Sinister: Hideous Inkie

[Michael Jones]

March.  Or die.

Curious goings-on this morning.  Found myself intercepted on an
escalator at London Bridge tube by John Sessions and Elkie Brooks;
forced into a cubicle, I was showered with sticky glitter and had my
neck tattooed with an LT symbol.  A goon with a face like fighting
geese and breath like used swabs filled my pockets with loose change
(as opposed to low-denomination coins all glued together), pressed
Deep Heat into my temples and made me stand on a podium next to 'Kid'
Jensen.  Disorientated and nauseous, I glimpsed a small gathering of
sour-faced children, waving tiny flags, while some kind of
triumphalist wincecore jazzbo honked away down to my left.  It
gradually became apparent that I was to be honoured as the trillionth
passenger on the Northern Line (Bank branch) and this was some kind
of presentation ceremony.  I got the vague impression I was supposed
to rummage through a sack of ping-pong balls for a special key, and
when I reached Moorgate I was to disembark and locate a prize-chest
filled with bubble-wrap.  Within a single poppable air-lozenge,
there'd be a micro-Travelcard entitling three acquaintances (they
were very clear on this - no-one I actually *liked*) and myself to
unlimited weekend access to the Executive SubTube - a network of
HiSpeed Slinks 2km beneath the city streets.  (Ever wonder why you
never see Anne Diamond or Joe Pasquale squeezing their be-Guccied
forms into a stuffed six-car at Hyde Park Corner?  Now you know...).

I'm off to Hackney Caldera (35 seconds from Deptford Fumarole) this
Sunday with a middle-aged divorcee from accounts called Deborah (or
Denise or something) from whom I once borrowed a stapler.  I feel
cheated somehow.

Brush away, brush away, brush away... the SR way.  How queer to see
the late-80s MM aesthetic revived as a permissible topic of
after-dinner conversation.  Of course, such banter never fell out of
favour in some postal districts.  I think it's important to remember
that the article PineFox liberally quoted was actually originally an
extended think-piece *in* MM.  Now, say what you like, but you don't
see anyone attempting that sort of analysis these days in the
weeklies, do you?  I don't think Johnny Cigarettes vomiting 500 words
on "Why we need another Clash" really counts.

I get the feeling that, before my time, NME was a vital force, riding
the punk torrents while MM laboured in the prog quagmire (I'm sure
you could go back further - NME thrilling over the latest R'n'B
imports, MM picking over trad-jazz LPs with an archivist's
exactitude).  By the time I was taking an interest, the post-Morley
NME seemed to have slipped into stultifying greyness (the Lamacq
years), while MM extolled everything vibrant and left-field*. 
Inevitably this led to yards of appalling daftness, gallons of
embarrassing overstatement and a barn-door target for their
near-neighbours' piss-taking.  I lapped it up like a thirsty kitten. 
In some small but significant way, Reynolds, Stubbs, Roberts and the
gang changed my notions of the pop experience, perhaps even the way I
listened.  Writing that was as superficially intoxicating, as
texturally tangy, as preposterous and audacious as the music it
celebrated.  What happened after SR hung up his IPC gloves is the
subject of my forthcoming tome, "Molko Looks Like a GIRL: Cessation
of Brain Stem Activity in the UK Music Press, 1994-98".  I blame the
Sutherlands.

(* But yes, as Nick D pointed out, The Cure were on the cover every
sixth issue and The Mission would habitually top all the readers'
polls.  Go figure.)

I can't swallow properly.  

Mike.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   +---+  Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list  +---+
   To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
   send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
   majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+
 +-+  "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper        +-+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+