - January 18 1992

 





















A contrarian viewpoint on Scott Walker - claiming that the stuff with the Walker Brothers was the greatest, the solo work just pretentious, morose guff - that I don't agree with in the least, but am nonetheless impressed that someone would argue it with such conviction.