[Glice]

Steven Wells deserves a knighthood. Fuck it, we'll deify him. I love that man.

No, seriously, he's the best journo out there. Too many 'blah blah, masturbate my record collection' types out there. We NEED more Swells's.

I'm sure he's a total cunt, but name me another hack who's any good and isn't a cunt, and I'll call you a liar.

[porkmarras]

Simon Reynolds
David Keenan
Ian Penman
Mike Barnes
Lester Bangs(with or without lack of disco-taste limitations)

The list could go on.

[Glice]

Cunts the lot of 'em.

Ok, so I'm being hyperbolic. The point I'm making, as I have made before, is that there is too many hyper-bland journos out there who have nothing to offer the world other than their bigoted opinions. Steven Wells' bigoted opinions are always utterly ridiculous, tasteless, impeccably written and most all, very amusing. I'd rather read someone who makes me laugh than someone who articulates their stupid, asinine opinions in an incredibly lifeless and boring fashion.

I used to write for various fanzines (none I would care to mention) and I've seen how people are influenced by the overwhelming majority of bland writers. Journos are essentially parasites on the good sense of the people (who ironically inform and pervert said 'good sense') and the sooner they are shown up as the limp johnny-come-nevers the better. All journos taken outside and shot please.

[porkmarras]

Originally Posted by Glice

Cunts the lot of 'em.

Ok, so I'm being hyperbolic. The point I'm making, as I have made before, is that there is too many hyper-bland journos out there who have nothing to offer the world other than their bigoted opinions. Steven Wells' bigoted opinions are always utterly ridiculous, tasteless, impeccably written and most all, very amusing. I'd rather read someone who makes me laugh than someone who articulates their stupid, asinine opinions in an incredibly lifeless and boring fashion.

I used to write for various fanzines (none I would care to mention) and I've seen how people are influenced by the overwhelming majority of bland writers. Journos are essentially parasites on the good sense of the people (who ironically inform and pervert said 'good sense') and the sooner they are shown up as the limp johnny-come-nevers the better. All journos taken outside and shot please.

I agree that Steven Wells is a laugh and all that but we shall not forget that he is in the business of writing about music and not that of being a comedian.I don't have a problem(problem?) with him being funny and all that(that's an aspect of him that i quite like in fact),it's just that he makes all these gonzoid remarks about bands that don't actually say anything about the music at all.

[Toilet & Bowels]

i think he tries too hard to be funny and just over eggs what jokes he has, also when he doesn't have that many ideas it's the same old routine over and over. i agree with shooting journalists though.

[porkmarras]

The great majority of them should be shot but there are people out there who love writing about music out of genuine passion for it.Most fanzine writers,though,piss me off big time.

[Toilet & Bowels]

byron coley is the best around at the moment, in my opinion, as he's one of the only people i can think of who writes with any imagination. dave thompkins and peter shapiro are both good too.

[Glice]

Yeah, I think we're kind of on the same wavelength, I agree with all that has been said. I always think of that quote of mysterious providence, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture". I heard this was attributed to Zappa, some say Elvis Costello, others say Laurie Anderson. Whatever. The ways it's often used is to mean 'writing about journalism is a detraction, or better, is unfaithful to the act of listening to music (ergo, a miscegenation of two irreconcilable mediums)'. What I like about certian journalists (and Coley is a better instance of this than Swells) is when they realise that writing/ reading is never going to be reconcilable with listening/ experiencing music - that is, they make little effort to explain the music, they talk from a purely personal point of view - they make transparent their nominal stances and do so quickly and eruditely, and go about making journalism a (pseudo-) artform in its own right, rather than the parasitic journalism of 'effective' adjectives.

Insofar as I have (hopefully) established my stance here, I provide a defence of journalists being transparently malicious in the name of journalism becoming prose.

Hello. I've found my wankers hat. Ooh, doesn't it look pretty on my head?