Lovely ride this afternoon, out by Broadclyst and Ottery, Tipton St John, down to Otterton and back via Woodbury and Topsham Road. The BBC five day forecast was way out: the sun shone hazily, the air felt close to balmy, and whilst there was a bugger of a head wind on the way out, it was lovely coming back towards Exeter. Riding up out of Whimple though, disaster struck: my phone went off. Ironically it was the bike shop calling with bad news: the new frame I wanted can’t be found in the size I need. Anywhere. They even phoned Trek in the USA to see if they had one they could fly over, but alas no… I guess they ought to make more of those big sizes. Sigh. So my dream of riding one of these this summer has evaporated. What to do now then? Shell out on something else that’s not really what I want, or ride my current steed for another summer and grab one of the 2004 frames when they become available, hopefully in the Autumn? Decisions, decisions…
posted by duke harringay at 5:24 PM

Another, hopefully final, email from the one-time new romantic this morning. In it he says that the NME and NME.com make Tangents look like a local rag. He says this because he decided to buy the NME for the first time in years this week, and was excited by what he saw. So I did the same in WH Smiths this morning.

Except obviously I didn’t. I only bought a copy of Mac World, Mac Format and Cycling Weekly and instead simply picked up a copy of the NME and looked through it. It didn’t excite me. Perhaps this is proof that I really am an old fogey geek nerd and my old-new-romanitc nemesis is, like, down with the kids, has his finger on the pulse, blah blah blah, whatever the hell it is they say these days. No, leafing through the NME I was aware of a few things: first, it’s not aimed at people like me. Which has little to do with age actually, because neither is it aimed at the me I was when I actually did buy the NME and Melody Maker, back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Instead it now seems to be largely similar to other teen-mags; loads of colour pictures, not much text. No insightful or interesting writing that I could discern. Which isn’t a criticism exactly, just… well, it’s like I said when I mentioned I didn’t need a new White Stripes album because I had the Hidden Cameras. I just don’t need the NME because I have Careless Talk Costs Lives. Hell, I even have Tangents. (And incidentally, since the White Stripes seem to excite you so much, where were you two years ago when the pages of Tangents were, if not filled, then at least peppered with frothing words about how much we loved that devastatingly cool Detroit duo?).

Also, leafing through the NME I just got the impression that, hey, Rock is cool again. It’s yet another Rock Revival that the media have decided to use to give the illusion that they have ‘discovered’ something, that they are indeed arbitrers of taste rather than simply cottoning on to something that has been steadily doing its own thing for years when it was, you know, not really very fashionable. Nothing more, nothing less. Which is maybe the point: the NME seems to make it look like a fashion thing, a ‘yoof style’ thing…. Fine, except, ah, well except that such things always repulsed me. Always made me recoil in terror. It’s only me.

Give me isolated bedroom pop over crowded clubs and pubs full of sweaty people desperately trying to look cool any day. Live music has never really done that much for me. Or maybe that’s a lie: live music has of course moved me to tears, made me dance uncontrollably, made me laugh and made me want to slit throats. But it’s only ever done that in spite of the context, and not because of it. And really, the moments I remember most; the events of significance, the flashes of inspiration, the explosions of passion, grief, relief, belief and disbelief; all of these are memories of isolation, are to do with hearing music alone, consuming it avidly in the dead of night through headphones or in afternoons laid on the lawn, stereo tingling in the sun beside me. And only me.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Pop is not a group activity. Pop is not about inclusion.

Maybe this is the core of what the old-new-romantic and I disagree about. Maybe this is what makes us polar extremes. I don’t give really a damn that he gave Depeche Mode and Wham! their first cracks at stardom by giving them a place to play live. I don’t really give a damn that the NME or NME.com do whatever they do, and I don’t give a damn what he thinks about Tangents. Actually I don’t give a shit what ANYone thinks about Tangents (despite the lie being given to that statement by the very fact that I’m writing this). I don’t do this for anyone but me. Pop is all about the ego, after all. The ego of the performer, the ego of the consumer. It’s all the same in the end.

I don’t know where Tangents stands in the firmament of things, certainly not in terms of mediated music and culture. I don’t really know what Tangents is, except in relation to what it’s not: it’s not bothered about trends; it doesn’t have editorial policy (other than: Do I like this? Do I think this is interesting? Do I think this challenges some kind of preconception? Is this going to piss someone off? It’s that ego thing again, and yeah, maybe Robin did have the greatest title for a fanzine ever with EGO); it doesn’t need to consider upsetting advertisers (simply because it does not, and will never, sell advertising space); it doesn’t need to answer to any multinational publishing concern; it doesn’t need to bother about deadlines and dealing with printers and distributors and shops and business because hell, I don’t like that kind of thing myself and most of the time I’m happy teaching thanks very much, and besides maybe I really am just scared to bite the bullet, but hey ho, that’s the way it is; it doesn’t need to concern itself with what might be popular and to change its tune to fit with that, whatever the fuck that might be at any given moment in time. Hell, it doesn’t need to do what it doesn’t want to, full stop. Or rather, it doesn’t need to do what I don’t want it to. Ego again. Which of course is why I love Careless Talk Costs Lives: Careless Talk Costs Lives is maybe Tangents with more guts, is the brother and sister out in the streets, hanging out on the corner being cool whilst Tangents hides in the attic. Careless Talk Costs Lives has the guts to make a go of it in ‘traditional’ publishing circles; plays within the rules but not by the rules.

And if not exactly working outside the rules, I like to think that Tangents at least stands outside that traditional publishing circle. Instead I like to think Tangents is off on its own somewhere, maybe rummaging through old record shops and book shops, looking for forgotten ‘50s and ‘60s pulp crime and western novels, gently humming ‘I’m Lonely (and I love it)’ to itself.

posted by duke harringay at 11:52 AM