Sinister: "Peckham: A Piss-poor Prospect"

[Nick.Dastoor at xxx.uk]

When I was looking for Simon Reynolds's website, I came across this, which made
me laugh:

"But already this year we're hearing great pop singles again - The Telescopes'
"To Kill A Slow Girl Walking" EP could quite easily make it onto Radio l,
Birdland are there, so are And Why Not?"

It's from Steve Sutherland in 1990.  He certainly doesn't know his P!O!P! from
his P!A!P!, does he?

I also found this, in an account of 'The Rise And Fall Of British Alternative
Music' at http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~tewing/ukalt.html

"1986-1988 are fairly bleak years for UK alternative music - hordes of fine
individual records, no overall direction. Simon Reynolds' superb book Blissed
Out does a better job than I ever could summarising and criticising the various
trends in music at the high watermark of Thatcherism. His preferred brand of
rock was epic in sound and scope without being epic in terms of ego - the
'oceanic rock' of the excellent My Bloody Valentine and AR Kane. Some attempt
was being made to come to terms with hip-hop, though nothing terribly exciting
came of it. Velvets and Smiths fetishism continued to thrive, as did small-scale
indie music of the Sarah variety, often derided as twee and unambitious when all
it wanted to do was touch people's hearts like punk had, but with less
aggression and on a one-to-one basis instead of as part of a mass movement."

I'm a bit young to be into this whole 80's MM writers cult.  I was mainly an NME
boy anyway -  Melody Maker seemed to be into goth quite a lot.  I'm not tempted
by Simon Reynolds's vision of epic rock, I have to say.   Sounds a bit stinky.
My Bloody Valentine were good and everything, but I couldn't look my kids in the
eye and say "The trouble with music today is that it's not sufficiently epic in
sound and scope".

Anyway, good to see someone reminding us that 'twee' is a pejorative term.  I
have discovered that the Sinister village has the slogan 'A Twee Community'.
Hmm.  Doesn't have the same ring as 'Glasgow's Miles Better', or 'Hertfordshire:
A Progressive County'.  What was that one that Catford had?

Nick xx



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