RIP Tom Verlaine

I have a tribute pre-prepared, as it were, with this '87 column about Flash Light exhumed over here. To which I've added a round-up of useful writing about Television and T.V. (most of it posthumous but a few bits that are, er, humous and the best is a rhapsody in real time). I also discuss the challenge of writing about Marquee Moon: the music is a pure technique of ecstasy, the lyrics are visions that can be quoted but resist paraphrase or exegesis. Some of the most useful comments come from musicians, who know the properties of one make of guitar compared to another make of guitar, technicalities of playing, etc. This kind of thing is revealing, but not necessarily illuminating... 

Proof the pudding, from the horse's mouth, a September 1992 bit from Melody Maker's Control Zone:

Even more demystification, from June 9 1990.

Some much earlier demystification (June 1978)

Talking about tributes, I'm surprised this Alvvays tune hasn't come up in anything I've seen written. Then again, in terms of what it actually resembles sonically, the song would be better titled "Kevin Shields". Or perhaps "Harriett Wheeler". 

Whereas this next track is both a genuine sonic tribute-ary of the great man (although strictly speaking the flow is the other direction, from him to them, whereas tributaries flow into and feed rivers and lakes).  It's also a wonderful example of how the exceptional artist can become a style that subsequent others are able to write within, expressing themselves perfectly well through the precursor's language.  The sui generis >>> genre transition, also discussed here. 

Beyond the guitar tone, the title "Twin Layers of Lightning" itself seems pointedly to contain the intertextual trace of  T.V.'s greatest couplet -  "I remember how the darkness doubled / I recall, lightning struck itself".

Here's another glorious example of a debt transfigured, a sound made triumphantly one's own 

update 2/20/23

Apparently the Alvvays track was in response to Tom Verlaine doing a track called "Always".

And it's not the only song out there titled "Tom Verlaine".

There's at least two more - by Carbon Footprints and by The Family Cat 

I wonder if this a unique achievement for a left-field musician (as opposed to say the Beatles or the Stones, or Elvis - I'm sure there's many many namechecks and songs simply titled with their names). Like Alex Chilton scores 1 - thanks to the Replacements. But three songs for an alt-legend, that's pretty amazing. 

Pistol whipping

For this New York Times piece - which appeared in the print + paper edition yesterday - I looked at  Pistol as a punk fan turned parent and pedagogue. What, I wondered, could my sons or my students find inspirational, or relatable, or even comprehensible, about the Sex Pistols saga? Are there any "teachable moments"  to be gleaned from punk in the year 2022?

(Interviewed: my 16-year-old).

(Here also is the missus's take for Vanity Fair).

(The other installments of my recent "punk trilogy" - McLaren and cultural terrorism at LRB, punk movies for Pitchfork)

(Plus ancillary blogposts - Jordan and the aesthetics (and ethics) of shock, "No Fun" versus "Gee, Officer Krupke") 

rrrrrrrrrright!

'ere we go now

a sociology lecture

with a bit of psychology

a bit of neurology

a bit of fuckology

no fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun

Rotten mocking and taunting in advance all professional analysts and understanders of punk as "valid expression of working class youth energy"!

WHEN YOUR MATE MAKES A BOOK

A very special edition of "When Mates Make Books"!

Because it's my best mate, my life-mate in fact - Joy Press - who has made a book. 

       

A book that's out in a couple of weeks on Atria/Simon & Schuster in America, and on Faber & Faber in the U.K. 

                                                   
It's a bloody good book too. 

But don't take my admittedly biased word for it. 

Here's some advance reviews for Stealing the Show: How Women Are Revolutionizing Television from the American trade press - where Joy has pulled off the book-writing equivalent of a Grand Slam with three starred reviews.

"Women have run successful TV shows for decades, but they still routinely face bias and unreasonable obstacles in the industry, as Press details in this powerful narrative that expertly weaves reporting, analysis, and anecdotes. ...Press’s chronicle of a pop-culture movement should inspire a new generation of women creators"  
- Publishers Weekly, starred review. 

"Press draws from decades of interviews, research, and reporting to create a vibrant behind-the-scenes look at the some of the most prominent women creatives in the industry and the role they played in bringing women-focused narratives to the forefront of modern TV and culture... An urgent and entertaining history of the transformative powers of women in TV" 
- Kirkus, starred review. 

"The book is well-organized chronologically and is an absorbing read with some politics thrown in. There are fascinating interviews with female showrunners such as Roseanne Barr, Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls), Jenji Kohan (Weeds/Orange Is the New Black), and Shonda Rhimes (Scandal). ...Highly recommended for those who enjoy reading about the entertainment industry, how their favorite TV shows are created, and women" - Library Journal, starred review

Joy has also received ringing endorsements from leading members of the punditocracy:

"Please read this book immediately. It is sharp, funny, and gorgeously researched, a satisfying blend of inside dirt and critical illumination. It also places female creativity on television exactly where it belongs: dead center in the cultural conversation." 
- Emily Nussbaum, television critic  at The New Yorker

"A roaring tour of women's professional, artistic and political impact on television and on popular culture. By turns invigorating and sobering, Stealing the Show maps the progress of the expanded voice, vision and reach of women on television and behind its scenes."
- Rebecca Traister, author of All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of An Independent Nation

"Stealing the Show is essential reading for anyone interested in women gaining power, in how edgy storytelling comes to screens, and in brilliantly talented females taking the reins of a once-derided-as-secondary-to-movies medium.... I relished their stories--and was inspired by them, too." 
- Sheila Weller, author of The News Sorority and Girls Like Us

For further information about Stealing the Show, head over to Joy's website - where you can find details of book events in New York and Los Angeles and details about the book's scope and content.

To buy the US edition go here. 
To buy the UK edition go here.

                                 

Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead? was a long running BBC children's TV show that, from the early 70s onwards, showed all kinds of pastimes, games, hobbies, projects, and other non-passivities that kids could be doing rather than staying sat in front of the goggle box. It's hard to imagine a commercial TV station going against its own interests in this way.

Fascinating post from Carl at the Eighties blog on the expansion of TV channels focusing on i/ the construction of children as hyper-consumers 2/ the superabundance of choice, which prefigures the internet:

"It is of course during the Eighties that two phrases develop to reflect the numbing, paralysing effect of the increasing vastness of the mediascape, of the impossibility of settling for any one thing, the burden of an overabundance of choice: “channel surfing” and “couch potato”.As Bruce Springsteen put it, there are “57 Channels and nothing on”. Whereas before you might have flicked through four or five stations and then gone and done something else, in Springsteen’s song, “got friendly upstairs”, now the search becomes the activity in itself, (this is something magnified on the Internet, of course, with its low-grade, endless, questing and grazing) and there was an early transfer of the verb “to surf” from TV to Net-based activity that has fallen into disuse. “Surfing” implies a restless, depthless forward momentum, indeed an impelled momentum; the shift from the earlier use “channel hopping” to channel/web “surfing” well captures the degree of volition and the scale and force implied by the burgeoning swell of media. TV then becomes less an event, a family gathering point, a moment running to a schedule, and more of a resource or an arena to be navigated but one which is in a sense cognitively unmappable, an open terrain to wander about in, filled with unrealizable promise. You could always be missing something better elsewhere, angst and dissatisfaction are built into the system, yet it also induces a kind of half-fascinated torpor. Vegging out."

Of course the difference between TV and Internet is that while day to day use of the latter does still involve a lot of aimless idle flitting hither and thither, it also incorporates elements of activity -- reacting, commenting, answering back, reblogging, linking, etc etc... just enough of an element of dopamine-achievement-buzz to ensnare users even more effectively ... it's not the Spectacle as was, but a new improved (in)version of it...