So now I’m re-reading 45 of course. Now I’m going through it all, all over again; the wanting to listen to those Bunnymen records again, the Teardrop Explodes records, the Wild Swans, Wah! and a host of others. Again.

Wanting to dig out those KLF records again, even though I’ve not even got to that bit yet, and actually, remembering those records and reading today, let me say that Drummond really did achieve that goal of writing a classic heartbreaking ballad because 3am Eternal is just that, only of course for the Rave generation. Well it is for me because it’s 3am on the beach with a burning out fire and walking home to the dawn chorus, and the beach looking like the moon, and… and my guess is that Dan remembers this too, because he has the photos, and the song… the song is only there because the song was there all the time that summer, was everywhere, seeping into our collective memories, or my own at the very least.

I told my year 11 class this morning about the Drummond / Manning journey to the North Pole with the icon of Elvis, and how that the good vibes emanating from Elvis at the top of the world was going to solve all of humanities problems. This in relation to their exam theme of ‘beginnings’ and me going off on a tangent from thinking about Lou Reed’s ‘Beginning of a great adventure’, me imagining someone doing a great painting of all the things you’d take with you on that journey; provisions, warm clothes, sleds, whatever… and in the middle of it all, Elvis. That would be so cool. I want to do my GCSE Art exam all over again just to do that.

Of course the kids all looked at me, shaking their heads like I was a sad, mad old fucker.

Which suits me fine of course.

This morning as I made breakfast I played that Teardrop Explodes Piano CD with the Zoo singles on. And of course Drummond is wrong to suggest that they sounded crap because they didn’t, and don’t. They sound magnificent, and they sound all the more so because of the new context they reside within in 2002… imagine someone making such tinny, thin, reedy records nowadays and them getting away with it, getting onto Top Of The Pops or the cover of Smash Hits! Never gonna happen… and hey, suddenly now that’s what I know I miss about Pop music these days; that sense of desperate innocence. That feeling of winging it, of kind of making up the rules as you go along and promptly ignoring those rules anyway… it’s all too knowing these days, so full of carefully planned strategies.

Which is probably actually as it’s always been, only it doesn’t feel that way, it really doesn’t, and oh…

You know, WHY am I writing this, and WHY do I even care, and the answer is I don’t really in the slightest, I only care about… I only care about… I only care about the fragile fascinations of my fractured heart, alliteration being the essence of Pop (one of the many essences of Pop – the great delight is that those essences change from day to day, from whim to whim, like the scent of the world forever evolving, mutating as it spins and pulls us all to its breast) and in those fractures, YES, the virus of Pop infecting, spreading… itself mutating and defying all attempts at eradication.

Always something new or old to crop up and swipe you over the back of the head, and like Carmady at the end of Chandler’s ‘The Man Who Liked Dogs’, the lights go off very slowly, like in a theatre, and there I go, drifting off into the blackness, reappearing someplace else.



posted by duke harringay at 6:36 PM

I’m delighted that Kevin found a copy of Bill Drummond’s 45. I’m delighted that Kevin has been as energised by it as I was when I read it a year or so ago. I’m delighted that Kevin has been inspired to want to hear Crocodiles again, just as I was, and I’m delighted that Kevin has started keeping notebooks again.

I’m less than delighted that Kevin appears to be bowing out of writing. Which might of course be just selfishness at work, but whatever…

I think keeping notebooks is essential. Same as keeping sketchbooks is essential; they fulfil the same purpose of course. I was always a bit odd in Art school because my sketchbooks were always full of writing, with the occasional drawing in between them. These days there’s more of an equal balance, although to be honest this year I’ve branched out into having two notebooks; one mainly for drawing and one for notes. It’s the fault of those Moleskine notebooks coming back into vogue… I have to admit I love them. Before that I loved the square, roughly A5 sized Daler sketchbooks, and the A5 landscape ones too. Those were / are great, although my local store doesn’t have them in anything but spiral binding anymore, which is a bummer. I have a couple of drawers in my filing cabinet filled with sketchbooks from the past couple of years, and a box someplace else with all my older Art school notebooks and sketchbooks. I had a look in one of them the other week, and it was like looking back in a diary; embarrassing, acutely painful and delightful all at once.

Yeah.

So sketchbooks… notebooks… essential stuff. I once read from a notebook in a London pub too, with a backing of loops and beats provided by my trusty old pal the Piezoelectric Unit. Momus and some people from Heavenly and The Pines were in the audience, but I don’t know if they thought it was just a joke. certainly no one pushed a plate of shaving foam in my face. I enjoyed it greatly, even though I’m sure it sounded like crap.

So I’m glad that Kevin has started to keep notebooks again, but like I say, I’m incredibly sad that he seems to have decided to stop writing (for Tangents at least… I just hope he continues to write for SOMEone… even if it’s just himself).

I know how he feels of course. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve said I’m giving this whole damn thing up and going out on my bicycle. And I know what he means about The Sound, although because I was a know-nothing nobody in the early ‘80s I had never heard them until this weekend, and whilst I was singularly under whelmed by what I heard, I uphold Rupert’s decision to write about them, and my decision to publish it on Tangents, only…

Only…

Only it’s all got me wondering what Tangents is, or isn’t. Should, or should not be. I’m feeling a bit lost to be honest. Part of me wants to say, yeah, there’s lots of interesting writers out there, and it’s good to have them on board here, and then part of me also thinks… sod off, go and start your own e-zine.

Because that was what was always so great about my favourite paper fanzines… they were always the voice, the passion of ONE person, setting themselves up against the world and writing their hearts out. It wasn’t about (re)evaluating the past or whatever, it was just Pow! Pow! Pow!, all heartbeats up love and hearts on your sleeve and Love and Hate, and all that Personal Pop Revolution cliché cliché cliché, but at least it was REAL and it was powerful and it made me sit up and think and go WOW, and YES!!!

Why does so little of what I read on my own website make me go like that anymore? And why has it taken Kevin’s ‘grand finale’ to make me realise this fact?

Kevin, if you read this, I want you to know that I have read every word you’ve ever written with lumps in my throat and a hot prickling behind my eyes (must have been the hayfever then), realising that every word was so full of passion and purpose. You’re the main reason I ever started writing about music at all, the main reason I started writing, full stop, and I want to say thanks.

Yeah, Drummond says never meet your heroes, and you know it took me over ten years to finally meet Kevin, even though we only ever lived a couple of hundred miles apart at most. And I guess that meeting was the exception that proves the rule.

Whatever.

Fuck it, this suddenly sounds like an epitaph, and it’s not meant to, because I know that even if Kevin isn’t sending out his reports from the fronts of his explorations to Tangents, at least I know he IS out there, digging and scratching and responding with passion to what he finds, and that, more than anything else, is enough to keep me going.

As for the rest of you, well, sod off and write your own e-zines…


posted by duke harringay at 6:28 PM