I like Ian Penman a lot

Just noticed that his name is misspelt as Ian Menman on the back of the Wire/Scott Walker book

"Ian Penman, who started writing for the NME in 1977, is working on a novel about music and terror in 1970s Britain."

And I for one can't wait.

Not gonna happen

His stuff for the lrb has been really good

I like the idea of it.

Oh me too! But I remember that his byline always used to say he was "working on" books about Bryan Ferry and Billie Holiday (the latter even had a title, Pretty White Flowers)

His twitter is the best:

https://twitter.com/pawboy2

Charity shop finds, his reading, what he's watching on daytime 5USA, BBC2 etc. Pics of writers and their cats.

Thinking I might even get a twitter account now.

I was kidding btw..

yeah when I looked at twitter that was the main one I looked at

I see his contributing to the LRB at the moment.

oh look, someone already said that.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n01/ian-penman/wham-bang-teatime

This was good although some of these pieces (taken together over time and I'd need to re-read and check) begin to read like 'well I read every biog of (x) and this one from (y) year does the job'. A lot of reaction against the shape of 'legacy' and how that is being written-up.

The section on Morley was a nice lesson on writing about someone you are fond of when they don't do a good job.

Gently rips into Reynold's thing and fair with it.

I'm sorry he didn't acknowledge Bowie-scepticism more, and this detail is simply wrong (I think he's thinking of Al Jaffee's fold-ins, which appeared on the back cover of Mad) - It’s impossible to imagine something like Bowie’s masterpiece Low (1977) coming out now, an album split down the middle like an old Mad centrepiece

beautifully written and well-thought, one of the best things I've ever read about Bowie. absolutely agree with his assessment of the middling middle years and his frank/fair take on both Reynolds and Sheffield.

What a turn of phrase:

...golden youths picked up and polished then abandoned by Machiavellian gay managers. (One key difference between Mark Feld and David Jones was that the latter was maybe happier to go that extra inch.)

So much shade thrown in this piece.

^ Yes, and thank god for that. Morley/Reynolds/Sheffield get thrown so many free passes and none of these books look, on the surface, to be terribly inspiring.

think he's thinking of Al Jaffee's fold-ins, which appeared on the back cover of Mad) [...] split down the middle like an old Mad centrepiece

You're both wrong, it's the IBC and Jaffee is still doing them

omg someone has to write a pedantic letter to the lrb

I say this as a fan both of the piece and of pedantic letters to the lrb

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/fitzcarraldo-editions-acquires-music-critic-penmans-first-book-20-years-954786

So it looks like this will be a collection of some of his work for the LRB.

Oh nice. Fitzcarraldo publishing it is maybe a good sign that we might actually see this “novel about terror and music in the 1970s” too

Penman on Kraftwerk in LRB! But two major errors, in the second paragraph! pic.twitter.com/QExMLAtqp8

— Owen Hatherley (@owenhatherley) September 2, 2020

Penman has turned his attention on Kraftwerk and it's interesting how the reception for these LRB pieces are in a bit of a turn around. Don't remember them inviting as much criticism at the beginning.

Don't get how the first sentence fits with the rest, also Kraftwerk not always "lush," Detroit techno not always zombie pock glare: seems like too big a hurry w the news of yore.

That para aside I think this is pretty good, much because he doesn't like Kraftwerk (which I disagree with -- surely Kraftwerk were more knowing and not so celebrating of rationalisation and tech, for one*) or the book he is reviewing (sounds terrible from the quotes).

*and Stockhausen is a gap when he gets to mapping out West German culture

And an... interesting mention of Mark Fisher that is sorta left there lol

Although I wish the LRB give him a go at Warhol instead of Colm fucking Toibin.

Yah this is crap

P crap issue

At least Frances Stonor Saunders has closed the case, not that anybody cared.

lol i was going to ask if anyone was reading that

I envy him for inspiring Robyn Hitchcock to write "The Lonesome Death of Ian Penman," which is prob even better than "I Killed Christgau With My Big Fuckin' Dick," not that I've ever heard better.

ever heard EITHER! SHIT!

is he the "tantalizing enigma of The Cure" guy as per 'grinding halt'?

At least Frances Stonor Saunders has closed the case, not that anybody cared.

i skipped to the end to see if she opened the suitcase. spoiler: she didn't.

lol, i don't even know what that is

the kraftwerk bit is so annoying because he uses so many incorrect facts to reinforce his arguments and is very condescending about knowing more about west german pop culture in the 1970s than you although in actual fact he just mentions a couple of bands, painters and film directors that literally everybody knows. its a bit sad. but yeah the warhol thing jesus. that gopnik book does sound atrocious from the bits he quotes

He used to be active on Twitter, but has disappeared in recent months.

I remember his takedown of Bonnie Prince Billy in The Wire, which felt a little unfair

"very condescending about knowing more about west german pop culture in the 1970s than you although in actual fact he just mentions a couple of bands, painters and film directors that literally everybody knows."

Kinda, would your LRB reader know about Fassbinder and Neu, some would but maybe a quite a few wouldn't? (That ofc says a lot about the LRB, or how I perceive it) I liked that he didn't mention the literature of the time.

The point seemed to be that all of the stuff he mentioned stood the test of time a lot more? It's not really true when it comes to the other German stuff but Moroder, that Soft Cell single etc...I think he was more interested in destroying the elevation of Kraftwerk above say disco as described in the book and in that sense it scanned for me.

I think the weird bit was when he blamed KW for not anticipating Brexit and Covid on Europe Endless.

Ha! One of my work colleagues sent me scans of this piece, but I got so eye-rolly at the first thing I saw - which was one of the footnotes, uncritically repeating a well-worn joke (which is actually completely factually untrue) which has become part of the whole ~Kraftwerk mythos~ - that I didn't bother reading the rest of it until this morning.

It's just riddled with errors and assumptions, but granted many of those assumptions may be down to the shoddiness of Schütte's book. Which I was actually quite hotly anticipating, as he is the professor who instituted the academic conferences on Kraftwerk, and should know his stuff - but found incredibly disappointing. Schütte's whole schtick was that he is a serious professor of German language and German culture, so he was going to ignore ~personal gossip~ in favour of culture and serious criticism - the end result being, that he had almost zero first-hand sources, and so very little factual material at all.

I'm going to lay bang my usual drum here - the joke that Schütte repeated and Penman quoted, was about how "women were banned from KlingKlang". If you actually bother reading the liner notes for the records, you will discover this simply wasn't true - Barbara Niemoller, Rebecca Allen, Sandhya Whaley are three women I can think of just off the top of my head, who were in their studio and involved with their records. But for Schütte, as for many ~writers on Kraftwerk~ it's a sexist landgrab, about removing the *many* actual women from Kraftwerk's story, as a way of rendering Kraftwerk's oevre and subject matter - computers, cars, nightclubs, techno - as male space. It's gross.

*Good* writers on Kraftwerk actually bother getting into how *intertwined* Kraftwerk were with disco - they loved disco and discoteques and dancing? This supposed elevation of "Kraftwerk over disco" is a bizarre interpolation which has nothing to do with contemporary Kraftwerk. The review is kind of a confused mess, riddled with factual errors and ahistorical assertions - but so is Schütte's book, to be fair.

xp I also thought that, but if that's the case the article is even more useless, what does it tell you at all about Krautrock? About the german new wave? About the welfare state, youth culture, drug scenes, government support for the arts in germany? Its just a list of bands that the reader has presumably never heard of. All it adds to the article is to register that the author is "an authority." I could find you a similar authority in every record shop in the country and round up legion of them in the youtube comments under 'Ananas Symphonie.' The main problem with this information is that its just in the article not doing anything, not informing anyone - its just additionally annoying that its so smugly deployed.

I can imagine the 'women were banned' being a mistranslation of "Wives/girlfriends were banned" but I don't know if that's true either

Both Barbara Niemoller and Sandhya Whaley were girlfriends, so...

The thing that's frustrating is that Schütte *IS*, technically and absolutely, an "Expert". He has done more serious scholarship on late 20th Century German contemporary music than anyone else currently working in the country, and his contributions to Kraftwerk scholarship are enourmous.

But that actually just points to the seriously depleted state of German (or indeed any kind of continental European) scholarship in the UK - which does fit into the whole brexit / ignorance of Europe narrative.

branwell you shd totally write a letter to the LRB -- you're a kraftwerk scholar! maybe not all the mistakes lol but definitely pick up the girlfriends error, since it's a tired repeat tale well worth skewering, and the flaws in the schutte book despite his being an expert, since IP is not learned enough to know this

you owe it to their readership (me xyz and pinefox)

i fear they're beginning to use IP as their all-purpose pop-culture correspondent, just tossing all the books of a certain kind on the penman pile -- which is a v bad trap for him if so (most pop-culture bores him these days as i think this probably proves, and his sensibility is these days far better directed at non-music things that interest him) (filmns! tho that's probably tied up tight as well)

lol i'm pitching an idea to them RIGHT NOW so i am invested in them getting a shiver of doubt abt this being his patch and his alone -- commission me u haughty fvcks im dying out here

all the books of a certain kind -- which often turn out to be shitty books and in process of responding to shitty stuff in them he's filling his essays with kinda shitty stuff? I am pro-penman and take no pleasure in reporting this

"also thought that, but if that's the case the article is even more useless, what does it tell you at all about Krautrock? About the german new wave? About the welfare state, youth culture, drug scenes, government support for the arts in germany?"

Yes I would like to read more on this but wouldn't it be outside the scope of the article? The book -- as presented -- seems to be using Kraftwerk to re-draw German pop/avant-garde in relation to Anglo pop, hence the anxious comparison of Kraftwerk to the Beatles and Kraftwerk as grandfather to strands of Black American pop. Penman was more interested in drawing attention to that, but he's engaged with quite a lot of the culture Kraftwerk are coming from, so he includes that to ask 'Why Kraftwerk? They weren't even the best that place had to offer!'?

xps

I am like there is good there is bad in this. But I think LRB towers are perhaps too easily impressed by the good, and they don't have the ppl/desire to fact-check the bad because their heart is not in it.