B-dom, b-dom.....

Christ Anthony H. Wilson's a cunt....

Happy New Year,


xxxx

'Berta





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The Dalai Lama...

Myspace gets quite a lot of stick in snootier circles (The Grauniad, Personal Computer Weekly, Housewives' Choice etc..) but I think a lot of this animosity and contempt is ill-deserved, actually. You know, it's not just a paedophile-friendly jizz joint where you can while away weeks on end gawping at scantily-clad goth girls splattered in feck blood, listening to the atrocious SlipKnot cover versions they've posted up that sound like someone vomiting over a Black Sabbath track played backwards (although that is quite a large part of the appeal, obviously. As Stray Photon will concur...) But really, there's a lot of good (i.e. non-pornographic) stuff on there too.

For instance, the other day I came across this nice looking bald chap in his 70s, dressed in orange. He looked kind of cute and had a smile that was sort of, how can I put it? - Serene? Anyways, I thought what the heck? And sent him this message:

I came across your myspace by accident, your Royal Highness - I'd typed in Dial-a-Llama, and you came up.

It's nice to have met you anyway - I really admire what you do.

(I guess I'll just have to do without the Llama....)

Much love, peace and respect to you, sir,


xxxx


'Berta

And I got this reply:

that made me smile. many blessings to you, namaste.

His myspace is here if you want to check him out.

Don't know about you, but I think I'm in there....



xxxx

'Berta



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Camera Obscura...

Hi, you probably don't know me. I'm Bob's half sister Roberta. Or people call me 'Berta for short, especially if they're in a hurry. Anyway, I've been asked to take over Bob's blog as he's been knighted or something and has taken to swanning around with Prince Charles, Stephen Fry and Keith Allen and all those other establishment bods.

Well, truth is, I'm a bit busy myself really, being as I am a global celebrity wannabe and aspiring Glenda Stefanni style pop legend and all. But you know Bob - he can be very persuasive....(and, more to the point, he's bloody loaded - you don't think I'm doing this gratis, do you??) So I thought - what the heck? Why not! Obviously, I won't be quite as prolific as Bob (he didn't have a huge audience of Goth Girls splattered in Feck blood to keep happy, for starters...!!) But I'll do my darnedest to keep the think going in his memory.

And just in case any of you think I will only be using this space as a blatant and gratuitous way of publicising my Myspace space (er hem....it's here if you're interested, btw) I thought I'd direct you to this lot who are also on there and, if you ask me, bloody brilliant stuff!!

Have a listen here.

I'm loving 'If Looks Could Kill' right now...

Right you lot, I'm off.

Speak soon,


xxxx

'Berta



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Honoured...

When I saw the crest on the back of the envelope, I thought at first that it was another demand from the Inheritence Tax bods. As if £50,000 smackers plus wasn't enough, already..

But when I opened it, there was a heavily scented letter (vermouth/curry powder - slight undertone of vomit, or possibly ready-grated supermarket parmesan - I can't be certain). It read:

Dear Mr. Swipe,

I am writing to you on behalf of Her Majesty in connection with this year's New Year's Honours List. I have the pleasure to inform you that you are to be recognised for your services to the world wide web, telecommunications and cheap, soft-porn satires at the expense of insignificant television presenters and dwarf-baiitng by being awarded Membership of the Order of The British Empire. Her Majesty has asked me to communicate her own personal satisfaction at the nomination as she has for some time been a keen reader of your work, despising as she does, "that bloody Kerplunkski woman", as she is wont to refer to a certain television presenter. Her Majesty is a woman of strong opinion, not easily deflected from her prejudices, and is not particularly fond of the Poles as a people, I'm afraid.

Assuming your acceptance of the award, your investiture will take place on 13th March at 3pm. Kneepads will be provided, although you may wish to provide your own condiments, according to taste. I would be grateful if you could confirm to me in writing whether or not you wish to attend. Her Majesty still hasn't forgiven "that scouse wanker" for returning his. "Cold Turkey? My Arse!" is a frequently heard cry around the royal residences whenver the wireless happens to be tuned to counting down of the hit parade. A shame, as the Queen Mother was somewhat of a fan.

RSVP

Hamish MacRae-Canteloupe, Equerry to the Royal Household.

Then this, in a girlish scrawl at the bottom (hearts instead of dots over the 'i's:

...it would have been last year if it hadn't been for that Blumen Hestonthal...

So, what to do??


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Honoured...

When I saw the crest on the back of the envelope, I thought at first that it was another demand from the Inheritence Tax bods. As if £50,000 smackers plus wasn't enough, already..

But when I opened it, there was a heavily scented letter (vermouth/curry powder - slight undertone of vomit, or possibly ready-grated supermarket parmesan - I can't be certain). It read:

Dear Mr. Swipe,

I am writing to you on behalf of Her Majesty in connection with this year's New Year's Honours List. I have the pleasure to inform you that you are to be recognised for your services to the world wide web, telecommunications and cheap, soft-porn satires at the expense of insignificant television presenters and dwarf-baiitng by being awarded Membership of the Order of The British Empire. Her Majesty has asked me to communicate her own personal satisfaction at the nomination as she has for some time been a keen reader of your work, despising as she does, "that bloody Kerplunkski woman", as she is wont to refer to a certain television presenter. Her Majesty is a woman of strong opinion, not easily deflected from her prejudices, and is not particularly fond of the Poles as a people, I'm afraid.

Assuming your acceptance of the award, your investiture will take place on 13th March at 3pm. Kneepads will be provided, although you may wish to provide your own condiments, according to taste. I would be grateful if you could confirm to me in writing whether or not you wish to attend. Her Majesty still hasn't forgiven "that scouse wanker" for returning his. "Cold Turkey? My Arse!" is a frequently heard cry around the royal residences whenver the wireless happens to be tuned to counting down of the hit parade. A shame, as the Queen Mother was somewhat of a fan.

RSVP

Hamish MacRae-Canteloupe, Equerry to the Royal Household.

Then this, in a girlish scrawl at the bottom (hearts instead of dots over the 'i's:

...it would have been last year if it hadn't been for that Blumen Hestonthal...

So, what to do??


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I'm Speechless....

Email from Todd Blogney:

PS r*f*s met bowie last week and he said 'he sooo thinks he's Robert Swipe!!'

My reply:

…he *was* me for a year, wasn’t he?

Todd continued:

No seriously.. r*f*s says he's exactly like you..

My reply:

[...]

I'm sure you can all fill in the punchline....



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Christmas #1/Bob's Festive 50...

As PC-gone-made-lunatics at BA attempt to stifle the Christian faith, we here at Swipe Towers enter the season of goodwill to all men (and a couple of tasty birds too) with all barrels loaded. How very dare they rob us of our cribs, gently braised wild fowl and copious amounts of cheap cash and carry absinthe as we charge our glasses in memory of the birthday of the saviour of mankind. Don't these people know the true meaning of Christmas? I mean, when else were we going to watch those endless re-runs of the 1977 Morecambe & Wise Christmas Special? Easter??

But these killjoys will not have it all their own way. And to prove it, The Swipe Show will be beginning our Christmas festivities even earlier than usual. To this end, we'll be launching our traditional Christmas #1 campaign today. Just go here and have a listen to 'Christmas Dinner' by Fuzzy Brown - our tip for the yuletide top spot this year. It's a real belter and its message of religious tolerance (well, apart from the Jews, obviously), the brotherhood of man allied to some splendidly histrionic axe-battering have made it a real firm favourite in our office. Please do all you can to put this record* where it belongs - top of the hit pararde by a bloody mile!

As if that were not enough, voting starts today in our traditional** Festive Fifty*** Chart. That's right, in time honoured John Peel fashion, all you have to do is vote for your three favourite songs that have featured on this year's Bobcasts and we'll then rundown our listeners favourites in a special one off Christmas Day Bobcast! So get sending in those votes, pop-pickers!!

And is if all *that* wasn't enough, here's another chance to read last year's fabulous Swipe Show re-working of It's a Wonderful Life...

God bless us all, everyone!!!!!


*I'm sure it will be released one day....

**We're hoping one day it will become so...

***Only we'll be doing a top ten, not fifty. Do you have any idea how large a file to download that would be??

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Tag Heuer...

This is one of those tag things. I have to tell you 5 things about myself and then tag three other people.*

1. I have a rotten cock.

2. I don't live in Slough.

3. I support Arsenal F.C.

4. On Wednesday night I saw them lose for the first time in 40 years to Fulham F.C.

5. I am *well* ragged off about it.

I nominate Brian Damage, Stewart Lee and Roger de Courcey and Nookie Bare (South West Devon's premier pornographic puppet act!!)

*The Rock Mother made me do it.

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Craven Cottage...

Anyone who's never been to a Premiership match in the London area could do a lot worse than take the short stroll along the river Thames from Hammersmith Bridge to the home of Fulham F.C. Don't be put off by the slightly aggressive posturing in the name of their fanzine ("There's only one 'F' in Fulham") - they're like pussycats. No, really - they *are* Indeed, it's more like a night out at the dogs or evening races than the normally adversarial atmosphere at many other football grounds - as if the crowd is amusedly watching the antics of the creatures rushing around before them, mildly interested as to which of them will come out on top. Of course they're partisan and want the team to do well, but they're as likely to indulge in the time-honoured pursuit of barracking their own players (even at two-nil up against the [once] mighty Arsenal, than for the more usual hero-worship and idolatry). Robin van Persie's exceptional long range free kick even brought a generous smattering of appreciative applause from around the ground, even though it brought Arsenal back into a game that had started to look all over, bar the shouting. Of course there were the occasional paedophile chants directed at the dapper-as-ever Arsene Wenger. But you can't expect them to keep *all* the Stamford Bridge lot out, what with the clubs being so close....

In fact, if you're lucky enough to get a seat in the newly refurbed Riverside stand, you can spend the pre-match and half time interludes on the terrace that looks out over the Thames, supping on an exhorbitantly priced (3 nicker for a 330 ml) bottle of Fosters and gorging on a tasty (but miniscule) cheese, onion and mushroom pie with the rest of the Fulham faithful - a charming mix of old time cockernees, French, Japanese and abundant Chiswick, Hammersmith nouveaux riches of admirably mixed gender (admittedly, you'd probably have to be to be able to afford the ticket prices. I paid 50 notes for mine. Mind you, you probably wouldn't have to pay quite so much to watch one of the less attractive sides. Middlesbrough visit soon. Or better still, wait for the local derby with Cheslea. They'll probably be giving them away for that.) The ubuiquitous racism aside ("come on you whites!" What's that all about? Half their players were black!)

All in all, a wonderful evening out, the highlight being the walk back among the happy hordes. Their first victory over Arsenal in 40 years brought about little of the more usual triumphalism and gloating. Rather, a joyful buzz filled the west London night air, as if each of the supporters was emittting a little E.T. like hum of deep satisfaction beneath their overcoats and jumpers. It can't have been all that different from the days when my Dad would accompany a drinking mate of his to the Cottage, returning with a broad grin on his face, brandishing a copy of the print out to the popular terrace chant of the time, the one the then standing terraces sung out to Elkie Brooks' most famous tune: "Earl's a Winger". Halfway across Hammersmith Bridge, back once more in the breast of the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames, I looked back east along the river to see the brilliant glare of the floodlights breaking through the silhouettes of the clumps of bare riverbank trees, like a second moon. You really should give it a go some time - especially an evening game.

It's just a shame the Arsenal never turned up.

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Comment of the Week (Slight Return)...

...


Oh and Happy 63rd Birthday to Stray Photon!!



Keep spraying them there rays, Stray!!




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Fluff...

R.I.P.

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Comment of the Week...

I know you all tried very hard, but there could only really be one winner from last week's bumper selection.

Tony pretty much summed this place up with his concise, witty and perceptive post from 11/25/2006 10:06:53 PM:

shit

Excellent. A bottle of 'Buie Breezer all over body wash and a Chelsea season ticket goes out to you, Tone.

Keep 'em coming and I'll announce next week's winner in seven day's time - presuming I haven't topped myself by then.




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Airport 06...

Passing through Heathrow this morning I was pleased and alarmed by the sight of the now standardised Union Flag British Airways liveries. Pleased because they seem to have eradicated all those poncey po-mo all-the-flags-of-the-world-but-our-own tailfins - you know, that awful conglomeration of tartans and daft squiggles that adorned the tailfins of the national airline carrier's craft through the late eighties and early nineties. I mean, what's the point? If you exclude Brazil and South Africa, we have by far the nicest flag in the world and one, moreover, that is eminently adaptable to a veritable cornucopia of graphic demands. The flag has been put to a whole host of highly effective uses: guitars, mini Coopers, fridges, Jeri Halliwell - these are just some of the things that have been effortlessly customised by the old red white and blue.

But in typically self-effacing Brit style, we allowed our own virtue to be eclipsed - through pandering to the meally mouthed platitudes of woolly minded liberals - by the second rate "can't offend anyone" political correctness of flag facism. Anything, it seemed - swastika's, hammers and sickles, Yugoslav death squad skull and cross bones, even, God help us, Chelsea FC badges (there was no limit to the sick lengths these bastards were prepared to go to) - was preferable to using our glorious Union Flag.

And then came the alarm: I realised that I sounded exactly like Margaret Cunting Thatcher.

Say what you like about her, but.........[Bob exits, screaming]



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Roberta Sings!!!!

Download an exclusive extract from my Big Sister Roberta's forthcoming R.C. Phone L.P. release, The Madcap in the Attic, HERE....FOR FREE!!!!!

***********UPDATE***************

Anyone who hasn't already really should go over to Istvanski's place and listen to the latest Depcast. It's a Howesy special and I can heartily recommend it. I'm not kidding when I say I haven't laughed so long and so hard in years. And the comedy skits are quite amusing too. Mind you, I'm sure that my fit of hysterics will seem insignificant compared to Istvanski's reaction when he gets the first communication from my legal team....


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Pee Search of the Month...

Regular readers will know that I am a frequent and enthusiastic reader of my own site meter. Indeed, as the quality of the material I post up no doubt demonstrates, it's about the only pleasure left to be had on this sad, withering old blog. Aside from one or two incomprehnsibly loyal readers (for which, cheers Dickster and Istser the Twister the Hasta la...come on, you know the rest by now, surely...), my statistics suggest that a significant percentage of you (c. 88.9%, as it goes) have been directed here via a google search. Of those, a staggering 99.47% have come to us through a google search for the word 'pee'. So in order to welcome these new found, piss-searchers and to make up for the paucity of micturation-related content here, I thought I'd introduce a new feature, just for all you wee-wee fans out there.

Introducing, Pee search of the Month!!!!!!:

Domain Name rr.com ? (Commercial)
IP Address 24.97.35.# (Road Runner Commercial)
ISP ROADRUNNER-COMMERCIAL-NYC
Location Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
State : New York
City : Albany
Lat/Long : 42.6706, -73.7791 (Map)

Language English (United States)
en-us
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Internet Explorer 6.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
Javascript version 1.3
Monitor Resolution : 1024 x 768
Color Depth : 32 bits

Time of Visit Nov 16 2006 3:18:32 pm
Last Page View Nov 16 2006 3:18:32 pm
Visit Length 0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL http://images.google.../images%3Fq%3Dpee%26
Search Engine images.google.com
Search Words pee
Visit Entry Page http://rswipe.blogsp..._rswipe_archive.html
Visit Exit Page http://rswipe.blogsp..._rswipe_archive.html
Out Click
Time Zone UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time Nov 16 2006 3:18:32 pm
Visit Number 64,936

Thank you visitor #64,936 - and God bless all those who piss on you!


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4' 33"...

I have the score of John Cage's 4' 33" in front of me.

It goes like this, all handwritten in (presumably) Cage's Milliganesque scrawl:

[Title page:]

4' 33"

FOR ANY INSTRUMENT OR COMBINATION OF INSTRUMENTS

[signed] John Cage

COPYRIGHT © 1960 BY HENMAR PRESS INC., 373 PARK AVE. S., N.Y., N.Y.10016

[over...]

NOTE: THE TITLE OF THIS WORK IS THE TOTAL LENGTH IN MINUTES AND SECONDS OF ITS PERFORMANCE. AT WOODSTOCK, N.Y., AUGUST 29, 1952, THE TITLE WAS 4' 33" AND THE THREE PARTS WERE 33", 2'40", AND 1' 20". IT WAS FIRST PERFORMED BY DAVID TUDOR, PIANIST, WHO INDICATED THE BEGINNINGS OF PARTS BY CLOSING, THE ENDINGS BY OPENING, THE KEYBOARD LID. AFTER THE WOODSTOCK PERFORMANCE, A COPY IN PROPORTIONAL NOTATION WAS MADE FOR IRWIN KREMEN. IN IT THE TIMELENGTHS OF THE MOVEMENTS WERE 30", 2' 23" AND 1' 40". HOWEVER, THE WORK MAY BE PERFORMED BY ANY INSTRUMENTALIST(S) AND THE MOVEMENTS MAY LAST ANY LENGTHS OF TIME.

FOR IRWIN KREMEN

[over...]

I

TACET

II

TACET

III

TACET

[over...]


[blank]


[(...)]*


*as Brian would have said....



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An Adult-Oriented Rock Singer's Love Song...

After A Subaltern's Love Song.

Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In your velvet jacket
With military braiding.

Singing your mind-numbing
A.O.R.
On your poncey, roundbacked
Ovation guitar.

Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Indifferent to the countries
We are invading.

While sectarian militias
In Basra riot,
You pointlessly sing about
Dropping the pilot.

Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In Baghdad and Kabul
The troops are parading.

While you wail your songs for
Middleclass simpletons
And cohabitate with
Valerie Singleton(s)

Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Geo-political conflict
Evading

You sing not a word of
Iraqi invasion -
You're not in love...

....but you're open to persuasion.



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Rip it Up and Carry on From Where We Left Off Yesterday (Second Edition)...

As the over-long, ill-informed, over-opinionated pop-crit seems to be drying up all but the hardiest of my commentes, I'll keep on with this thread in the hope of wearing down what remains of the resistance...they can only hold out for so long...

Some excellent sections towards the end of the book - on Scritti Politti and the whole Frankie/ZTT phenomenon, of which more later. There's also a lovely passing note on John Peel and the cassette-only labels that sprang up around the DIY ethos his show fostered and showcased. Most notable of these - "the Rough Trade" of Indie Cassette labels - was the gloriously named Fuck Off Records, home of bands such as Danny & the Dressmakers (whose songs included "Come on Baby Lite my Shite" and "Going Down the Sperm Bank Four Quid a Wank"...) The pre-eminent example of this so-bad-it's-good genre has to be a C60 length tape by the Teen Vampires "which consisted of an argument between singer and bassist" released despite/because of it was, according to label owner Kif, "the worst tape I've ever heard"...If anyone has a copy, please do the decent thing....

The Scritti Politti sections are interesting, tracing Green Gartside's transformation from Gramsci-spewing anarcho-squat-guru to bland purveyor of lite-skanking, radio friendly pap (apologies to Betty - I'm in unforgiving mood today, even though I've had that bladdy "The 'sweetest' girl" song going through my bladdy head all day...) There's a highly amusing couple of paragraphs in which Reynolds paraphrases the novel-length essay Gartside wrote for his fellow band members explaining, with full reference to Marcusse, Derrida et al and deploying a whole host of other French intellectuals' theses and theorems, strategems and ruses etc., his decision to turn the group into highly commercialised major label chart fodder a million miles away from the idealistic earlier DIY collective. Well, it made me laugh. The results - a succession of increasingly banal efforts at what Reynolds describes as "the new pop", only devoid of the wit, melodic power and pop historical nous of rivals ABC - finally secured a hit with 'Wood Beez' (which always sounded like some new-fangled furniture polish to me...) before Green and the assemblage of session musicians and drum machines that then passed for Scritti Politti were eventually consigned to languish in their rightful "where are they now?" file by a grateful record buying public....well, you play with fire, you get burned....

ABC emerge from the book as one of many acts worthy of re-evaluation (I rather draw the line at Gazza Numan, mind...). Reynolds astutely pinpoints the humanizing detail of Martin Fry's pock-marked skin still visible behind the pancake make up. Similarly, his voice was just the right side of ordinary to debunk his larger than life, boys' own hero persona. The gold lame was great though, wasn't it? In fact, Reynolds seems to write most insightfully about the more accessible bands and those who, to varying degrees, broke out of the post-punk underground to achieve a broader appeal. Human League offshoots Heaven 17 are a case in point, Reynolds pinning down the ironies of the group's ambivalent attitude towards their only slightly parodic corporate-style image (they were, indeed, less a group that a production company and had a dozen album per year licensing deal inked before they'd even started working on any material, such was the efficiency of their negotiating skill and organisational acumen). As an aside, I recall seeing Glenn Gregory and Ian Craig Marsh (or was it Martyn Ware?) frequently in leafy Twickenham in the early eighties. So they must have been coining it. A far cry from the firebrand socialist environment they grew up in. "We don't need this fascist groove thang" was brilliant though, wasn't it?

It was ABC though who inadvertently brought together one of the most unlikely combinations ever to (dis)grace the pop firmament. Paul Morley and Trevor Horn met on the set of an ABC video shoot. Morley, a fierce proponent of the lush new pop embodied by the Sheffield group had already given Horn's work with Dollar a much-needed (if not actually sought) credibility boost via the NME. This heightened profile had in turn brought the ex-Buggle to the attention of the band as a producer who might be capable of providing the lushness and power they felt their songs deserved but had so far been unable to achieve in the studio. Despite having initially repelled Horn (unsurprising, as the Dollar-worshipping NME writer had tried to kiss him...) it was Morley to whom the producer turned to provide McLarenesque propagandist skills when Horn formed his own ZTT label.

Surprisingly, Morley's ideas actually sound very good on paper - to paraphrase hugely, what would pop sound like if it had been conceived of as a continuation of European Futurist and Modernist art movements, free from the taint of American rock 'n' roll? Indeed, the idea sounds so compelling that you wish the records themselves had actually conformed more to that description. As it is, Reynolds description of the Frankie sound as punk as if it had been based around Donna Summer's I feel Love rather than US garagebands, more accurately factors in the fact that there was a significant debt owed to (primarily black American) disco music. And as you read on you start to recall Wilde's famous maxim about those who can doing, those who can't become NME journalists and as such should never, ever be allowed anywhere near a recording studio or A&R department. Perhaps the logical endpoint of all the modernist speculations that the rest of the book charts, the series of singles released by Frankie in 1983-4 was the sound and spectacle of the theorist and the anal-retentive technician untrammelled and unleashed. As Reynolds suggests, not so much the end of post-punk as a portent of the manipulated and manufactured hype-up horrors of the boy bands who followed.

In the end, you almost feel for the Frankies. Their desperate lust for fame leading them to jump at ZTT's astonishingly regressive advance and royalties deal (for the publishing, a four (!?) figure advance and 5% (!!??) between the group - that on a series of records that sold several million copies in total. I'm sure Larry Parnes got Johnny Gentle a better whack than that, in real terms...Shame on you Paul Morley!) Then, once in the studio, "The Lads" who had provided the musical accompaniment for singing stars Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford found themselves edged out of the recording process in favour of, at one time or another, the Blockheads, a panoply of samplers and sequencers, Anne Dudley and....basically, anyone who wasn't them. The sole contribution of Frankie as a collective is the (presumably heavily treated) sound of their jizz-fizz-apeing dive into a swimming pool. It is, of course, the record's high point.

The ebbing away of Frankie-mania after an unsuccessful attempt to woo the more hype-resistant American audience is a fitting end point for the book. Reynolds draws subtle parallels between the heaps of discarded Frankie merchandise, hollow and empty keepsakes when placed aside the still desirable punk memorabilia. "Ever have the feeling you've been cheated?", he asks, echoing Lydon's famous Pistols valediction, suggesting that both their band and their fans had been victims of a scam. Fortunately, schadenfreude awaited the ZZT mob. Refusing to take part in a Morley-proposed "Great Frankie Says Swindle" movie, despite the lure of a Martin Amis screenplay and Nic Roeg as director, the band insisted on recording as themselves on the follow up to Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Liverpool. Their hamfisted attempts at equalling the massive Horn/session players generated sound of the first album proved costly. 750,000 of ZZT's greedily accrued ackers went down the swanny as the album sold a dozen or so copies to the planet's last remaining Frankie completists. And Morley washed up having to sit next to Germaine Greer. That's karma for you...

The concluding after-chapter puts what came before in better context - the drabness and secondhand nature of much of the later 80s and 90s scenes (Prince and The Smiths being, as Reynolds and I concur, rare and much loved exceptions) does help strengthen his claims for the post-punk era. It might have made a better introduction, in fact. Reynolds holds up for particular scorn the claim made by Primal Scream's (in my view vastly over-appreciated) Robbie Gillespie, that rock music is a library from which artists are free to pick and choose at will. We might admire sonnets written in a different era, says Reynolds, but who writes them today? It's a fine line, I suppose, between being in thrall to one's inspirations and fuelled by them. Reynolds rather blots his copybook by not laying into Frank Ferdinand for being precisely the kind of copyists he lambasts elsewhere....but he was bound to be tired after all that typing and listening to art school wank (not to mention grammar school wank) for the last 5 years.

But seriously, I enjoyed the book much more than I thought I would - although I have to admit skipping the sections on stuff like Throbbing Gristle and industrial music. TG seemed old hat and pointlessly peripheral at the time and having been forced to 'study' them at art school (and, yes, it really *is* all wank, for those who haven't had the dubious privilege...) I rather think I've made my contribution. Although I suppose they *did* call for the canonization of Brian Jones...Reynolds is ultimately unsure as to whether the time he's spent obsessively following the twists and turns of the music that's arrived in the wake of punk might have been spent doing something more worthwhile. I guess we could all say the same though.


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Rip it Up and Carry on From Where We Left Off Yesterday...

Still reading Simon Reynolds' Rip it Up and Start Again. Excellent chapters on the Sheffield scene and Gang of Four/Mekons/Delta 5 Leeds University scene. Reynolds observes that in highly militant lefty Sheffield (they flew a red flag above the Town Hall there for many years), rebellion actually consisted for many of *avoiding* the Clash-style urban guerilla chic that the southern softies went in for. Hence the rise of the Human League (named after a team in some daft sci-fi computer game - Oakey was well into his Dick. Philip K, that is...) et al., for whom apeing the glammy glitz of Bowie and Ferry was a far more seditious act. Indeed, my pet faves Roxy Music were enormously big in the city of steel; the leading lights of Cabaret Voltaire allegedly cornering Eno in the bogs at a lecture he was giving nearby and foisting one of their Dada-inspired home recordings onto him.

Reynolds astutely points out that the scene in Sheffield was as vibrant as it was partly because of the old Labour Council's policies - 5p to ride anywhere on the local buses, ample rehearsal/performance space opened up under its auspices for the local bands to get stoned and run riot and so on. One such was The Meatwhistle club which offered a valuable early plaform to most of the city's emerging talents sounds a most unlikely utopia: communal meals, illicit drug-taking and weekly open spots, all hosted by the city council with benign indifference. Indeed, the pre-punk scene in the city sounds anarchically akin to the Dadaist nightclub that gave CV their name. And it's here that you again begin to wish that Reynolds had structured the book slightly differently and maybe looked at his material more thematically. It's hard to credit such an atmosphere of municipal tolerance and lackadaisical nurturing in today's world of corporate blanding out and tendering out.

Interesting too to read Reynolds' assessment of the ideologically driven Gang of Four - "emasculated cock rock" (...and he's a fan too, by the way) Again, the band's worthy aspiration to eschew the sexist language of rock and desire to deconstruct romantic attachment - previously the chief subject matter of the pop song - remind one of the reason so may of these bands didn't make it into the Swipe record collection at the time. You sense that even Reynolds wants to say what one feels oneself about bands who set out to move so far from the dominant form as to be almost unrecognisable as pop music: go and right a bloody essay and let us get on with enjoying the music. And this is perhaps central to my fogeyish feeling that he's perhaps overstating the gloriousness of these years.

Reading Reynolds questioning the repressed nature of lead Gangster Andy Gill and pinpointing the conflicts between the GofF's undoubted manliness and their uneasy acceptance of the constraints of political correctness, you began to realise what was missing. Hard for a right-on, manifesto clenching collective of musoes to tackle the many complexities of the thorny subject of sexual uncertainty in an age when the whole issue of gender was highly politicised. True. But the same subject matter provides just one strand to the career of a pop genius like Morrissey. And this is probably going to lose me most of my readership, but you do start to realise that that horrible old Martin Amis/Eric Morley word is the only one that does justice to what is lacking in so many of the acts Reynolds is presenting as being the saviours of popular music: talent.

I was thinking about the long history of the popular form. If you'll excuse a brief digression into the mists of time, its chief narrative seems to me to be the secularisation of spiritual music. Soul music is gospel style applied to the pleasures and pains of prosaic urban life. The Blues descended from African spiritual music, those West African tribal incantations fusing with the missionary inculcated Christian hymns to form the field spirituals of the slave diaspora. The same transformation is evident in white country music - just listen to Hank Williams or Johnny Cash to hear the honky tonkification of white church music. The two strands fuse in Presley - that glorious plasticised angel's voice of his. In his best work, he's perched atop the apex where the secular and spritual meet and the joy of listening to him is in the tremulous uncertainty as to which way down the mountain he'll slide; the sublime or the ridiculous. And that's what records embody for me - the most materialistic device you could conceive of; uniform, mass produced and utterly worthless, only when it's done right, they're charged with such spirit, such beauty that you wonder at how the plastic could ever have contained it. That's, to be pretentious and music criticy for a second, the uber narrative here: the erosion of the spiritual by the mechanical. You can hear it playing out in the work of all the best artists: Presley, Cash, Beatles, Bowie, Ferry, Lydon, Morrissey all embrace that central contradiction and work with it. It's all very well to say you want to break with the past, but if you do, you are leaving behind one hell of a story.

And I guess that's my quibble with much of the stuff Reynolds is writing about. It's too clever by half, doesn't know it's history and ultimately just ain't up to the job because it wants to stop doing what you most need it to do. There's something ineffable about the best music, so you have to admire anyone who tries to pin it down with words,and Reynolds writes with a nerdy passion shared by all the best writers about pop. But if the answer is, in the end, a feeling, then I'll stick with Al Green's voice catching on the phlegm in his throat as he sings "How can you mend a broken heart?" Or Scotty Moore hamfistedly scuffing the beginning of the second solo on 'Hound Dog' and coming up with something unrepeatably brilliant. Sometimes that's all you need to know. And maybe this is why Reynolds wondered so intensely if he'd been wasting his time with music all these years. Maybe he had. Or just listening to the wrong stuff, perhaps.

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Rip it Up and Start Again...

Been reading Simon "Shirty Gertie from Number 30." Reynolds' overview of the post-punk scene.* Yeah, it's alright - much less theoretical than I'd expected and in a disarming introduction he admits that, like me, he pretty much missed out on the punk scene at the time, finding his fanaticism for pop music stirred more by the diverse explosion of music that followed in the aftermath of the Pistols' demise. The book is, he admits, an attempt to return to the source of a lifetime devoted to the study of pop, one brought about by the familiar bout of soul-searching that I'm sure many of my readers have gone through, mid-life. Rip it Up and Start again: or, why have I wasted my life on a whole bunch of plastic?? might have made a nice subtitle now I think of it.

However, such subjectivity is both blessing and curse - especially if you were expecting (as I was) an overview of the period (1978-84) that could compare with the scope achieved by Dave Marsh, for instance, in his excellent "my favourite 1000 records of all time" exercise, The Heart and Soul of Rock & Pop. Because it seems to be based on a very personal view, Rip it Up does read very well and Reynolds communicates with the vigour and eagerness of a fan (the section on Gary Numan, for one, provoking a pleasant pang of nostalgia in this reader). It's not remotely dry, which I'd assumed it would be, and - based on my so far having read only the sections based on stuff I know myself - he does actually appear to have listened to many of the records. Indeed, even a cursory scan of the contents makes it hard to argue with his assertion that the years 1978-84 represent something of a golden era for adventurous popular music. Only Reynolds goes so far as to suggest that it rivals (and possibly even eclipses) the era between 1965-67 commonly regarded as the high watermark of ambitious pop music. And it's here that the subjective nature of Reynolds' approach begins to undermine his thesis.

Before the first chapter proper, one is already scratching one's head as Reynolds describes the "failure" of punk in the eyes of the post-punk movement. Failure to do what, exactly? Flipping back a few pages to see exactly what I'd missed, I realise that there's no real delineation of what the punk movement was in the first place - this, we are told is a subject fully covered elsewhere (Jon Savage's England's Dreaming probably representing the key text. Must read that one day, but Greil Marcus is so good on the Pistols in Lipstick Traces that I so far haven't felt the loss). Punk, we're told, was stylistically purely and simply a return to rock and roll basics, a movement aimed at overthrowing the hegemony of the major labels and returning ver music to ver kids, innit. But were there *really* any such clearly defined ojectives mapped out to the extent that one could sensibly construct an analysis of how successfully punk had performed in realising them?

Whilst this quibble might seem nitpicking (and it certainly doesn't undermine Reynolds' argument that what followed punk is perhaps far more worthy of consideration than the initial ground levelling of the initial '76/'77 explosion) the lack of an objective framework to support his assertion that the period was to all intents and purposes the finest era in the history of pop music becomes harder to swallow. Mightn't anyone make the same case for their own era of choice or, as in Reynolds case) that when they felt closest to the music as it came out, by the simple expedient of writing several hundred pages approving every other record that came out during whichever points on the calendar? OK, not exactly simple, but eminently do-able, given the time and inclination. There are also omissions - quite serious in my view - that, whilst they don't undermine his basic tenet (indeed, their inclusion could only have strengthened it) they reveal the way that Reynolds has rather skewed the picture being painted to suit his own ends, rather than allowing the evidence to shine through.

For instance, the index cites 5 references to Blondie, all of them turn out to be no more than passing. Perhaps, as original denizens of the CBGB/Max's Kansas City NYC scene they, like the Ramones, are considered beyond Reynolds' remit (although Talking Heads, who emerged from the same scene and are considered - quite rightly - to be deserving of a lengthy and detailed analysis). But given that the B52s, for instance, warrant a significant chunk of a chapter devoted to New York proto-disco, the decision starts to look a bit barmy - especially given the global success Blondie achieved with records that were, in my view, as exciting, ethereal and innovative as any of the outright pop music Reynolds writes about in the second section of the book. Odd then that records as sublime (and more pertinently, innovative, influential and germaine to Reynolds' argument) as 'Heart of Glass' and 'Rapture' don't warrant even a passing mention. Especially strange given his approval elsewhere of groups like the Pop Group and PiL incorporating dance and disco elements in their music.

So, as you read one whistlestop career precis after another - Magazine, have several high foreheaded members, boldly reintroduce prog keyboards but then Devoto overdoes the pancake on TOTP and scares off most of Western Europe....Talking Heads make some of the finest music ever made, Tina Weymouth invents slap bass and has a groovy Jean Seberg rug re-think, they initially all get on with with Brian Eno before David & Brian gett too pally and piss off the the other three and they don't use him as a producer any more.... and so on - without ever feeling that the thesis outlined in the introduction bears all that much relation to the words on the page. There's a huge wealth of excellent pop trivia - e.g. art poseur in extremis David Sylvian's dad was a municipal ratcatcher.... - and some great quotes "it's like seeing a vision of 1980": Bowie taliking about the Human League.......in 1979.

But, good and (broadly speaking) thorough as it is, I was expecting a bit more analysis and rigour. For instance, Thatcherism and The Bomb feature, but as in Simon Goddard's The Songs That Saved Your Life, they seem marginal diversions from the authors' own myth-spinning when in fact they were the central facts of the period as it was lived in - and it's a shocking distortion - especially from a supposed 'Marxist theorist' to downplay this. Indeed, there's maybe an argument that an analysis of the context of the period being discussed might have made for a more useful introduction to the pop music material, encomappsing as Reynolds suggests it did, the death of the old progressive liberalism and the rise of a new and virulent conservatism that we are still living with the effects of today. And, as I recall, the best music of the era struck a chord precisely because of it's relevance to those issues - The Smiths' 'Stretch out and Wait', The Jam's 'Going Underground', Kate Bush's 'Breathing' - those last 2 examples both number one singles, incidentally. Arguably, there's a better book than this and Goddard's Smiths effort, perhaps, in examining what the artists of the time missed - namely, the wholesale retrenchment of the post war social progress model. For me, only the Smiths music from that era seems to articulate the sense of loss. And in any case, if punk did 'fail' and we ended up with with Sham '69 and the Cockney Rejects, surely the same could be argued about post-punk because it led to U2, Simple Minds and.....apologies to more sensitive and easily nauseated readers, Frank Ferdinand.

Quibbles aside, I'd recommend a look at the Reynolds book but, being an old fogey, would push younger readers in the direction of the rock writing of Charles Shaar Murray, Nick Kent, Ian "Macca" MacDonald and Greil Marcus, all of whom do either the subjective/passionate or the analytical/boffin brainbox bit a bit more convincingly.

In other rock-related news, my Christmas list has been sorted, what with the announcement of a new 3 CD, 95-page booklet Tom Waits release. And finally: I fell asleep in the middle of the Pete Doherty Arena documentary. As is so often the case, the best bit was Eno's opening theme music.

Oh, and Paul Morley is a pretentious twat.

*see earlier post where he hissy fitted at our dear friend Timster over a trifling criticism of the American edition of the book.

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