simon reynolds: classic or dud

smart people say the stupidest things:

anyway it occurred to me that the only truly convincing and coherent defence of Hilton would be one that based itself on Bataille's ideas*, a case based entirely on the celebration of her as a figure of pure excess, non-productivity, wastefulness (e.g. the carbon footprint of her UK promo trip, massive entourage including three tour managers for no actual tour, all flying first class). Paris as a solar anus of expenditure-sans-return. Indeed precisely through not having earned the money she spends, she is all the more “sovereign”--sovereignty defined in Bataille's value system by the distance one has from the “servile” and profane realm of production. The sovereign, according to Bataille’s mystical economic theory as outlined in the Accursed Share * * never does but only is. Which is precisely what the Paris-haters complain--"she doesn't do anything!". She does get paid for "work" admittedly--modelling, appearing at parties--but that's as close to publically "just being" as you can get, and the beyond-handsome pay is way out of proportion to the effort so therefore as little like work-work as is imaginable.

say what you will about his words but after meeting him in Seattle I know Simon Reynolds is smart and teh cuetness

i know he's smart -- he's read bataille. i guess it's not simey's problem that bataille was a bit of a douche.

i know he's smart -- he's read bataille

just checking, this is a joke right?

anyway dingdingding simon you almost kinda got it though it took like 103 posts

say what you will about his words but after meeting him in Seattle I know Simon Reynolds is smart and teh cuetness

-- Maria :D, Friday, 29 June 2007 13:41 (26 minutes ago) Link

I can't disagree, especially when he politely listened as I ran my mouth off about the greatness of Shannon.

This thread is going great places, I can feel it.

simon isnt nearly as authoritative in person as he is in print. at least thats how it seemed when i saw him at a rip it up n start again panel debate thing last year. in person hes still a teensy bit patronising but he kinda holds it in (not sure if thats better or worse).

still, great writer.

yes it's a joek. he is pretty smart generally though, just let down by residual attachments to tedious cult studs figureheads like bataille. but no not dingding simon, it's bullshit.

lol people say i look like simey so teh cuteness? i'll say.

xpost

he's adorable! no wonder the ladies love him. i've had my problems with stuff he's written and mostly cuz he IS a smarty. dim bulbs aren't worth the time. paris as solar anus is awesome. i might have to steal that.

ll grimey s

if we're talking cuteness i can think of several (ok one or two) male music journalists who are way cuter (this is admittedly not the most fertile of ground)

matosharvellotherguy.jpg

"he's adorable! no wonder the ladies love him"

i have seen a lot of dodgy music journo porn where simon reynolds head has been transplanted to bodies of other men. theres clearly a huge demand for this sort of stuff. from the ladies of course.

everetttrue.jpg

Reynolds looks a little too much like Mark Lamarr for personal tastes.

i have seen a lot of dodgy music journo porn where simon reynolds head has been transplanted to bodies of other men. theres clearly a huge demand for this sort of stuff. from the ladies of course.

-- titchyschneiderMk2, Friday, June 29, 2007 8:15 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

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

Where's that NME writers slash page?

Ah, here it is: http://community.livejournal.com/sleepingwithnme/

unfortch i don't recognize that many of the names now :/

in order to preserve my sanity i'm just going to assume that was a lie and not click on that link

http://static.flickr.com/24/57274408_93e8b76061.jpg

that guy's hands are freakish

is that that exeter guy?

xpost

Southall?

zing!

There isn't any slash on that slash page

"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.

Is it taster of his new book?

yeah, looked for it, couldn't find it. wire seems to keep the latest issue out of the archives, for good reason, i suppose.

the boogie thing is in reference to the delta swamp rock compilation that defines itself as "boogie rock".

we were talking about the book (extensively!) over here. is the Wire piece an actual extract can anyone say?
Retromania: Pop culture's Addiction to its Own Past. (New Simon Reynolds book).

I've only read half the article and none of the book, but The Wire describes the former as "a sequel to his new book".

the boogie thing is in reference to the delta swamp rock compilation that defines itself as "boogie rock".

― broodje kroket (dog latin), Monday, May 16, 2011

But he then references other uses of the term with videos and more---in disco, etc.

Had no idea he'd moved to LA until I read the hypnagogic pop thing in Frieze. Welcome, Simon!

Archived interview w/ him on Domino Radio pop-up station, recorded earlier this past week:
http://dominorad.io/show/all_things_reconsidered_richard_king_simon_reynolds

x-post-- he's been in LA for about a year

Reynolds is moving to Los Angeles. His wife, writer/editor Joy Press, got an editor job with the L.A. Times.

― curmudgeon, Monday, June 7, 2010

he shouldnt do radio interviews. he comes off too imperious/unimpressed/unbothered. like he thinks hes too smart to field questions from anyone else. then again he comes off like that a lot of the time on his blog, but at least there i dont have to hear his voice.

wow, I don't get that impression at all.

Yeah, kind of strange... I've seen him speak a few times and he's been unusually personable and polite - especially given the field he works in and the amount of bile a lot of people seem to have for him. Likewise when I've spoken to him.

about done with rip it up and start again. good read.

tho i kinda wish he would have just cut out america altogether if he was gonna do such a halfass job on the non-devo/pere ubu stuff

sandwiching B52s into the NYC chapter with liquid liquid and etc was weird enough but having it be the only oral history style chapter just seemed to be an admission of "oh fuck it, here ya go"

the New Pop stuff was fascinating, didn't know much about that, outside of hearing those hits

It's an excellent book, rip it up. Don't know why it was decided to have the whole mutant disco bit done in interview format, but if you get the outtakes/bsides book Totally Wired, it has a prose chapter devoted to that stuff.

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.

yeah i'm reading the Brit one i think? not 100% but i thought that what my friend said...it has an SST chapter...

i dunno, anyway i've really loved the book.

yeah iirc he talks about Huskers, Black Flag and Meat Puppets and... that's it. Seems more or less arbitrary, I get the impression he doesn't really know anything about hardcore (related: some 90s piece in Bring The Noise which is like a semi-jokey faceoff between oi and gangsta rap, hamstrung by the fact he clearly has no actual interest in the former)

yeah i bothered me that he basically acts as if hardcore was just the american version of Oi, a retrenchment to rock tradition after a period of experimentation, when it's pretty clear if you have ears that hardcore didn't really sound like any other rock music that had ever been made, there are so many classic hardcore songwriting tropes that feel unique to the genre...and hardcore was actually moving towards something too, it can be felt in tons of stuff that came later like thrash etc.

oi sounds like folk songs play by slade

i mean i get the comparison to some degree...the macho stuff, the assholism, violence, closemindedness of the audience (or parts of it)

But you're right re the differences.

The American and Brit versions of the book have different covers.

He does veto hardcore from his agenda throughout the book, citing other people's work on the topic

my cover is bright yellow with pink large kinda "cut up" font type stuff

Pretty sure thats the U.S. version, iirc.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=rip+it+up+and+start+again&x=3&y=17

UK version is yellow with pink letters

while US version has pink with photo

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_3_44?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=rip+it+up+and+start+again+postpunk+1978-1984&sprefix=rip+it+up+and+start+again+postpunk+1978-1984

mine is uk version!

in any case i should be so nitpicky overall it's been a great read and i've learned a lot!

I'm not too bothered to re-read Rip it Up, but it was hugely formative for my music taste when I read it at 15 or 16. It got me into dance music in a roundabout way: Remain in Light -> Ze Records -> disco etc.

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

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.