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Not much. I've got a plank.
Anyway, on to Careless Talk Costs Lives: I finally got into town yesterday afternoon and picked up a copy from Selectadisc. By the time I was outside the shop, I'd flicked through it enough to make me turn around, go back in and buy another one. If I wasn't kinda broke and they'd had more, I would have bought several to send to people...
Good things - so many, but here are a few:
'A Connection Is Not Made'/"Where's Our Piece of the groovy world?" - just read it. Brilliant piece on misogyny/exclusion of women in the UK music press.
'The Nu Slutz' - great article on people like Peaches ("hell, there are no women like Peaches, she's a trailblazer"), Gonzales and The Moldy Peaches: "It's not clear who's doin' what to whom, and it doesn't matter. Strap-ons are a part of every hipster's sexual repertoire these days, right?"
The following line, by the author of the above, Miss AMP, and from a live review of Mercury Rev: "It's great that old people go to gigs. I hope when I'm old I go to gigs. Although hopefully by then I'll be sitting in the fucking ROYAL BOX with some cute boy virgin with his face between my thighs..."
Stuart Murdoch from Belle & Sebastian's tour journal of Brazil. Exactly how that sounds.
The prominent space given to the demo review section.
The magnificent Electrelane centre spread. Glorious. Uh, I think if I go on about Electrelane anymore than I already have here, they'll get scared and you'll get bored, so I'll leave it at that...
The fact that many of the pieces are written by other musicians - Mia from Electrelane interviews Kathleen Hanna and reviews some album as well, Tobi Vail (!) reviews Erase Errata, for starters - on one level it's depressing in that what it implies about the wider music press in the UK, but it's good to read.
The way it smells. Hard to explain this one, but Careless Talk Costs Lives smells like the zines you get in the post from cool peeps, not the slick wanky magazines you buy in shops that drop adverts for credit cards onto the floor when you pick them up.
The passion. The bile. The general attitude. "Why are you looking at this? Is it because you care? If not, then just fuck off."
Bad things:
The 'state of hip-hop' piece tries hard not to but still falls into an underground/commerical dichotomy.
The 'Why I Hate Corporate Indie' piece - way too obvious and slight. This could easily have been in the NME. There's a much longer, sharper, better version of this rant that any number of posters from this forum could have written.
The True Report - kind of an unnecessary indulgence to have a whole page and a half of this.
The cover. Actually I'm kinda divided on that one. Maybe I just dislike it cos it's Mogwai.
Mogawi. I still think that Mogwai come off as the most irritating, nasty little tossers imaginable in interviews. Ah well.
The occasional trying-too-hard/anti-pop vibe. Too many "we hate The Strokes! isn't that subversive?" moments.
BUT.
Overall, the bits that I disagree with in CTCL, the bits that wind me up - they wind me up in the way that the Melody Makes used to what to me was its height... They make me think, and want to argue fervently... They may even end up changing my mind... They don't make me curse myself for parting with the cash (as so often happens with the NME).
Anyway, anyone who can do should buy a copy of this. It's counting down from issue 12, and according to editor Everett True: "Issue one is our Year Zero: when we reach that number we will either have replaced the music press (and gone bi-weekly) or gone bust. Either way, we win." More here (but be warned, some of the people commenting on the first issue make comics fans on the net look clever *shudder*).
It's very necessary.
[ 10-02-2002: Message edited by: Flyboy ] |
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