For your edification -- Taylor Parkes interviews S*M*A*S*H, _Melody Maker_, 1994

Anyway, I really wish Ned had not posted this. It's making me wish my back issues of MM hadn't got destroyed, and I reallly should have better things to do than sit around and read back issues of an old music paper. Oh well.

Need you ask? Who do I know that is/was obsessed with Britpop? To be fair though, she's mainly just into the Manics now. But she will occaisonally bring up blights like Carter and Gene, and to bring us somewhat back on topic Taylor Parkes! She was excitedly telling me about the Amazon reviews because she had a thing for him back in the day...

Can't wait for Taylor to read this thread so he can learn about the groupies.

Also, the kind of articles we had to write at MM don't archive too well, because they *were* disposable, and they were written with that in mind. Our primary objective had to be taking on the concerns of our readers, which were often minute concerns indeed. The bigger issues everyone remembers us talking about (most of which stemmed from an acknowledgement that pop is, for all its immaturity and its many sins, bigger and better than us, and to train a healthy pop response - that is, to meet pop on its own terms - it's first necessary to make our minds a little less lazy and squalid than they usually are) were only raised as either a counter-argument to whatever bilge the indie world was pumping out at the time (to shame and chill these people in the shadow), or as backup and context when plugging some new wonder. We weren't allowed to write stand-alone thinkpieces, and our word-counts were kept low-ish (2,500-3,000 words for a cover story). We had it easy compared to the trussed seals of latter-day music magazines, with their feature templates and wasteful sidebars, but we had nothing like the freedom - in terms of content as well as length - enjoyed by writers for, say, Creem or NME in the 1970s, or Melody Maker itself in the late 80s. I liked this discipline in a way, because writing for a weekly and being forced to follow trends, albeit with a take-the-piss option, makes one feel quite alive, quite useful, as though one lived in Japan or something, and as I said earlier, I was 22 or something at the time. A good age to be in charge of a weekly feed of very-contemporary, constantly- shifting opinions, perhaps a bad age to be allowed to write 6,000 unedited words that are supposed to go down in history.

A few months after that S*M*A*S*H interview was published, I ran into one of them in a bar in London. I anticipated a row, but instead he complimented me on the article, and said, oddly, that "we sat down and talked about it and we decided you'd raised some good points. It had quite an influence on us". A month later I heard their new single, a dancey, poppy remix of one of the album tracks, with a video that looked a little like the video to "Groove Is In The Heart". About three weeks after that, they split up.

The point about relative freedom to actually talk at length and how you didn't have that is very well taken, though. At the same time, it seems the limits can at least help you focus your points of view -- the end manifesto may be abrupt, but you state an ideal and swiftly back it up with useful reference points. Knowing me, even after editing I'd still need three times as much space doing a comparable approach.

And so they actually did try out your approach at the end? Hmm...

Thanks for posting that, anyway. I'm trying to collect specific features I don't own anymore, and that one was proving tricky.

Sat 28 February 2004
S*M*A*S*H and THE SLAMMERS play Hitchin Club 85. Doors open at 7.45pm.

http://vu.morrissey-solo.com/smash/index.htm

Smash are back and thats all that matters.

Micky Sheehan

A novel way to ingratiate yourself with ILM posters.

Smash were trying to make 'Cunt' a positive word with all that Germaine Greer quoting after all.

peace to de and the boyz

http://weheartmusic.vox.com/library/audio/6a00cd970e4cda4cd500d09e841abfbe2b.html

Taylor Parkes' "J'accuse"/bitchslap of Tim Lovejoy in the latest When Saturday Comes is probably the best magazine article I've read in five years.

"'Lovejoy On Football' is part autobiography, part witless musing, and one more triumph for the crass stupidity rapidly replacing culture in this country. Hopelessly banal and nauseautingly self-assured, smirkingly unfunny, it's a £300 T-shirt, a piss-you-off ringtone, a YouTube clip of someone drinking their mate's vomit. Its smugness is a corollary of its vacuity. I hope it makes you sick."

Anyone got the Bis article mentioned upthread?

Anyone who has an online journal is a cunt. Its as simple as that.

Smash are back and thats all that matters.

Micky Sheehan

http://www.myspace.com/mickysheehan

S*M*A*S*H released a new album last month.

i wondered who taylor wrote for now.

he is a total fucking hero.

yo ithappens, you should hire him for real.

One member of Smash used to own a very twee shop near where I live. They're playing here soon, supporting some band called Goldblade - should I see them?

Goldblade is John Robb's band, yes?

Smash the blue.

Yes

http://www.wsc.co.uk/content/view/145/29/

Here's the Tim Lovejoy article referenced upthread.

Also - original zing crew members. You know that fat, suicidal, bi-polar chick with the dyed hair we know? No, not that one, the other one. Apparently she rolls with TP now. Small world.

I actually read all of Taylor Parkes stuff on that site after you pointed it out to me, despite knowing nothing about football.

I'd still like to read the Bis article.

yo ithappens, you should hire him for real.

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 15:26 (6 months ago) Bookmark Link

mfkn real talk

This thread is the top result for Taylor Parkes Bis.

The only Bis related Parkes piece I could find, a review of Luscious Jackson: http://lusciousjackson.net/articles/moist.html

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/295538_572930506052023_165387974_n.jpg