Dear Sinister, Today I was reading Careless Talk Costs Lives the music magazine that held the interest of more than a few people here when it first came out, because Stuart Murdoch was allegedly in it. Normally I shy away from the music press entirely, or, more specifically, I shy away from buying the music press entirely, since Im often to be seen shiftily reading the review sections of Q, Uncut, NME, The Wire and others in shops, without ever having the intention of buying. In fact, in a move that screams too much time on your hands I sometimes read half the reviews that interest me from a copy of Q in, say, HMV, before putting it back and nipping down to WH Smiths to read the other half. In doing that, I get to read all the reviews I want without loitering without intent in either shop. But to say that such activities were motivated by having too much time on my hands would be false, since usually when I do that, there are a thousand other, more important things I should be doing. Id like to say my aversion to the music press is motivated by a political or artistic gripe that the NMEs traditional fare of hyping bands to the point where they inflate like shiny, heart shaped helium filled balloons into premature rock ascendancy, and then proleptically (Microsoft Word seems to think proleptically isnt a word, but it has been proven wrong in the past), claim that they, the NME, never really thought all that much of them in the first place. Id like to say that, and I do think that, to a degree. Id also like to say that my aversion stems from their penchant for guitar music make by pretty white boys over all else has been detrimental to the growth of other musical genres, at least in terms of sales, that their reviews and features are based in fashion and sensationalism, rather than telling us something useful about the band or record in question, that they are continually changing their minds about who its ok to like and who it isnt, that their tastes are infinitely conservative until the avant garde they so frequently deride and sneer at, comes up with something they actually like, at which point they take it on board like an old friend theyd known for years (e.g. the new Jim ORourke record). Id like to be able to say all of that, and I do think that, to a degree, but my main reason for not buying any magazines (though I read a few reviews online for free), is firmly cash based. Thats right kids, its art vs. commerce, and commerce always wins (a bonus point if you can name the reference). But Ive digressed, as I inevitably do, I didnt actually buy this copy of Careless Talk Costs Lives it was borrowed to me by a friend some days ago, though lord knows why he bought it, he doesnt listen to any of the bands in it, which is probably why he hasnt asked for it back its the one with the blurry, grainy photograph of the Dirtbombs singer on the front anyway. And reading it made me remember why I dont dip into music magazines all that much for the most part their feature on said Dirtbombs was, for example, appalling in its sycophancy, I thought, a sprawl of catch-all terms like raw visceral fun and essential even. Now dont get me wrong, I happen to quite like The Dirtbombs, Ive even got their new album, I liked their live thing for John Peel, but this feature was the kind of lazy dross that reminded me of when I used to read the NME the very fact that The Dirtbombs are getting radio play now, them being a years old garage rock combo is a prime example, perhaps, of just how much UK audiences are enamoured with The Strokes, The White Stripes et al, how The Dirtbombs, who as I understand it have been ploughing the same furrow for years, not worrying at all about success or any of that, feel about suddenly being en vogue, suddenly being part of the musical zeitgeist, was not addressed. Instead it was four or five tiresome pages of the bands rock and roll excesses and how great they are. Pity. It got worse though, as I read on, Careless Talk Costs Lives thinks enough of itself to frequently slag off rival publications, most frequently The NME and The Wire, which annoyed me really it called The NME a mouthpiece for authority and The Wire pretentious, both of which, I suppose, are fair enough criticisms, perhaps not ones I myself would use because I think you have to appreciate that both magazines are made for a certain demographic, and with that in mind, they dont do all that badly. It does sound a bit silly though, coming from another music mag, especially one that, content-wise, seems to sit between the two, featuring bands that are a bit more leftfield than the ones that make the NME, but ignoring anything that might be jazz or modern classical or improvised. And it also sounded a bit silly when Careless Talk employed a style not that dissimilar to its hated rivals, so we got some snotty NME fawning sensationalism in the Dirtbombs article, coupled with some Q style this is what (dad)rock is all about type stuff, as well as the classic witty NME perfunctory put-down, I believe chief careless talker Everett True reviews the new Lee Scratch Perry record simply with the word whatever. How fantastically punk rock of him. But there was also the kind of snotty, Wire style pretension in lots of the reviews, as well as the laborious, Wire style laborious, strained, blokey type reviews in abundance. I wasnt much impressed really. Another qualm was their continual derision of Radiohead, but there wasnt any substance to it (they do it to a couple of other bands too, but Radiohead came up the most times I think). I like Radiohead, but I certainly dont think theyre infallible, and Im yet to see a serious piece on their failings, glib put-downs just dont cut it, surely a magazine that wants to rise above the NMEs pettiness should be avoiding such witless quips, they just arent going to convince anyone. Their dislike for Radiohead seemed to be solely based on the fact that the band were successful, and again, surely a magazine that wants to rise above the NMEs pettiness should be avoiding the frankly stupid assertion that being in the charts = being crap. I think the idea of the magazine is a return to the DIY aesthetics and realness of fanzines, but in reality it seemed to occupy a territory that has the worst bits of fanzines (unexplained dislike for certain bands, fabulous praise for others, sneering, hints that the writers think theyre the coolest people on earth), combined with the worst bits of the bigger magazines. Not a fun read at all really. I certainly wont be buying it in the future, not that I bought it this time, but still I wrote that a while ago, but neglected to send it, I think because it contains too much negativity, and I thought I needed to balance it out with something a bit more upbeat. The new edition of Careless Talk has since come out and I believe it has the sprightly Conor Oberst, of Bright Eyes fame on the cover. I hastily glanced through it yesterday in HMV, and had a quick read of an email interview they did with Hefner, one or two things struck me about the article, firstly, that the writer accused Hefners competition of being either too old (Pulp), or too shit (Belle and Sebastian). Now not only is this the kind of childish dig I was bemoaning earlier, but this article is followed directly (on the same page even) with a piece written by none other than Stuart Murdoch! Perhaps they arent all that keen on Stuarts writing and are trying to get him to quit, or perhaps this is Careless Talk at its fiery best, with diverse and even contradictory opinions vying for space, a truly multi-faceted publication. Whichever, putting the two articles together like that did strike me as churlish, and if I were Stuart I might be a bit offended. The other, and probably more important thing that struck me about the Hefner article was an acute sense of déjà vu Im sure Ive read it somewhere before on the net, and I remembered that when (if?) I read it before; the interesting bit of the article is Darren Hayman talking about his song writing technique. Darren regards himself as a professional writer, you see, writing is his job, and that his songs come from lots of hard work rather than flashes of inspiration. This did disappoint me a bit, because it takes the magic away from Hefners songs, we expect people we admire to be spontaneous and brilliant all the time - as they are in whatever it is we admire them for (perhaps this is what celebrities mean by the pressures of fame), and rarely do we acknowledge the toil that has gone into their art. I always pictured Darren, post coital, scribbling his grubby thoughts on the back of a taxi card with a chewed biro, another paean to being unable to distinguish between love and sex. Seeing the real truth in front of me - that he probably spends more time sat in front of a piano, notebook in hand than he does chatting up girls, was odd, we want our rock stars to live the dream dont we? And although if, prior to reading the article, I wouldve really thought about it, I would have admitted to myself that a lot more work went into Hefner songs than youd think, having Darren himself admit it is like him breaking the magicians code. Two more, similar images have entered my head whilst I was thinking about all that, both from comedians incidentally, the first is from me reading an article about Harry Hill, it might have been an interview with his wife actually, and she was saying that he spends hours and hours every day on his comedy, that he has books of the stuff, a whole room full of books on comedy and comedians. And though Id always thought that there was a sort of deliberateness to Harry Hills stuff, seeing it put like that somehow makes his comedy less funny because half the reason we enjoy stuff like that is that it seems spontaneous. The other thing I was thinking about was a TV thing I saw, which had Paul Whitehouse (of Fast Show fame), and he was saying that he hardly ever laughs at comedy anymore, since he became a comedy writer, that sometimes hell see things and hell be able to say Yeah, thats funny. In a detracted sort of way, but comedy no longer affects him as it used to. I found this terribly sad, that the thing he loves has been changed because of his knowledge of the process involved in creating it because he is so involved with this process, he is no longer able to fully enjoy the end product as much, or in the same way. I found this terribly sad, and I believe it was Oscar Wilde who wrote: Yet each man kills the thing he loves. And how true that is. But Darren Hayman, Harry Hill and Paul Whitehouse must have all thought, naively as I do that genius is not, to drag out the old cliché, 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration, but something more ethereal, that the universal truths that art strives for must be plucked from the air, rather than diligently laboured over. God, thats depressing isnt it? I promised something more upbeat didnt I? Well that comes in the form of all singing, all dancing, guitar jousting folk hipsters Belle and Sebastian, who I saw in London whenever it was, about this time last week. Lots of people have written well about the gig, so I wont go on about it too much, except to say that it was great and everything despite a few songs not coming off too well, blah blah blah. I was quite surprised though, when I got inside the venue, that it had been described, on more than one occasion as soulless since it actually wasnt too bad, certainly a vast improvement on the bland, squat Birmingham version of the academy. On the way there I met a medical student called Dave who was a bit lost like me, and once we got inside we shouted over the records that were playing enough for me to learn that he didnt recognise records by Hefner, The Velvet Underground, The Magnetic Fields or some others who Ive forgotten he didnt know all that much about music, which left me with very little to talk to him about, he didnt recognise String Bean Jean or the Only Ones song at the end either, nice guy though. I completely forgot to ask him if he was on the list though, I doubt it, since he completely forgot to ask me either. I had a lovely time anyway, and cheers to Hannah again for letting me stay at her gaff (I quite like the word gaff). Ill be off then - Kieran p.s. Kudos to whoever is taking Sinisters collective meanderings and relaying them back to us in the form of haikus, clever that, very Warholian. _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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