What happened to LUSH?

No, that's a good point. My method of using twitter doesn't involve hate-following anyone, but some people do.

that's a lot of hate-following

comfortable making the stretch tbh

same. I can imagine she’s not liking or retweeting any of it because of the book launch.

Hmmm. I'm not terribly familiar with the UK terf pile, but I scrolled through the people she's following. Picked out those who had some form of feminist in bio (as well as a few others who leaped out as being "controversial") and then googled them to assess terfiness. In cases where these people were definitely terfs, for the most part, Miki was their only follower that I shared (although sometimes joined by Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub!). And I do follow a number of UK-based accounts, so you'd think there would be a greater overlap if it was just based on hate-reading or just a passing interest.

i suppose someone could just ask her on twitter if you feel like doing that. I do not.

Norman Blake also follows loads of terfs yes

Fannies drummer has ratcheted down from terfy tweeting to just terfy follows iirc

I’ve followed her for about 2 years and not seen anything related to gender at all, and she quite often posts after a couple of drinks when you’d expect the filters are down (and appear to be). If she holds those views she’s at least covert about it.

There are lots of people on Twitter who followed some feminist / culture writers a decade ago, and have not kept up to date with the discourse because it must be tempting to mute or ignore the discourse, think we can all appreciate that. if you have a look at her follows, the dodgy ones are all near the bottom of the list. you can imagine a decade ago encountering someone like helen lewis as a journalist writing a book about feminist history and that's about it, HL was even on adam buxton's podcast, have not listened to it but imagine the terf stuff is left out entirely. Not everyone is up to date with this stuff.

a huge reason why a lot of these TERF writers are so well-regarded by establishment media is that they were popular/successful/seemingly decent people in the 90s. I imagine it's like the people I have on Facebook who I met once at a house party ten years ago and never got round to deleting after discovering they're rabid anti-vaxxers, then again it's all just speculation isn't it

yeah at least berenyi isn't obsessively tweeting about it but it's not at all a good sign

yeah i guess it was all a big accident

She'll make it ok with a duet with Dame Edna called "Accidental TERF."

Installing Shinigami Eyes will save you a lot of bother

Deleting Twitter will save you even more bother! Biggest positive change to my life in 2022. Not exaggerating.

Interview on a prog rock blog!
http://progsheet1.hypermart.net/mikiberenyi2022.html

I still haven’t bought Miki Berenyi’s memoir, but I have read several of the publicity interviews. Naturally, I was shocked by the whole “being molested by her grandmother” thing, because I remember fan discussions back in the 1990s expressing puzzlement over the “woman with silver hair” line in “Kiss Chase”, and concluding that it surely couldn’t be a sexual thing. Ugh, it was.

Is there any survey of critical appraisal of Ben Watt’s post-EBTG career in dance music? Around 1999 I was getting into both UK progressive house and IDM, and by comparison I found the timbres and flow of the particular tunes that Watts had chosen to take up, clumsy and plodding. Was my disappointment shared, or were people really moved by his new thing?

Sorry, wrong thread for that, I'll ask a mod to fix it.

dunno but I like his solo albums with bernard butler a fair amount

I got the memoir from my library! not started it yet though.

Reading her book - still in childhood and it's pretty dark so far

Me too, and I have just found out that she is Keigo Oyamada/Cornelius' second cousin, wild.

Wait, what?

It's in the book, yeah

I'm just getting to a bit about "Gene" and I fervently wish Miki would start a thread about him on here.
"My favourite Gene anecdote is when he starts putting it about that he has carried out a paternity test proving that he fathered Ashton Kutcher during an affair. When I point out that Kutcher is, in fact, a twin, Gene doubles down on the lie, only claiming responsibility for 'Ashton's side of the womb'."

Emma Anderson goes solo!

https://pitchfork.com/news/lushs-emma-anderson-announces-debut-solo-album-pearlies-shares-new-song-listen/

Indeed -- had a chance to hear the full album the other week and it's very lovely.

the lush albums are being reissued individually as well (except for Gala, annoyingly)

> except for Gala, annoyingly

Gala was a US reissue on a single CD of their first three EPs. It was never part of the band’s album release history in their own country. Perhaps that is why. But this made me curious to see if Gala got a vinyl release, because by the time I bought Gala in 1997, CDs were the dominant format. Yes, there was a vinyl Gala and photos can be seen on Discogs.

^ not true. Gala was released in the UK. I should know, I have a copy:

https://www.discogs.com/release/367798-Lush-Gala

Wow, surprised to learn that, too, especially after reading Miki Berenyi’s autobiography where Gala is described yet again as a concession to the US market:

After a thirteen-date UK tour for Sweetness and Light, we are back again across the Atlantic to promote Gala – a compilation of the tracks from Scar, Mad Love and S&L – repackaged as an album for North America and Japan.

The latest comment on that Discogs page is interesting:

Lush - Gala was advertised in the UK as "limited edition" when sold on the UK market... but I saw no evidence of that. There seemed to be plenty in record stores at the time.

tbf it didn't stay in print - I got a 4AD catalog in about 1994/5 and it wasn't in that. so it probably was "limited edition" just not all that limited.

cad0017cd

so that's a UK catalogue number. i think everything on it was still in print, but i bought a copy anyway

the boxset had Gala as a seperate cd.

cad0017cd

That's it. I remember how pleased I was to get Gala. I had a CD boombox in my room and now I didn't have to go downstairs to the family record player to listen to the Mad Love EP.

limited to how many we can sell, I think.

I was an absolutely rabid Lush fan from Scar onward, living in Tasmania it was impossible to get their releases except thru contortions, mail order etc. and then at the end of 1990, there on the shelf was a fckn ALBUM I had never heard about. Super disappointed to realise it was a comp, bought it anyway.

I had bought the Scar CD single before but couldn't find Mad Love or Sweetness & Light anywhere at the time. I grew up in Worcester and there was one indie shop there that was tiny and didn't have much in, in fact I think I bought Scar when my mum took us to Cheltenham one day. went to Reading Uni and a 2nd hand shop had Gala so I bought it immediately.

Will never forget waiting weeks for Mad Love and then cranking “De-Luxe” when it arrived, pure bliss. Still love it.

I still have a vivid memory of hearing "Sweetness and Light" on KROQ in the early morning and waiting for what felt like an hour for someone to announce what it was they played. Bought Gala that afternoon - didn't know it was a comp.

I knew Gala was a comp because, by 1997 when I bought it, there was a very active online community for 4AD fans (the 4AD-L mailing list). I had the bad luck, though, to become a fan of Lush and Cocteau Twins in that period between the release of their respective last albums and the announcement of their tragic ends.

I was pretty active on 4ad-l around then or slightly earlier. I think a few of us were (Ned of course).

Thanks to set list.fm I figured out when I saw Lush live. April 3, 1992 in Tampa, Florida. I don’t remember who the opening act was. In those days it seemed to be Flesh For Lulu half the time.

I was really surprised to read from Miki Berenyi's autobiography that Lush toured with Lollapalooza after the Spooky album. I always misremembered the Lollapalooza thing as after Split, because the latter’s sound seemed to fit better in an American alternative rock context than the UK-specific shoegaze of Spooky.

xp Babes in Toyland opened for Lush when I saw them in March of 1992.

Ooh I wish it was them. Possibly I came late and missed the opening act. I had to drive across the state of Florida to get there.

I just looked deeply into this and apparently Flaming Lips opened in April 1992. Definitely missed them, or they made no impression whatsoever.

“the UK-specific shoegaze of Spooky”.

I didn’t see them live around this time, but a lot of reviewers of Spooky were disappointed that it had been Cocteau-d to death by Robin Guthrie and did not reflect the energy of the live versions.