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

[Catalogue of ills]

Ta for clarifying. Swells was an idiot. Possibly a nice man IRL for all I know, but his writing persona (which presumably reflected part of who he was) never failed to grate. For someone who was so in thrall to the punk ethos, he had a major blind-spot whenever he was confronted with genuine 'outsiders' such as bis.

I spent a day with Swells once, and he was perfectly nice company. This is possibly more surprising given that he was clearly disappointed in us (me and my mate) but didn't get nasty or mardy about it. He was right to be disappointed, but it was ironic that a man embedded in the world of persona journalism was let down by a couple of young lads not living up to their written selves. He was quite charming to my mum and said "I bet you were a bobbysockser" (I still don't know what this is, maybe it's a heinous insult).

I think he was just bored by most music and constantly wanted something unexpected to zoom in from beyond his peripheral vision and genuinely excite him, which is a pretty good outlook all things considered.

He didn't stink either, which was one of the main complaints about him. Maybe he'd just had his weekly bath

[Jockice]

Ballad, yes he was, and he never shut up about it. And she was in her teens at the time. He had this big thing about Bis being Tories after he did an interview where he asked some very leading questions and tried to get them to talk politics, when they clearly weren't interested, and one of the lads made some innocuous comment about John Major and Swells blew it out of proportion and made out that they were Tories when they'd said nothing of the kind.

For some reason I can very clearly reading that interview and finding it most unfair, even though I wasn't a Bis fan.

Swells was all over the place with his politics anyway. I remember him adoring The Spice Girls until Geri said something positive about Maggie Thatcher and he seemed to be shocked that they weren't left-wingers. And when he interviewed Status Quo he didn't ask them about playing South Africa - because he'd grown up with their music.

He could be good sometimes - the Happy Mondays interview that almost brought the band down was a masterpiece I thought (and I really liked the Mondays) but sometimes he was... well... annoying.

[Jockice]

bis were a band that he wrongly identified as being part of the twee phenomenon, which he hated. indie-schmindie i guess. here's his take on Los Campesinos: https://thequietus.com/articles/00315-put-thumb-sucking-kidults-los-campesinos-in-guatanamo-bay

He did similarly scathing interviews with Talulah Gosh and Lush much earlier from what I remember.

[Kankurette]

Miki Berenyi shoved him down a flight of stairs, so he clearly must have pissed her off.

[Jockice]

Miki Berenyi shoved him down a flight of stairs, so he clearly must have pissed her off.

When I did a phone interview with her I actually woke her up yet she didn't hunt me down and injure me. I was just an amateur though.

[willbo]

What's strange to me is they're changing view of classic metal. In the 90s, critics I read had utter disgust for bands like Maiden - their spotty, "virgin" fans, how "inbred" the band looked, etc. Now Lemmy is a national treasure and Maiden, Ozzy, etc are at worst seen as affectionate eccentric relatives.

Yeah I don't miss the 90s with how cruel, spiky and sneering all the humorous reviews and comments were. I feel like every era has its "tone" and the 90s was all about being sharp, cool, cutting people down, liking Tarantino and Trainspotting (not a bad thing in itself, but we didn't need a nation of men trying to act like the characters in the films), listening to Noel from Oasis swear about how crap and slaggy the Spice Girls were, etc.

[sutin]

like I remember he ripped one of my favourite bands as 'just playing one note and turning to each other and smugly smiling for a minute'

Pavement are one of your favourite bands?

[Kankurette]

And then nu-metal became trendy and MM turned into indie Kerrang! I never got the 'metal fans are all spotty virgins' thing either. Most metalheads I knew had decent sex lives, for a start.

[Jockice]

Perhaps so, sweeper, but NME wasn't Swells Weekly, and he routinely used to get mocked in their pages by the likes of Beaumont and others. It was a discourse at its best rather than a didactic, and all the better for it.

Mark Beaumont! Now there's one writer I really couldn't stand. Can't even remember why but I thought he was an utter twat.

[sutin]

And then nu-metal became trendy and MM turned into indie Kerrang! I never got the 'metal fans are all spotty virgins' thing either. Most metalheads I knew had decent sex lives, for a start.

Absolutely. When I was a teen in the '90s it was the indie lot who moped around at home, the metallers were out partying and living life.

[chveik]

And then nu-metal became trendy and MM turned into indie Kerrang! I never got the 'metal fans are all spotty virgins' thing either. Most metalheads I knew had decent sex lives, for a start.

'X group doesn't like X music because they don't get laid' is a very common trope in music criticism, it doesn't matter if they do get laid in reality, they are spiritually virgins. i have no idea where and when it started. another form of self-loathing possibly, music journos aren't exactly known for their sexual accomplishments.

[Kankurette]

That makes no sense, but then neither does most music criticism.

[bgmnts]

The prog rock lads are the virgins surely? Can't be more than about 4 women into prog.

[Kankurette]

Who's getting the most pussy? Hip-hop fans? People who listen to anything approved by Bobby Gillespie?

[willbo]

And then nu-metal became trendy and MM turned into indie Kerrang! I never got the 'metal fans are all spotty virgins' thing either. Most metalheads I knew had decent sex lives, for a start.

I knew metal and star trek fans who had relationships but were unpleasant sarcastic nerds, metal and star trek fans who were nice and popular, ones who were gay, ones who were nerdy single guys. So what? They still didn't deserve the shit they got then. Some of the rhetoric against metal and sci fi fans in the 90s was really extreme, like "cool" people wanted to kill them or something. I read a lot of in video game mags too...Charlie Brooker's nastier "siblings"...

[willbo]

music journos aren't exactly known for their sexual accomplishments.

except Neil Strauss of course

[the science eel]

and ANDREW COLLINS

[Kankurette]

I knew metal and star trek fans who had relationships but were unpleasant sarcastic nerds, metal and star trek fans who were nice and popular, ones who were gay, ones who were nerdy single guys. So what? They still didn't deserve the shit they got then. Some of the rhetoric against metal and sci fi fans in the 90s was really extreme, like "cool" people wanted to kill them or something. I read a lot of in video game mags too...Charlie Brooker's nastier "siblings"...

Yeah, I always used to hate the virgin jokes (in the music press and at school) because I had a huge complex about being a virgin. When I was 11, for fuck's sake. I lost my virginity the way I did, to an ugly stranger in a club toilet without protection, precisely because I did have a complex about it and thought I'd be more popular if I'd been fucked.

[Wacky Homemade Badges]

They did used to do a thing where once every few years there'd be an article about mental illness or sexual health, then they'd spend a fortnight patting themselves on the back in the letters page before getting back to glamorising self-harm to thirteen year olds.

[Jockice]

They did used to do a thing where once every few years there'd be an article about mental illness or sexual health, then they'd spend a fortnight patting themselves on the back in the letters page before getting back to glamorising self-harm to thirteen year olds.

This was the 80s but the NME did an article about youth suicide which ended up   being the cover piece. I think it had the paper's lowest sales figures for that decade or something.

Lawrence wasn't too happy as there was a big feature on Felt in that week's edition (the legendary one where he doesn't let the interviewer use his toilet) which was apparently meant to feature him on the front but was bumped off at the last minute. Probably because he didn't let the interviewer use his toilet.

Anyway a few years later I met Lucy O'Brien, the journo who did the youth suicide article. She was going out with a friend of a friend at the time. Of course as soon as I heard her name I had to mention it to her. She looked pained, like anyone would if that was the first thing anyone remembered about you.

I've never met her since but she has written several books and it turned out she'd known a cousin of mine since their teens (they were both in Southampton's punk scene and members of bands, which in my cuz's case ended up being The Men They Couldn't Hang. After he'd left) so I am Facebook friends with her now. I haven't mentioned youth suicide to her again though.

[Catalogue of ills]

He did similarly scathing interviews with Talulah Gosh and Lush much earlier from what I remember.

Isn't this illustrative of editorial decisions at the time? There's no way Steven Wells was going to do favourable interviews with either band, so it smacks of "let's send Swells to interview them, should be fun". Inevitable to some extent I guess, in that no-one wants to read a publication where all the interviews are fawning fan pieces, although Wells frequently overdid it. That said, Maconie's pieces in the late 80s were generally very positive and I remember enjoying them at the time.

[Jockice]

Isn't this illustrative of editorial decisions at the time? There's no way Steven Wells was going to do favourable interviews with either band, so it smacks of "let's send Swells to interview them, should be fun". Inevitable to some extent I guess, in that no-one wants to read a publication where all the interviews are fawning fan pieces, although Wells frequently overdid it. That said, Maconie's pieces in the late 80s were generally very positive and I remember enjoying them at the time.

Indeed. He went over the top about bands he loved as well as those he hated too. It was his thing and I enjoyed it sometimes, although not always. The likes of Maconie were more...for want of a better word...balanced and like Swells stuff sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

I'm interested in your meeting with Swells incidentally, because you live in my patch. How did that come about? Were you in a band or an author or something?

[Catalogue of ills]

Indeed. He went over the top about bands he loved as well as those he hated too. It was his thing and I enjoyed it sometimes, although not always. The likes of Maconie were more...for want of a better word...balanced and like Swells stuff sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

I'm interested in your meeting with Swells incidentally, because you live in my patch. How did that come about? Were you in a band or an author or something?

I wasn't in your patch at the time, and it's not that interesting I'm afraid. Essentially, me and a mate were very into the US noise scene, particularly the Amphetamine Reptile and Glitterhouse output, and I'd taken to writing a lot of excitable letters to the NME about it while my mate was busy stuffing the shelves of the Our Price he worked in with albums by the God Bullies and the like, which I guess was relatively subversive and anti-corporate. Swells liked the sound of this and asked me to send him my phone number and then he came to my (parents') house and did an interview, then we went to my mate's branch of Our Price and did some photos and stuff. This resulted in a double page spread, using us as a vehicle to promote the bands we were into.

We weren't nearly as rebellious or anarchic as he was expecting, just a couple of Home Counties kids excited about some American bands, and while he did make it known that he was disappointed, he was quite gentle about it. And kudos to him for doing something as daft as getting a double page spread into what was then a high profile publication, featuring two nobodies like us.

[Jockice]

I wasn't in your patch at the time, and it's not that interesting I'm afraid. Essentially, me and a mate were very into the US noise scene, particularly the Amphetamine Reptile and Glitterhouse output, and I'd taken to writing a lot of excitable letters to the NME about it while my mate was busy stuffing the shelves of the Our Price he worked in with albums by the God Bullies and the like, which I guess was relatively subversive and anti-corporate. Swells liked the sound of this and asked me to send him my phone number and then he came to my (parents') house and did an interview, then we went to my mate's branch of Our Price and did some photos and stuff. This resulted in a double page spread, using us as a vehicle to promote the bands we were into.

We weren't nearly as rebellious or anarchic as he was expecting, just a couple of Home Counties kids excited about some American bands, and while he did make it known that he was disappointed, he was quite gentle about it. And kudos to him for doing something as daft as getting a double page spread into what was then a high profile publication, featuring two nobodies like us.

Ah right. It's just that I used to do some music writing in S Yorks (local paper stuff mainly. I did the odd bit for Kerrang and suchlike but never 'made it' into the top tier, not that I really tried) and wondered if I might know you. It's still an interesting story though. Thanks for that.

[Astronaut Omens]

For all their faults, UK music journalists never did anything quite as daft as the US hip-hop magazines did in the 90s- their hyping-up of the East Coast- West Coast feud really escalated the violence in that situation. 

It might be the many hip-hop related deaths in the US that changed things for me, but I think the Swells-type rant would be a bit less enjoyable just because there seems a bit more hate and a bit more violence in the real world, and the idea that music and music criticism are these harmless and ineffectual places where you can be personally insulting to people and there's no possibility of any serious consequences just seems a bit deluded.  That style just doesn't work anymore,
e.g. a few years ago, maybe 2015 a friend of mine, I guess attempting a Swellsy style of joke, posted up on his facebook page "I have all 3 members of  (band name) in front of me but only one bullet, what should I do?!". That's exactly the kind of quip that worked on the Mister Agreeable page in Melody Maker in 1992 where it didn't really seem plausible that somebody might really think like that; it seemed a really, really stupid thing to say today.

[KennyMonster]

Sad to read the hateful stuff Swells appears to have written.

In the late 90s/early 00s he was my favourite writer, he like the bands I liked (mainly The Clash, Asian Dub Foundation and The 25th Of May), had good (left wing) politics and wrote comedy for this Morris bloke I liked.
He seemed to be the only one who had anything to say.
I even bought his (penny dreadful) novel.

[Pauline Walnuts]

I lost my virginity the way I did, to an ugly stranger in a club toilet

Hey, I've got feeling you know!

I think the Virgin abuse was only aimed a males, wasn't it? That's how I took it, so to speak.

[Catalogue of ills]

It's annoying that there were a lot of good writers who it seems are harder to remember than the more mouthy or shouty ones. In the 80s and 90s I had to carefully choose which music I was going to spend my farm boy's wages on (in the absence of love), so a well written review would help steer me to something worth buying. I remember a particularly good review of Virus Meadow by And Also The Trees, which prompted me to buy it, and which it turned out had described it perfectly. No idea who wrote that though.

[Wacky Homemade Badges]

On a more positive tip, a lot of the Smash Hits stuff posted in the TOTP thread is really great, capturing the joy created by great music and the annoyance created by stuff you don't like. And today seems a lot cleverer than the more studenty MM thing of mentioning Guy Debord for no reason while writing about a gig by The Charlatans.

[Custard]

How long til Neil K turns up on here? He'll see his blog is being linked to, wonder who's talking about him, and bish bosh a new CaB member (with hair)!

I like him on Chart Music, but I do think that Tori Amos article is absolute dog scrote, so it's very confusing

One of the best Chart Music episodes was him slagging off Mark Sutherland for 45 minutes. But this is just witless rubbish. Wonder what he'd think of it now?