They Will Show Me What I Want To See | |
| we all want to know who It's interesting to see Alistair, Tangents editor, worried about Steely Dan being in his zine. I know he likes jazz and some funky stuff, too; and he's far more into 'production' than I am. So why - and he's not alone - the automatic dislike of two white boys from New York playing their chops with great smartarse lyrics? He should know better than to rely on other people's first impressions or perceived opinions [even mine!]. Expect a tape very soon Mr. Fitchett! You have been warned. Next thing he knows, they have exchanged opinions on the book and he has handed it back to the old man and is being shown into Hell. I see he's reading Paul Morley's book at the same time as me, too. I'm kind of stuck two thirds of the way through, and it seems to me the book's title, Nothing, isn't wrong; Morley witters on and on about nothing for ages. The fact that this nothing includes schooldays and football doesn't help: I'm not very patient with teenagers who don't work out some kind of way of surviving school [Morley's greasy unwashed hair, non-regulation trousers and super-flared collars suggest he wasn't that sussed reallyÉ more asking for it], or football in general; neither, I'm afraid to admit, am I patient with "life oop North" as Morley tells it. I'm probably being regionalist, but Morley seems to be the same in an inverted-snob kind of way: "Look at us, aren't we stupid. And wasn't I a stupid kidÉ but, hey, look at me now, writing a proper book!" "Cheer up it'll never happen" they said |
| Nothing orbits around Morley's father's suicide. A ghastly event to happen to anyone, I'm sure. I know how awful an event my father's death from illness was; I'm sure suicide would have made it worse. Morley, however, even these years later, doesn't seem able to step back and consider the experience he wrote about either back then, or has written more recently. I wrote about my father's death [a sequence of 5 poems, and another couple of individual ones] at the time and, yes, they were a kind of therapy and a way to share the experience with othersÉ But at some point I had to show them to firstly a friend, then a couple of editors, and say "Are these poems worth publishing, or should I just hide them away as personal angst?" Obviously, Faber offered, indeed paid, to publish this, but I think they were wrong, this book isn't very good; it's obsessive, selfish, self-obsessed, verging on the neurotic. Even the diversions into pop - particularly the deaths of Ian Curtis and Marc Bolan - can't open the book up into a genuinely wider sphere of thought and philosophy. Its' a shame, as I've always admired the man who created ZTT and wrote the most literary and pretentious writings on music to ever grace the NME's pages. I believe all that I read now One of the marvellous articles Morley wrote, which I still have tucked into an album cover, was about Howard Devoto, the lead singer of Magazine. The pair of them - plus, presumably the photographer - played hide and seek through a dark dockside populated by containers and wire fences; the resulting "interview" was suitably dislocated, shambolic and fragmented, a sub-Burroughsian nightmare. Business hours are over now Magazine always suffered from people's wrong first impressions; only now, with the release of Maybe It's Right To Be Nervous Now, a retrospective 3-CD box set, can we all sit down sensibly and see what was going on. Or can we? What do we make of a supposedly punk-fuelled, or new-wave influenced, band whose first album was full of keyboard flourishes that didn't just ignore the immediate past [only XTC, to these ears, managed to carry on using synthesizers after punk; both bands somehow drew on both progrock and punk's heavy metal pronouncements], but had an arty monoprint cover; whose lyrics were clearly literary and intelligent [if a little strange] and was fronted by a balding weirdo? What do we make of a band whose second album sounded like they'd been listening to Pink Floyd [or perhaps Wire and This Heat?] more than anything else, although they served it up with dark, edgy lyrics, including a closing song about necrophilia? The past is rotten to the core Okay, I guess there were Simple Minds back then, mixing Roxy Music with Can; there were the Banshees [who shared John McGeoch for a while, with Magazine] producing moody experimental music that slowly evolved into goth hysteria; there were art-school pranksters Wire, definitely listening to Floyd and reading more philosphy and media theory than was good for them; and there were the more jazz/"out-rock" groups like Essential Logic, The Raincoats and The Slits. But Magazine were one of a kind. When I saw Simple Minds supporting Magazine they were boys fumbling through art-rock clichés [electric violin! perleaseÉ] on their way to pop excesses; when I saw the Banshees they were about to release Juju, Siouxsie had just crimped her hair for the first time and McGeogh was conjuring up waterfalls of guitar from his semi-acoustic guitar - one of those teflon-coated jobs. The Raincoats et al were shambolic feminist groups, busy making statements about patriarchy, naivety and enthusiastic experiment. All great bands in their own way, most with a couple of classic albums. But they weren't Magazine. |
| Once you had this promise Magazine were grim, miserable lads with a wicked sense of dark humour, quirky musical ability, and more charisma than was good for them. They released a set of freaky singles in quick succession [all now collected on CD; all safely tucked away in my singles box downstairs], each in a plain brown card sleeve [no picture-sleeve tricks for them; no twelve-inch remixes; no coloured vinyl], each with a very strange B-side [also now on CD]. Then there was a period of turbulent personnel changes, a dreadful live album, an okay third album which included a lot of the singles, and a final masterpiece, Magic, Murder And The Weather. This was a far funkier affair than before; less rocky, more layered; in retrospect quite strange and out of its time. Most people seem to dismiss this album as a last gasp of breath, but for me it's up there with Real Life and Secondhand Daylight as one of a trio of great Magazine albums. Here is the love of your life I'm not sure this box set has made me re-evaluate; it's just made me reconsider and agree with myself. It's nice to have some live and some radio session versions I haven't heard before, it's good to not have to turn over 7-inch singles to hear these tracks again; but basically it's just a great triple CD from a wonderful band who should have been massive. Let's hope they will make a good impression this time. I'm in love with everything that's been left unsaid I will forget © Rupert Loydell2000 [All Howard Devoto lyrics, including the title of this piece, are quotes from It Only Looks As If It Hurts: The Complete Lyrics 1976-1990 by Howard Devoto, Black Spring Press] |