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

Started by Kankurette, January 13, 2022, 10:36:26 AM

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sevendaughters

well let's take a look through Rock's Back Pages.

QuoteQUEER BASHING is back in fashion. It has become cool to hate homosexuals. In 'One In A Million' Axl Rose from Guns N' Roses — a band whose entire visual image is lifted from the high camp of The New York Dolls — sings "Immigrants and faggots/It makes no sense to me/They come to our country/And think they'll do as they please/Like start some mini-Iran/or spread some f—ing disease."

Get that? According to Axl 'immigrants' are stealing his country and faggots' spread disease. But no way — Axl tells us — does he hate blacks or gays.

[...]

White music journalists have let rap acts spew poisonous homophobia without so much as even a slapped wrist. Tone Loc told NME: "I don't see how a man can touch another man. I think it's absolutely gross. Absolutely. I don't even see how a man can be attracted to another man when you've got all these women out there with breasts, nice ass, eyes and pretty hair..."
Friend or Phobic? - Steven Wells, New Musical Express, 17 March 1990

Quote"It wasn't a fight down style but I did that in a dancehall once and this woman said 'Smiley Culture! I loved you but you're a racialist bastard!'"

"So I said. Why, why? I'm really astonished, y'know?

"'Cos that word!"

"In the end I find it's because p**i is a racialist word full stop. But I said — p**i is Pakistani! That's what I'm saying, that's how I writ it down!"

"Like, y'know, I couldn't write Pakistani 'cos it wouldn't rhyme so easy so I wrote p**i..."

Bouncing around in Smiley Culture's head is a word party which, filtered through his wordprocessor screen, enables him to explore concepts most 'poets' can only deal with with the aid of abstraction.

To refer to his craft and that of his hip hop counterparts as 'black music' is to practice a sloppy and archaic cultural apartheid. It is Smiley Culture's very English Englishness and the fact that he is a breathing bridge between that English and Black English English and Jamaican English and Black American English that make him such a radical proposition, even if he does occasionally come across like Ken Dodd.

"I like to be nice... niceness with everyone I know. I figure that's the best way to live. That's what we need in the world, more love, y'know?"

More mixin' and fixin', more like.
Smiley Culture: Word Party, Y'all, Steven Wells, New Musical Express, 22 November 1986

QuoteSALT 'N' PEPA, the female pop act 'discovered' in a New York department store, had tea with Mrs Thatcher last week. The Prime Minister asked the two "vivacious" rapettes for their opinion on the impending government legislation that will allow for the on-the-spot gassing of poll tax evaders, OAP hypothermia victims, the homeless and other terrorists.

The Prime Minister declared the duo's album, A Salt With A Deadly Pepa, a "real humdinger, a truly def 'pop' record and a shining example to young people everywhere. When these young women say 'push it' they don't mean drugs or unsafe sex, not by a long chalk, mateyboy!."

Ms Salt and Ms Pepa afterwards said that they had found Mrs Thatcher "enchanting".

No. A total lie. But it could have happened!

 

I ASKED THEM, I said: "Would you like to go for tea at Number 10 Downing Street with Mrs Thatcher?"

And Pepa, the noisy one with the poodle quiff said:

"Mrs Who?"

"Thatcher."

And Salt, the other one, said: "Who?"

So I said:

"Mrs Thatcher. The Prime Minister."

And Spinderella, the DJ one, asked:

"What's her first name?"

"Maggie." I said.

Do what! Are they taking the piss? No! Can you name the Prime Minister of Holland? (Dutch readers name the Prime Minister of Tobago). No! But still, these lasses, along with the Big Yin's epic linking of Apartheid to Britain's occupation of Northern Ireland and the TOTALLY BRILLIANT Fat Boys (with Chubby Checker!), were the best thing on at the Mandela celebration. But (and I think we knew this):

"We're just party-have-fun-have-a-good-time... we don't know many political people, we just have fun! But if we can help a cause like this cause and keep our image..."

Salt 'N' Pepa have been called the Mel & Kim of rap and that's not totally and utterly glib. They talk like accountants and PRs. Ask them if they think Whitney Houston has blanded out, gone soft, done a Jacko, joined The Cosby Show... and they say:

"Hey, if it's working for her and she's getting rich and getting everything she wants then that's her business. Opinions are like assholes, everbody has one."

Which is cool. But we expect our black and white minstrels to be a little bit spunky, bolshie, Mark E. Smithy, don't we? We do not expect them to sound like careers officers on Esctasy:

"There was this one girl, me and her used to hang out together at High School, and she sees me up there on stage and she says — Wait a minute! I can turn around too! She's just started and she's up there! So they find out what they do best and they start working on it. Like they envy me but I'm happy for them, you know what I mean?"

Yo! Eye of the Tiger! You too can have a career like mine! Like the politics of Public Enemy's noxious guru Farrakhan (of whom S&P have no opinion whatsoever) the pull-your-socks-up philosophy of S&P fits the experiences of many American blacks. It doesn't, however, fit the facts:

Despite the election of hundreds of black mayors, the appearance of many more black doctors, employers, lawyers and other professionals, unemployment amongst working class blacks in the US has increased both as a total and as a percentage of the total unemployed. The creation of a black middle class, Farrakhan's 'solution', the Cosby solution, has benefited nobody but the black middle class. Oh, but you shouldn't criticise! You're not black!
'Salt 'N' Pepa: Scratching with Thatcher', Steven Wells, New Musical Express, 9 July 1988

sweeper

Well, I don't understand the Salt n' Pepa one at all. Did they have tea with Thatcher or is he taking the piss? I have no idea what asking them about British politics is supposed to achieve. So that one has gone over my head.

Did he challenge Axl about his use of terms, or just write about it? Because I had an opinion about that song in whatever year it came out. I think most sentient beings did.

And did I misread the Smiley Culture bit or does he give him a pass for using the 'P' word?

sevendaughters

I just think they show him as more than the limited characterisation that has been put forward in this thread. I'm not asking you to like him or agree with him, that would be quite futile. He's interested in pop as a function of ideology, but also he likes to take the piss out of blandness, inoffensiveness, and liberal hypocrisy.

Beagle 2

I seem to remember PJ Harvey coming in for some stick in the 90s for her looks in the music press. Might have misremembered this but I think Select Magazine had some sort of end of year list and a snarky paragraph in there like "everyone saying PJ Harvey is 'not conventionally attractive?' Try not attractive at all" or something. Even as a horrible teenager I didn't get why it was okay to write stuff like that.

sweeper

Quote from: sevendaughters on January 13, 2022, 05:32:01 PMI just think they show him as more than the limited characterisation that has been put forward in this thread. I'm not asking you to like him or agree with him, that would be quite futile. He's interested in pop as a function of ideology, but also he likes to take the piss out of blandness, inoffensiveness, and liberal hypocrisy.

But it's his ideology, isn't it? Every time. Isn't the job to find out what the interviewee's ideology is and then explore that? Otherwise you're just berating people for not agreeing with you in advance. Which has no value or interest.

And does he give Smiley Culture a pass for using the 'P' word?

sevendaughters

it was a deliberate juxtaposition, sweeper - one article where he points out white hypocrisy whilst indulging in it himself.


I find the CM podcast problematic for that reason - talked about it before in the context of Price's Heavenly review.
QuoteAs for Kulkarni, Parkes and Price, they all come across as genuinely good people on the Chart Music podcast, and I daresay they regret some of the things the wrote in their igneous '90s pomp.

I have sympathy for this, but at the same time if they're doing a podcast mocking people's aesthetic choices from 30 years ago while not acknowledging that at the same time they themselves were making horrendously bad professional judgements, then I dunno if they're operating from the same conditions of integrity they seem to demand from others.

chveik

Quote from: sevendaughters on January 13, 2022, 05:32:01 PMI just think they show him as more than the limited characterisation that has been put forward in this thread. I'm not asking you to like him or agree with him, that would be quite futile. He's interested in pop as a function of ideology, but also he likes to take the piss out of blandness, inoffensiveness, and liberal hypocrisy.

you can enjoy slagging off bands (i do) but there's nothing particularly subversive about it. when you consider everything as politics, nothing truly is. the middle class detestation was just an expression of their own self-loathing. i bet you'd struggle to find a genuine good piece of writing that hasn't aged dreadfully.

dr beat

CMP doesn't mock. It may come across as irreverent, but theres always an analytical focus underpinning the jocularity.  As Taylor Parkes has said, it's less nostalgia more like military history.

dr beat

Quote from: sweeper on January 13, 2022, 05:16:23 PMWell, I don't understand the Salt n' Pepa one at all. Did they have tea with Thatcher or is he taking the piss? I have no idea what asking them about British politics is supposed to achieve. So that one has gone over my head.

Did he challenge Axl about his use of terms, or just write about it? Because I had an opinion about that song in whatever year it came out. I think most sentient beings did.

And did I misread the Smiley Culture bit or does he give him a pass for using the 'P' word?

By way of context  wasnt the late 1980s the height of the infamous NME hip hop wars?

Kankurette

Quote from: Beagle 2 on January 13, 2022, 05:42:32 PMI seem to remember PJ Harvey coming in for some stick in the 90s for her looks in the music press. Might have misremembered this but I think Select Magazine had some sort of end of year list and a snarky paragraph in there like "everyone saying PJ Harvey is 'not conventionally attractive?' Try not attractive at all" or something. Even as a horrible teenager I didn't get why it was okay to write stuff like that.
That's the exact kind of thing I'm getting at. Criticising someone's politics? Fine. Saying the music sucks donkey balls and you'd rather be bummed by a barbed tigercock than listen to the Bluetones? Fine. Going on about how a musician is ugly and/or fat? Shitty. Swells managed to rant about Belle & Sebastian without calling Murdoch ugly or Isobel fat or whatever.

ETA: the Salt 'n' Pepa one is him having a go for being a bit bland in an interview, I guess. And not wanting to talk about politics.

sweeper

Quote from: dr beat on January 13, 2022, 06:44:29 PMBy way of context  wasnt the late 1980s the height of the infamous NME hip hop wars?

Was that the time when paid journos became incapable of completing a single coherent thought?

sweeper

Quote from: Kankurette on January 13, 2022, 06:47:25 PMETA: the Salt 'n' Pepa one is him having a go for being a bit bland in an interview, I guess. And not wanting to talk about politics.

It later became apparent that they did have political opinions, and used their music to express them.

Was it the sense of shame they felt at being 'stung' by 'Swells' that precipitated that move?

Or was Wells just not capable of successfully interviewing a subject?

dr beat

From what I understand the emergence of hip hop totally divided the NME ranks, some passionately supporting it while others were vehemently  critical.  I dont know what side Swells was on, if any. A bit before my time.

Rizla

What was it Frank Zappa said about rock journalism?

"Writing about music is shit for cunts, that wanker Lester Bangs has a lot to answer for, don't get me started on Nick Kent, I mean at least Charles Shaar Murray comes across as endearingly sincere - checkout his Bob Marley pieces, fuuuck me...but some half-literate haircut spunking on about it as if it all means something, miss me with that shit, bro...of course half of them are "in bands" themselves, as in they could do your job but you couldn't do theirs etc, I mean Neil Kulkarni's most feted article is about crisps, what the fuck does that tell you?"

dr beat


Kankurette


Ballad of Ballard Berkley


dr beat

Quote from: bgmnts on January 13, 2022, 05:00:40 PMi dont care or know anything about music writing

Thank you for your application to be Chief Music Editor at the Guardian.  We've checked what school you went to, and I'm pleased to say - you're in!

Jockice

Quote from: sweeper on January 13, 2022, 02:09:55 PMYes, there was a lot of this. 'What's up with you? Just put on an old-fashioned suit and stop murning.'


To be fair to Russell, in his autobiography he says that because he is serious-looking (it's that face and those eyes) a lot of people assumed that he was a Richey Manic-style tortured artist and he got a lot of letters from that type of fan. Which to anyone who knows him (like - ahem - me) shows how deceptive looks can be. He's not lacking in empathy but nor is he the sort who is likely to gush. He's basically a blunt Yorkshire bloke. Not quite Geoff Boycott but along those lines.

Didn't he also say that Kurt Cobain should have realised what being a major rock star entailed and learnt to deal with it? Which is quite ironic as he quit Pulp at the height of their success basically because he couldn't cope with it.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: Jockice on January 13, 2022, 07:36:16 PMDidn't he also say that Kurt Cobain should have realised what being a major rock star entailed and learnt to deal with it? Which is quite ironic as he quit Pulp at the height of their success basically because he couldn't cope with it.

He did, yes. In the very article that was shared on the previous page. The irony of his comment wasn't lost on me either.

Catalogue Trousers

It's possibly the Mandela Effect at work, but I'm sure that I remember a piece in the NME in the early 90s that took the piss out of their own journalism something rotten. It was called something like 'A Day In The Life Of An NME Journalist' - all that I recall correctly is that the earliest, two middle, and final entries ran to the effect of:

1100. Have heard this brilliant new indie band called Birdland. I'm gonna make them the Single Of The Week.

1300. Not so keen on Birdland now. They're far too mainstream. Everyone's heard of them.

1400 Am writing an article. It's titled 'Birdland? Birdshite, More Like'

0000 Have just heard this brilliant band on the Peel show. Birdland. Must write a big piece on them tomorrow.

the science eel

Quote from: sweeper on January 13, 2022, 05:52:16 PMBut it's his ideology, isn't it? Every time. Isn't the job to find out what the interviewee's ideology is and then explore that?

not with narcissistic journos like most you got in those rags - even at their peak.

Bangs was another one - the journo WAS the story, half the time

sweeper

I like reading Bangs, but I can't make anything out of Wells half the time.

That's probably what it came down to, isn't it? If you could write charismatically and enough people enjoyed the way you wrote, it probably didn't didn't matter too much about the actual content or the ethics. Some people liked Wells' hysterical style, and I suppose that's enough. It's certainly allowed them to overlook some questionable content.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Yes. Bangs was charismatic, funny and clearly quite sensitive, whereas Wells just came across as a didactic nuisance. He probably had his heart in the right place, but ALL CAPS ranting is a chore.

KennyMonster

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on January 13, 2022, 03:22:09 PMAs for Kulkarni, Parkes and Price, they all come across as genuinely good people on the Chart Music podcast, and I daresay they regret some of the things the wrote in their igneous '90s pomp.

I'm not so sure about that.

Pricey was one of the ones on CM I knew, because he's been a talking head on some music docs I'd watched.

One of the early CM Podcasts had him boasting about a piece he wrote, it was a review of a Sultans of Ping (FC) gig or album where he had basically said how he wanted to skull fuck the band to death.

This was him proudly boasting about about it in the last few years on the podcast.

What a prat, that was something he still sees as an achievement to this day.

What a waste of a life, punching down in the most pathetic way.
It's soured my view of everything he has said since on CM, even he comes out with something eloquent that I agree wit I know its just by chance, the random sounds his gob has formed are just appearing to sound like intelligent speech.

Three Stars.

Brundle-Fly

'punching down on Sultans Of Ping (FC)'

A criticism I never thought I would be reading in 2022.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley