simon reynolds: classic or dud

"i hope you're serious here, what the shit?"

the heads of john harris, alex petridis, simon reynolds and paul morley are the faces deemed most popular in music journo porn.

JOHN HARRIS?

man alive.

journonjournoaction.com

i have no idea if you're joking btw. internet is a weird place.

xpost

not clicking

jesus i hate the internet

It's true. From his homepage:

John Harris was born in 1969, and raised in Cheshire, possibly England's least remarkable county (although, come to think of it, Hertfordshire might put up a convincing challenge). 19 years later, he began writing professionally: though he had just begun his first year at college, the much-missed music weekly Sounds added him to their pool of freelancers, and he wrote his first cover story the following year.

Regrettably, Sounds closed in 1991 - but after a brief spell at Melody Maker, and three months spent studying for an MA in Political Theory, he became a full-time writer at the NME, where he stayed until the summer of 1995. Fortuitously, this represented ideal timing: John was around for the birth of what became known as Britpop, and wrote reams about most of its key players: Suede, Blur, Elastica, Oasis. His April 1994 interview with the Gallagher Brothers, during which Liam and Noel all but came to blows, later achieved legendary status thanks to its release as a single entitled Wibbling Rivalry.

Having served his statutory three years, John left NME to become Features Editor at Q, and then Editor of Select magazine, before deciding to return - two weeks before his 30th birthday - to the life of a freelance writer. Since then, he has written about music for Q, Mojo and Rolling Stone, and contributed articles on a variety of subjects to the UK newspapers The Independent, The Guardian, The Times and The Observer.

After 18 months of research and writing, John Harris's acclaimed first book, The Last Party: Britpop, Blair And The Demise Of English Rock, was published by Fourth Estate in May 2003. He is currently reading Marc Resiner's Cadillac Desert: The American West And Its Disappearing Water, and listening to Love Is Hell Pt 1 by Ryan Adams, for what it's worth.

In April 2007 he signed a contract with the noted gay porn distributor Triga, and will both appear in and direct at least five upcoming DVDs, including "Scallyboy Orgy 6" and "Piss Baracks"

theres blogging fetish categories too with woebot, k punk, the impostume and simon silver dollar (thrown in for grime-blog retro appeal im guessing) too. i dont know how they got everyones heads though. i didnt even know what they look like before.

ok now you've pushed it too far. no-one is getting off on k-punk.

Piss Baracks

blissblog gone a bit quiet?

Dunno whether to buy "Energy Flash". Heard this guy is good on dance music, but I've already read loads of books on it. What's he bringing to the table?

Go to the top of the thread.

But he seems 'nuum'ed out for now. He must be trying to absorb changes in his fave Brit scenes or be just busy raising his young kids.

calculations show
we're pretty much
toast

i will probably buy the updated 'energy flash' why because it look intersting. and i haven't followed the nuum since the last one came out. i do wonder how positive SR feels about how most of the threads he was following -- eg techno -- have played out.

"Abboting" looks pretty desperate.

eh?

New Blissblog policy of posting pix of cartoon penguins is pretty mystifying.

If you look at his recent entries he has come up with the term "Abboting" as the obverse of "Wyatting," named after eighties comedian and hitmaker Russ Abbot.

So if two people do it together, they are Co-Abboting?

*groaaaaaannnnnnn*

New Blissblog policy of posting pix of cartoon penguins is pretty mystifying.

At least it's not For Better or Worse.

lol I did some 'wyatting' a couple of evenings ago.

I can't say I felt bad

"Abboting" has been going on for a number of years. I believe the alternative term for it is "Guilty Pleasures."

Then: lucid, well-regarded music journalist
Now: raving schizophrenic image troll

I like!

Dude e-mailed me to apologise for smacktalking Danny Wilson.

True story.

Through Energy Flash right now, and enjoying it. The way music is described in the book makes you want to listen to it. He slags some people whose records I like, but as he does so with fine writing, it's ok.

It's a long way from "Pip Pyle RIP" that's for sure.

I think I see a pattern forming on his blog now. Baffling smoke signals.

Has he posted any pictures of cuckoos yet?

I think the story is this: every time he sits down to post a new blog, one of his kids climbs up on his knee and says 'Daddy, more backyardigans pictures! Want more backyardigans!'. Being a proud and attentive dad, as well as an afficionado of l'objet détourné he thinks, 'Hmm, why not? Why not indeed? This may lead to fertile new territory for my jaded musical mind, after all'. Even more characteristically, he then begins to ponder on the relationships between kids cartoon characters and no wave band photos(see especially the most recent entry, a highly suggestive compare-and-contrast). Except some ruminations on kids cartoons and the epistemology of rock posturing soon.

all i do is think about the backyardigans! me and simon are on the same page. the music is brilliant.

"he then begins to ponder on the relationships between kids cartoon characters and no wave band photos"

um, the relationship between the backyardigans and that picture of the lounge lizards is evan lurie. who does the music for the backyardigans. and who was in the lounge lizards. unless you knew that. you probably did.

Ah no, I did not know that. Well there you go. The answer is more prosaic than I imagined.

And he's now blogging about it, and about other music again.

Quite a good record, that new Backyardigans album, but really this is wishful thinking beyond rationality.

Reading Energy Flash I'm realizing it has the same kind of odd disjunction that bothered me about Rip It Up. Each chapter functions perfectly on its own, but in order to pull that off there's constant reiteration of previously established facts. It gets tiresome.

Also a nitpick with both books: he covers the UK scenes first and with greater enthusiasm, so when he gets to the US he seems to have run out of steam and just be playing Big Musical Movement Narrative Mad Libs. "(Originator 1) met (Originator 2) in high school, and before long (Originator 3) fell in with the duo and they started farting around with analog synthesizers...."

Doesn't first wave US house/techno/garage precede any UK discussions in Energy Flash? Actually i'm basing this on reading the US version Generation Ecstasy, which maybe was differently structured, but I remember it trying to follow a reasonably chronological order (within limits: a lot of stuff was happening concurrently obv).

I agree that it's pretty clear that the coverage of UK hardcore and jungle is more excited and exciting than the coverage of any US stuff - I suspect a lot of that was cribbed from articles he'd written at the time of the music's emergence, so there's a less scholarly feel to the coverage (in that sense your above criticism would sort of apply - only to the order of writing rather than presentation).

One thing I do remember really liking was the too-brief coverage of US Garage where he talks about the Strictly Rhythm and Nu-Groove records he really likes. I wanted more on that, perhaps because it's an area of music that you don't often see broken down in that romantic-formalist way (usually it's all either deflating discussions of hi-hats and programmed bass or pipecockian evocations of soul).

In general, SR's relative disinterest in house (compared to other dance musics) seems to conflict with his excellent capacity to capture in words what makes a house track (that he likes) really great.

no longer very grimey simeys top 10 of 2008 from fact mag:

01- Vampire Weekend Vampire Weekend [XL]
02- Blackout Crew 'Put a Donk On It' [All Around the World]
03- Giggs Walk In Da Park [SN1]
04- Portishead Third [Mercury]
05- The Backyardigans 'Almost Everything is Boinga' [Nick]
06- Crystal Castles 'Courtship Dating' [Last Gang]
07- Gang Gang Dance 'Dust' [Social Registry]
08- Moon Wiring Club Shoes Off and Chairs Away [GAS]
09- Beck 'Gamma Ray' [Interscope]
10- Skull Disco Soundboy's Gravestone… [Skull Disco]

ew

Grimey can drop to that

"09- Beck 'Gamma Ray'"

really?

i haven't heard this.

but five gets you ten he was hating on beck in '93-6 when he didn't totally suck.

05- The Backyardigans 'Almost Everything is Boinga'

What on earth is this?

Nick Jr TV show soundtrack

has reynolds talked about giggs anywhere before? (or indeed any ilm stuff besides clueless marcello bollocks?)

i can understand why he'd latch on to him in terms of it being a big underground uk event (kinda, i guess, i dunno? the freestyle, and whatever old dr dre offcut it was on were totally ubiquitous, moreso than 'bongo jam' or anything, but as a theoretical return of uk hiphop, or giggs as the uk's first indigenous grassroots jeezy figure, or whatever anything else it is that people are supposing it all might mean, i have deep reservations about the lot of it) but... is he actually into it? living in new york, having the tastes that he does - why?? simey really do be grimey huh.

especially since he's pointedly choosing giggs over any funky house or even let's say the trim mixtape (for which one could just as easily transplant weezy for jeezy were you indeed inclined to that particular piss-weak argument.)

i mean, i should also probly make it clear i think giggs is fucking terrible. he sounds just like probly-not-even-playing-football-any-more's shabazz baidoo when he was doing his mc terminator comedy schtick. (which was just him talking like arnie.)(which everyone thought was rubbish, obv.)

01- Vampire Weekend Vampire Weekend [XL]
02- Blackout Crew 'Put a Donk On It' [All Around the World]
03- Giggs Walk In Da Park [SN1]
04- Portishead Third [Mercury]
05- The Backyardigans 'Almost Everything is Boinga' [Nick]
06- Crystal Castles 'Courtship Dating' [Last Gang]
07- Gang Gang Dance 'Dust' [Social Registry]
08- Moon Wiring Club Shoes Off and Chairs Away [GAS]
09- Beck 'Gamma Ray' [Interscope]
10- Skull Disco Soundboy's Gravestone… [Skull Disco]

what the fuck is all this bullshit

Baidoo is now at Croydon Athletic xp

i thought this dude was up on juvenile and aaliyah back when all the other rock critics were bangin out to uh beck and portishead

That was before hauntology happened.

Although yeah, for a guy who was riding for Weezy back in 98, this helpfully explains what happens to people when they get a mortgage.

05- The Backyardigans 'Almost Everything is Boinga'

Right about that one.

I can't tell you how confusing this thread became in the 30 seconds before I realised Shabazz Baidoo wasn't actually the gay dude who got kicked out of Big Brother a few years back.

This and Our Band Could Be Your Life kind of invented college for me.

my version had twenty or so pages switched out with some cowboy book about Reagan or something. LOL publisher fail

No, that was just the chapter on the Mekons.

loll

hahahahahahahaha

The US published version of Rip It Up is shorter than the Brit published version. Someone wrote on amazon.com:

Three chapters have been cut in their entirety and portions of other chapters have been cut or shortened. In total, the US version of the book is nearly 200 pages shorter.

― curmudgeon, Monday, June 13, 2011 11:09 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

ARGH fuck you publishers

Wow what a joke.

There's at least a chapter missing from the us version of Energy Flash (generation ecstasy), right?

http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/01/prisoners-of-style-201201

Kurt Anderson on retro culture. I haven't read this yet. Wonder if he refers to Reynolds book?

IIRC, no.

That article was rough. Pointless musing and avoiding any question of technology and its relationship to art. Ugh. (not to mention writing something like this and not mentioning Retromania seems a little goofy (though I might be playing up Retromania's impact)).

New book

http://shockandawesimonreynolds.blogspot.com/

a book about glam rock and art pop - 1970s mostly - but also tracking its echoes and reflections through the 80s, 90s and into the 21st Century - footnotes to follow here soon

Is there any differences between Generation Ecstasy and the later re-prints of Energy Flash other than a few less extra chapters at the end? My local library's only got Generation Ecstasy in stock right now

Seems to be some pretty exhaustive info on the Energy Flash blog

http://energyflashinfohype.blogspot.co.uk/

My Twitter feed is nothing but 'conceptronica' jokes

I don't get why "conceptronica" has blown up as a meme, it's clearly just a placeholder portmanteau for a very easy-to-define approach

Have missed most of the "live" broadcast but...

https://www.nts.live/shows/guests/episodes/simon-reynolds-9th-april-2024

Music journalist and writer Simon Reynolds shares an hour of music featured in his first book in eight years, "Futuromania", which explores the vanguardist electronic music which prefigured the pop of the future

LIVE TRACKLIST

14:54
HOLLY HERNDON
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt

14:50
JAMES BLAKE
If The Car Beside You Moves Ahead

14:47
CHIEF KEEF
On the Corner

...

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2024/04/futuromania-out-today.html

New book Futuromania is out today in the UK

getting delivered tomorrow. i'm excited but i can't stop thinking from the premise it feels sorta lowkey for a sr book? or maybe i just want it to start earlier than the 70s. the blurb:

"Starting with an extraordinary chapter on Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer, taking in illuminating profiles of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Boards of Canada, Burial, and Daft Punk, and arguing for Auto-Tune as the defining sound of 21st century pop, Futuromania shapes over two-dozen essays and interviews into a chronological narrative of machine-music from the 1970s to now."

ofc i expect to really get into it anyway. and his autotune piece for pitchfork from a few years back already feels classic.

A lot of it is remixes or director’s cuts of previously published articles, which explains the more contemporary focus. The ‘reacting in real time’ aspect was important this time apparently. There is an all new chapter at the end though that aims to tie the threads together and provide a counterpoint to Retromania.