I like Ian Penman a lot

x-post: which one tico? I have 'sleep has his house', mostly short songs, very pared down folk and the last track is palestine like minimalism (he of course cut the karenina double CD on david tibet's durtro label). Its my only one of theirs but its triffic!!!

mark s = Mark Sinker

Duh! How hilarious.

i've seen ip several times since his blog froze, and he wz fine, but only spoke once since j.balance died (which hit him v.hard) so what jerry said :(

hi dada! sorry i wz so taciturn on thur, i wz just v.tired and somewhat preoccupied

"Here we are again with the problems of producing music, hearing music writing about same. Here we are again with... on the one hand, a proposition such as The Fall, on the other such doleful music press hacks and cultural consumerist quacks as practice little more than daily breadwinning, more concerned with the width of a riff than the quality of language."

Ian Penman, NME, 1980

"And so we come to the business of constructing pop in 1986. Of tugging, tearing, forgetting, pretending. Of joy, despair, artifice. And still we find falling in love and saying "no" communicated in simply awful cyphers scraped on bright red plastic. The haircut appears to be mightier than the word."

Paul Mathur, Melody Maker, 1986

Mathur went on, of course, to write books about Oasis.

But I think Penman's style, the kind he still uses on his blog (and I see traces of it in Mark S's cryptic infoldings, showy opacities and loose grammar) has dated very badly. The surprise winner of 1980s UK rock writing's Posterity Awards is (for me, at least) the Smash Hits school pioneered by Neil Tennant, Chris Heath, Sylvia Patterson, Tom Hibbert. I have no idea whether any of these people have blogs. I hear Neil has a band, though.

When he does this he seems to me to be in thrall to a romantic / authenticist paradigm, in which the purpose of music is seen as a channel between those who are able to feel that bit more deeply than other people.

Even the "fun" involved sounds like hard work.

It's like a peculiarly rockist anti-rockism and I suspect that the trajectory that Paul Morley's writing has taken is in part inspired by a reaction against it.

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.