Neil Kulkarni’s shitty Tori Amos review and 90s music journalism in general

[Brundle-Fly]

Who remembers the regular NME (or was it MM?) letter writers John Connolly and Keith Flett? I see the latter is still going.

[Jockice]

Aye, Wells was in the SWP and was also a roadie for the Redskins.

I'm sure I haven't imagined this - my mate (the same one I was in the NME with) grew up in Epsom in Surrey, and claimed that Paul Heaton went to the same school for a time. Whether this was before or after his time in Sheffield I can't remember.

Yeah, his family did move down there from Sheffield so it is entirely possible. In Sheffield he went to the secondary school a few hundred metres from my house. Which wasn't the one I went to.

[Jockice]

Who remembers the regular NME (or was it MM?) letter writers John Connolly and Keith Flett? I see the latter is still going.

I've mentioned Connelly above. I believe he got banned in the end. I thought Flett was a Guardian regular rather than the NME though.

[Brundle-Fly]

I've mentioned Connelly above. I believe he got banned in the end. I thought Flett was a Guardian regular rather than the NME though.

So you did, I'm just reading this thread properly today without the haze of two bottles of Pinot.

[Jockice]

I did meet a couple of nice people in SWSS but they were very demanding and once you turn up to a couple of meetings, they try to hook you in and get you selling papers. They were always on at me to go to this meeting or that protest and coupled with my gran dying, a bad relationship with my housemates and trying to balance my course with being on the Student Union council, the Rock Soc committee and various other commitments just broke me, and it got to the point where I had to learn to say no and that I didn't have to be involved in EVERYTHING EVER.

Yeah, I used to get pressurised to join, go on protests etc. But I for the most part resisted. And now (again) my two SWP anecdotes.

!) Our two union reps at work were both SWP members and one lunchtime convinced me to go on a protest. Something about a BNP member having a job that allowed him to access people's addresses if I remember correctly. I was there when I spotted some members of the RCP who I also knew coming across the road. That's nice I thought. A bit of unity for once. Then realised that they'd turned up to protest against the protest. Real life People's Front Of Judea/Judean People's Front stuff. Splitters.

2) I met a lovely young lady one evening and I even managed to sort out a sort of date. A rarity in those days. However, that night I'd also sort of said I'd go to a talk organised by the SWP. So I told the union rep about it. Hie response: "Bring her along!" You, what ****, you are joking aren't you? He wasn't: "After all, you don't want to go out with a Tory, do you?" Well not particularly but nor do I want my first date to involve sitting in a draughty hall with about a dozen other people talking about the evils of capitalism. In the end there was no date, as she blew me out in advance and that was that. I didn't go to the sodding meeting either though.

[Jockice]

So you did, I'm just reading this thread properly today without the haze of two bottles of Pinot.

I'll let you off. I missed this place during my exile.

[Catalogue of ills]

I've mentioned Connelly above. I believe he got banned in the end. I thought Flett was a Guardian regular rather than the NME though.

Flett used to write to quite a few publications. He was also in the SWfuckingP

[Jockice]

Flett used to write to quite a few publications. He was also in the SWfuckingP

I didn't know that. All I remember is that he had (and possibly still has) a beard. When I was a kid I used to think these people must be really interesting in real life to get all these letters with their views printed. Then I realised that they were probably either bored or obsessives. Or both.

And from working for a local newspaper, I realised that almost everything publishable got published (apparently except my letters to the NME and MM under my own name). We didn't print ones like the one that said: "Hitler was in many ways a bad man, but at least he wouldn't put up with all those gays on television,' but about 90% of the others would end up in the paper, even ones that had to have a task force of subeditors working on them to make sure they actually resembled the English language.

[Catalogue Trousers]

...in Quantick's entry, it mentioned that Swells 'liked to cosplay as a member of the working class'.

I can't say that I ever liked Quantick or Swells's work that much in the NME. I remember once owning a book which was half poetry by Attila The Stockbroker and half poetry by Seething Wells (as he styled himself in his poet guise). Swells's stuff was undeniably more elegant and bitter, but for humour and memorability Attila had an easy edge.

In the NME, both Swells and Quantick had a risible aura about them of that 'how do you do, fellow kids?' meme, both desperate to be seen as cool and hip. They both claimed to be big fans of the Hernandez Brothers, with very little evidence, and every so often did embarrassing lolrandom 'rebellious' comic strips in which Noddy surfed on a skyboard just like Chopper from Judge Dredd and harassed policemen. Fucking embarrassing.

[Kankurette]

Attila has a real warmth and love of humanity about him as well. He doesn't hate people, he just wants them to do better.

[Brundle-Fly]

I knew we lost Dele Fadele fairly recently but I've now only just discovered Tommy Udo died a year before Dele in 2019. There seems to be a high premature mortality rate in that profession.

[Kankurette]

Aw no, I had no idea about Tommy Udo. Dele, I knew about.

[mippy]

ETA: wasn't Swells middle-class himself? Some bloke did a list of the 100 Worst People on Twitter (Vincent Kompany was on there and I have no idea why, he seems pretty harmless compared to some of his City team mates) and in Quantick's entry, it mentioned that Swells 'liked to cosplay as a member of the working class'.

The guy who's Amos review was posted upthread did that. He had "beef" with Swells somehow, presumably for being more successful.

[mippy]

I did work experience at IPC in 1999 and am pretty sure I saw Swells, in a Stars In Your Eyes tee, in the lift. Deffo saw Bem Knowles, who I recognised from Smash Hits' Indie corner.

[Jockice]

In the NME, both Swells and Quantick had a risible aura about them of that 'how do you do, fellow kids?' meme, both desperate to be seen as cool and hip. They both claimed to be big fans of the Hernandez Brothers, with very little evidence, and every so often did embarrassing lolrandom 'rebellious' comic strips in which Noddy surfed on a skyboard just like Chopper from Judge Dredd and harassed policemen. Fucking embarrassing.

I was once sitting near MM's Paul Lester in a pub. He didn't have a clue who I was (indeed, why should he?) but he was really giving it the big I am, telling his companions how he could make or break an act and it was such an enormous responsibility. I just silently sneered. That's probably why he 'made it' and I didn't though. I just never had the necessary arrogance and ambition.

[dr beat]

Interesting.  For seasoned CMP listeners that might confirm the hypothesis of the Finnish bloke who befriended Taylor Parkes.

[The Culture Bunker]

Swells was well before my time - my main memory of his writing was in some magazine that I can't remember, where he claimed TATU were the new millennium's version of Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Even as a 20 year old yokel, I saw that for the load of old shite it was.

[Pauline Walnuts]

I was once sitting near MM's Paul Lester in a pub.

Paul Lester? Who are Dey?

[Jockice]

Who?

He was better known for playing the part of Oliver Twist as a child.

(Apparently he's now editor of Record Collector magazine. But what I remember him for best is how during the Britpop boom he wrote a dreadful cash-in book on Pulp. It is truly appalling).

[Kankurette]

TATU, who were fake lesbians managed by a nonce.

[Brundle-Fly]

I met Edwin Pouncey AKA Savage Pencil a few years ago. I always liked his stuff as he often tackled the experimental end of rock music. He was running a music/ movie memorabelia store off Charing X Road. It's gone now, which is a shame.

[Jean-Luc Prickhard]

That's probably why he 'made it' and I didn't though. I just never had the necessary arrogance and ambition.

Was he also boring as fuck?

[Jockice]

Was he also boring as fuck?

Not as much as me. But we can take that as a given, can't we?

PS, nice try at provocation. Didn't work last time and won't work now. Don't know who you are or what your problem is with me, and strangely I don't particularly care either. Now why don't you toddle off back to the ''posting pictures of women who are out of your league and making  sexist comments about them under a veil of irony' thread again? See ya!

[mr. logic]

Quite interested to hear more about hip-hop magazines and their role in the deaths of 2Pac and Biggie. I know Vibe carried a famous interview with Puffy saying inadvisable stuff, but what about the The Source? Were they just failing to acknowledge the danger of what was going on, or was it something specific?

[jamiefairlie]

TATU, who were fake lesbians managed by a nonce.

Ahead of their time.

[pigamus]

Two fake lesbians, managed by a nonce
Two fake lesbians, managed by a nonce
And if one fake lesbian, should fall upon her bonce
There'd be...

[Astronaut Omens]

Quite interested to hear more about hip-hop magazines and their role in the deaths of 2Pac and Biggie. I know Vibe carried a famous interview with Puffy saying inadvisable stuff, but what about the The Source? Were they just failing to acknowledge the danger of what was going on, or was it something specific?

Broadly the issue is why a small and largely personal feud between only a few people had to be framed as 'East Coast vs West Coast' at all, when most New York rappers had no affiliation whatsoever to Bad Boy/Biggy/Puffy and the same with LA rappers and Tupac/Suge Knight/Death Row.
With that point in mind, the Source do share some of the blame for calling the incident's 'Hip Hop's Civil War' on their cover, and certainly, their awards ceremony in 1995 was where things started to go seriously wrong. But from what I've read, it might be fair to say they didn't do anything as bad as the Vibe magazine piece you already mentioned.

This article is a pretty good retrospective of the situation by a Vibe journalist, with a heavy focus on that piece:
https://www.complex.com/music/2016/02/vibe-1996-east-coast-vs-west-coast-cover
BUT, to me this piece downplays the significance of a couple of their other pieces- e.g. the April 1995 interview with Tupac, which, slightly obliquely, implies Biggy and Puffy's responsibility for the incident where Tupac had been shot- I think this was one of the times where the journalists crossed the line from just commentating or slightly hyping up a story to being an active agent in the story- I don't think they should have run this article.
https://www.vibe.com/features/editorial/tupac-april-1995-cover-story-ready-to-live-686969/

[Jockice]

Interesting.  For seasoned CMP listeners that might confirm the hypothesis of the Finnish bloke who befriended Taylor Parkes.

I haven't heard that one. I'm an occasional not seasoned CMP listener. So do tell me more.

[Jockice]

Broadly the issue is why a small and largely personal feud between only a few people had to be framed as 'East Coast vs West Coast' at all, when most New York rappers had no affiliation whatsoever to Bad Boy/Biggy/Puffy and the same with LA rappers and Tupac/Suge Knight/Death Row.
With that point in mind, the Source do share some of the blame for calling the incident's 'Hip Hop's Civil War' on their cover, and certainly, their awards ceremony in 1995 was where things started to go seriously wrong. But from what I've read, it might be fair to say they didn't do anything as bad as the Vibe magazine piece you already mentioned.

This article is a pretty good retrospective of the situation by a Vibe journalist, with a heavy focus on that piece:
https://www.complex.com/music/2016/02/vibe-1996-east-coast-vs-west-coast-cover
BUT, to me this piece downplays the significance of a couple of their other pieces- e.g. the April 1995 interview with Tupac, which, slightly obliquely, implies Biggy and Puffy's responsibility for the incident where Tupac had been shot- I think this was one of the times where the journalists crossed the line from just commentating or slightly hyping up a story to being an active agent in the story- I don't think they should have run this article.
https://www.vibe.com/features/editorial/tupac-april-1995-cover-story-ready-to-live-686969/

Interesting stuff. Thanks for posting.

[Dr Rock]

Remember when Paul Lester reckoned all the best music was the stuff by young women he liked to wank over?