The House At World's End

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56510812011-04-21T10:53:00.954-07:00The House At World's EndMusic, politics and culture from the edge of the world.Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comBlogger1491100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1103498673360732072004-12-19T14:33:00.000-08:002004-12-19T15:24:33.360-08:00

CLOSING THE CIRCLE I was right all along. I really should have formally brought this blog to an end in the summer, when, I now realise, a natural conclusion was reached. For we had wonderful times here once, oh yes. The ideas and the thoughts flowed in a way they never have in my life before or since. But now things seem decidedly hollow, meaningless, *played-out* in a way they never did

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1096943278367233342004-10-04T19:26:00.000-07:002004-10-04T19:28:29.270-07:00

Isn't Eminem's "Just Lose It" ... a damp squib? Pathetic, there's nothing there anymore, the game's over. I sense that he and all his kind are about to get their comeuppance in Europe, even if nowhere else.

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1096943123611632832004-10-04T19:23:00.000-07:002004-10-04T19:25:23.613-07:00

Why are the usual "Republic of Mancunia" suspects up in arms about Malcolm Glazer possibly taking over the club? He embodies everything they really believe in (and, worse, still think is "anti-establishment" in Britain); they just aren't prepared to admit it. Yet.

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1096077033663811222004-09-24T15:51:00.000-07:002004-09-24T18:50:33.663-07:00

(apologies for the lengthy gap, but have you Run Away Home yet ...?) songs currently THE NOTORIOUS BIG ft. PUFF DADDY & FAITH EVANS - "Mo Money Mo Problems" Two songs in one, the one existing at right angles to the other, fighting for supremacy; underneath the gloss, one of the weirdest hits of the Clinton/Blair boom era, and possibly the most frightened. Certainly the only Puffy hit from his

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1089690488800156182004-07-12T20:36:00.000-07:002004-07-12T20:48:53.270-07:00

2004 is the third consecutive year in which Elvis Presley has hit the UK Top 5. Until now, the last time he had Top 5 hits in three consecutive years was in the period 1961-1963. 2002-2004 has also been the period which has seen the greatest collapse of general British public confidence in the UK/US political/military alliance, certainly in my lifetime and possibly in the entire post-war period

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1089610954464161102004-07-11T22:41:00.000-07:002004-07-11T22:42:34.466-07:00

http://www.livejournal.com/~robincarmody

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1089606853030706192004-07-11T21:30:00.000-07:002004-07-11T21:34:13.030-07:00

http://follyfoot-tv.co.uk/gallery/SteveDora/6ds.jpg my "world just out of reach in the past" rendered into one image (the *understatedness* of that colour!)

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1089606161593418472004-07-11T20:50:00.000-07:002004-07-11T21:22:41.593-07:00

A THOUGHT 1976: the Bellamy Brothers' "Let Your Love Flow", a crossover hit originating in the most overtly god-bless-America of all the mainstream US genres (country), is Number 1 in Germany at the time of the US Bicentennial. It only makes Number 7 in the UK. 2003: 50 Cent's "In Da Club" tops the German chart (something it will never do in the UK, although interestingly it will in Ireland)

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1089604203353664622004-07-11T20:03:00.000-07:002004-07-11T20:50:03.353-07:00

JAMELIA - "See It In A Boy's Eyes" But back to the changes that no political regression can reverse. I won a Henry Williamson book off eBay this weekend. Williamson, as those familiar with my essay "The Hangman's Ancient Sunlight" will already know, was the man who best exemplifies what can happen when romantic ruralism (or care for the soil) falls over the edge into Blood and Soil: a fine

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1089601394614011342004-07-11T19:47:00.000-07:002004-07-11T20:03:14.613-07:00

To expand on the above, and of course it's flawed and by no means wholly accurate and you can't get specific analogies which tell the whole story and all that BUT BUT BUT: 1993-94 = 1961-63: frustration that the British state is holding us back, admiration for a modernistic US president, feeling trapped by a romantic-nostalgist British prime minister. Then comes a techno-modernist Labour leader

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1089600234229358472004-07-11T17:24:00.000-07:002004-07-11T19:43:54.230-07:00

The fact that there is a fifty-year-old record at number three this week is, in its way, a reminder of the inevitability of death. The earliest recording to be a major UK hit, Laurel and Hardy's "Trail of the Lonesome Pine", was actually more recent at the time of its success in 1975 than "I Want To Hold Your Hand" is today. The song "Whispering Grass" was a more recent composition in 1975 (

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1089348858531135672004-07-07T19:22:00.000-07:002004-07-08T21:54:18.530-07:00

A NIGHT IN 1994 But first, a diversion ("as per bloody usual" mumbles cynical blogosphere). It's amazing how often the most recent entries in long series of children's books - I'm sure this also happens in grown-up literature - are the hardest to track down. And it's almost always the same reason, as well: the series had usually enjoyed great success in its peak years, when it fitted in with

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1089252986141164172004-07-07T17:49:00.000-07:002004-07-07T19:19:04.500-07:00

Looking back through my early-hours-of-Monday posting I'm struck by how many sentences are, quite simply, incomplete (OK maybe it isn't so much by some other bloggers' standards but by the criteria of an unashamed language-pedant like myself it's a lot). It's appropriate, though - that posting was the most open, the most unashamed washing of dirty linen in public I'll ever do, and so it would

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1089009702066471422004-07-04T21:03:00.000-07:002004-07-05T00:14:51.373-07:00

(This post might be the end of something, or the start of something, or both. We'll see.) Ten years, though. Ten years. A decade, this summer, since I first came to Portland. And what has it got me? All these years, all these years all I have had to love - to make love to - is something I despise, something I desperately want to destroy. I cannot love humans, cannot love life, cannot love

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1088570702324664892004-06-29T20:41:00.000-07:002004-06-29T21:51:36.496-07:00

The 1980s On The Brink Of Becoming Ancient History: 20-odd years ago, it was remarkably common for publishers to "update", however superficially, the sort of old-school children's books I was writing about below: the defiantly post-war (and sometimes much earlier), middle-class, Home Counties ilk. Until at least the very end of the 80s, and probably into the early 90s, the Jennings books were

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1088565371367738522004-06-29T17:27:00.000-07:002004-06-30T09:59:53.246-07:00

For the second time in less than three months I have to cope with the death of someone who wrote a personal letter to me in my childhood. Thankfully, it doesn't come as a shock this time like it did when Caron Keating died, because the man who died on Monday had lived to the age of 92. Anthony Buckeridge was most famous as the writer of the Jennings stories, and as such a key figure in the

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1088555127484349782004-06-29T17:24:00.000-07:002004-06-29T17:25:27.486-07:00

For the last few hours I have been listening to the Pet Shop Boys' "It Couldn't Happen Here" on constant repeat. And the thing is: I genuinely can't imagine myself listening to anything else.

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1087060772291891572004-06-12T06:37:00.000-07:002004-06-12T10:19:32.290-07:00

OLDCHARTBLOGGING (again) 1965 and 1972 today, and the first year is by far the most moving for me: from now on, all the hits of that adventurous, challenging, dreaming summer - the first summer when pop genuinely seemed to have no horizons and no boundaries - will recall a once very close friend of mine who recently died, far too young. It's still too soon for me to feel like revealing much

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1087019531230900082004-06-11T20:39:00.002-07:002004-06-12T06:32:53.853-07:00

JADAKISS featuring ANTHONY HAMILTON - "Why" CAM'RON featuring JAHEIM - "Lord You Know" You can tell it's an election year. Hip-hop, in its abiding moods, atmospheres, contents, contexts, is possibly the best guide we have to the feelings of black America as a whole, its relationship with the wider American mood, its tensions and loves and hates and wars. Had Bush Sr won in '92 there's no way

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1087019530842974982004-06-11T20:39:00.001-07:002004-06-12T06:30:23.160-07:00

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1087019531513468752004-06-11T20:39:00.000-07:002004-06-11T22:52:11.513-07:00

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1084063289208813772004-05-08T17:41:00.000-07:002004-05-08T17:44:44.310-07:00

Anyone who doubts the importance of the post-war generation in setting up the "wigger" tendency they now despise might be interested in Westwood's last words on tonight's show: "come on let's go", the title of a Ritchie Valens song covered 46 years ago by Tommy Steele. Talking of which, I'm off to http://the-other-ones.blogspot.com to deal with the year Macmillan cancelled Blue Streak and

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1084062898565442582004-05-08T17:34:00.000-07:002004-05-08T17:38:13.763-07:00

LIL' FLIP - "Game Over (Flip)" THREE 6 MAFIA featuring half the Dirty South, seemingly - "Who Gives A Fuck Where You From" Two sides of the dirty-dirty - the crossover chart smash and the unabashed hardcore anthem. Raised in the House of Bush's home state, Lil' Flip ticks all the right boxes for the southern pimp/playa archetype and there's nothing wrong with that, but it makes "Game Over (Flip

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1084060325439886072004-05-08T16:52:00.000-07:002004-05-08T16:55:20.356-07:00

The weather today suits the mood any rational human being would be in at the moment; grey, cold, frustrated

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1084060167164673952004-05-08T16:49:00.000-07:002004-05-08T16:52:42.123-07:00

listening to Baby Bash featuring Frankie J - "Suga Suga" (smooth as you like; really a soundtrack for more rational times than these) Mario Winans featuring P. Diddy and Enya - "I Don't Wanna Know" (I'm only just coming to admit to myself that sometimes the chorus of this song may be true in my own life; one of the few genuinely emotionally resonant Bad Boy productions these last ten years)

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1084059677602199702004-05-08T16:41:00.000-07:002004-05-08T16:54:29.140-07:00

You know, sometimes people tell me I worry too much about the influence that the mass culture that really became embedded and took root in the 1980s has had on Britain, I blame Hollywood too much for the unthinking xenophobia so common in this country, I'm too quick to blame US hegemony for the lack of true representative democracy in this country and our sluggishness when it comes to embracing

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1084055794231260682004-05-08T15:36:00.000-07:002004-05-08T15:41:07.560-07:00

Ten years ago today, at or near the end of my childhood, I listened to the Radio 1 Top 40 in my old bedroom at the other end of southern England, while reading Malcolm Saville's "Home to Witchend", in all senses bar the most literal one his last literary will and testament. I'd never heard of Saville before, or read any of his books - I was born far too late for them to be any sort of part of

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1084054039624028712004-05-08T15:07:00.000-07:002004-05-08T15:10:35.106-07:00

What are we to make of the scheduling of the Prince's Trust Urban Music Festival so soon after the 25th anniversary of Thatcher's election? Charles is surely the most public example in his generation of the old-school romantic conservative, once intimidated even by the sounds of Wham!, Dire Straits and Michael Jackson (I was always amused by the idea that "A Trick Of The Tail" was Diana's

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1084040293285931882004-05-08T11:18:00.000-07:002004-05-08T11:23:44.610-07:00

OLDCHARTBLOGGING - MAY '68 But it's not the Paris Spring, it's a Britain where the forces of progressiveness seemed to be suddenly, sadly in retreat - offshore radio sunk, Macmillan-era relic Lord Hill getting tough at the BBC, the social conservative Jim Callaghan having replaced Roy Jenkins as home secretary, anger at US policy in Vietnam overshadowing everything but the media suddenly

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1083441741816955542004-05-01T13:02:00.000-07:002004-05-01T18:23:43.653-07:00

OLDCHARTBLOGGING (slight return) This week's Pick of the Pops seems to have as its ongoing theme The Cultural Proletarianisation Of The Middle Classes - coincidentally (yeah, right) at the weekend when we "celebrate" the 25th anniversary of Thatcher's election. To this end they've even chosen a chart which is recent enough that I actually listened to it as it was revealed on Radio 1 - very rare

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1083420505195231222004-05-01T07:08:00.000-07:002004-05-01T13:06:43.543-07:00

Monday 3rd May is the 25th anniversary of the election which paved the way for the full-on cultural proletarianisation of the British middle classes (although it did not seem that way at the time, and it did not become fully apparent until 1983). The two individuals who did most to bring this about were surely Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, who made reactionary Right-wing politics seem culturally

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1083205425856398512004-04-28T19:23:00.000-07:002004-04-28T19:26:51.326-07:00

http://the-other-ones.blogspot.com a companion piece to http://www.freakytrigger.co.uk/popular.html - 49 years of non-Guinness-approved chart-toppers. one of the reasons why i fear things might remain rather quiet on this blog for a while yet ...

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1081918783532289842004-04-13T21:59:00.000-07:002004-04-13T22:02:33.560-07:00

http://colm2004ie.blogspot.com good friend of mine, he is. great conversationist, as well - when we're speaking over the phone, ideas and understandings flow more naturally than they ever could with most. even when he calls me a wanker (which he does with good reason, sometimes, at least from his personal position) I instinctively know that the antipathy won't last for long. welcome to the

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1081917460019768462004-04-13T21:37:00.000-07:002004-04-13T21:40:30.340-07:00

Back to the old landed gentry for a moment: the suggestion in a Times letter about unpublished books in Antonia Forest's Marlow series was false and unfounded. A friend of mine is overseeing her estate and she confirms that, although Antonia *was* planning and working on another book over many years from 1983 to about 1997, no manuscript or typescript has been found and she presumably destroyed

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1081917258911567192004-04-13T21:34:00.000-07:002004-04-13T21:37:09.263-07:00

Oxford resident Henry Miller (the erstwhile "Enrique" of ILX) comments on the wall I mentioned in my Dorchester musings: "The Cutteslowe Wall: council houses were being built a little distance from a main road circa 1934. A private developer jumped in and built some houses between the council development and the road. Obviously the council house dwellers used to walk through the 'private' area

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1081831097027499932004-04-12T21:38:00.000-07:002004-04-12T21:41:06.310-07:00

I've always had a soft spot for Cilla Black's "If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind", one of the nicest and most enjoyably inconsequential pop songs from the pivotal winter of 1969/70. Agnetha Faltskog's new version of it doesn't really have the magic - it sounds like one of the new records that would have been playable on Radio 2 ten years ago, and while they used to play some excellent old

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1081830803199493512004-04-12T21:33:00.000-07:002004-04-12T21:36:12.546-07:00

Of course, Weymouth and Portland are to Dorset what Swindon is to Wiltshire - the only parts of their respective counties to have ever gone Labour, at profound odds with the traditional shire areas beyond ... maybe that's why I feel such an affinity with XTC; like me, they don't quite come from the deep country, however much they may dream of it, but they're frustratingly, elusively close to it.

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1081830143254182912004-04-12T21:22:00.000-07:002004-04-13T21:08:39.590-07:00

I'm always nervous when in Dorset's county town of Dorchester, a short distance but a spiritual planet away from World's End. I always get embarrassed when I have to give my postcode and what would once have been called my STD code, both for the Dorchester area (DT and 01305 respectively), such little allegiance does this area owe to that town. I'm nervous when I'm in Dorchester because I

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1081816153147321502004-04-12T17:29:00.000-07:002004-04-13T21:06:54.466-07:00

inspired by Marcello Carlin's semi-urgent request to me more than two years ago: BARRY RYAN SONGS THAT AREN'T CALLED "ELOISE" "Don't Bring Me Your Heartaches" - a 17-year-old Barry's first hit, duetted with his late brother Paul (who actually wrote "Eloise"). The journey from this to the breakdown in "Love Is Love" could be analogised for the transition from mid-60s anything-is-possible-ism to

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1081711562556804062004-04-11T12:26:00.000-07:002004-04-11T12:28:50.640-07:00

You want a really shocking confession (of sorts)? OK then: the things I said here in late February were driven mainly by a desire to distance myself definitively from ILM, and I thought the best way to do this would be to say make such determined, virulent statements that I could never really be accepted there again (even in the very unlikely event that I would want to be).

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1081635344520187702004-04-10T15:15:00.000-07:002004-04-11T12:20:26.436-07:00

Final word (hopefully) on the whole "Republic of Mancunia" thing; last December when I was wondering which lyric would best epitomise that worldview (as Lennon's bitter "standing in the English rain" and Jarvis's "take your year in Provence and shove it up your ARSE" do for the Liverpool and Sheffield equivalents), why the fuck did I forget "England's Irie"????. I know Joe Strummer and Keith

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1081616781410524042004-04-10T10:06:00.000-07:002004-04-11T12:41:59.966-07:00

OLDCHARTBLOGGING For those who don't know, we have a radio show in the UK called "Pick of the Pops", descended from Alan Freeman's celebrated chart rundowns of the 60s, now presented by mildly irritating minor celeb Dale Winton and featuring charts from the past - this week 1967 and 1979. In the vein of the "personalise a chart" thread on ILM of old, here goes: every song featured on the show

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1081556480817090762004-04-09T17:21:00.000-07:002004-04-09T17:24:07.186-07:00

Seemingly US forces in Baghdad today were blasting Guns 'N Roses as their intimidation music; it gives an ever greater resonance to the dynamics of the Manics' "Generation Terrorists", doesn't it?

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1081480102612964842004-04-08T20:08:00.000-07:002004-04-08T21:13:41.106-07:00

Seems that some thought I'd given up blogging (hiya Undercurrent!). Actually I never intended the lengthy gap between postings to develop at all - just a combination of my own writer's block with general exhaustion (on all fronts). But never did the idea of giving up go through my mind (although it did around late January / early February, in the despairing aftermath of H*tt*n); indeed, the

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1080272865572629642004-03-25T19:47:00.000-08:002004-03-25T19:50:16.653-08:00

all that being said, i recognise now more than ever just how *different* i am from so many of my blogging contemporaries. the grounding so unrelated, the values so removed ...

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1080272724869799512004-03-25T19:45:00.000-08:002004-03-25T19:47:55.983-08:00

good riddance Scott Neil. i'm actually rather embarrassed i had conversations with you. you're precisely the reason why i think The Cult of Manchester has been a corrosive intellectual force on people like me (lower-middle-class southern student-types). you need to *think* more. you might do that more easily in, say, Newcastle (just a southerner's guess ...)

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1080272604096652492004-03-25T19:43:00.000-08:002004-04-08T20:12:10.560-07:00

just been listening to Momus' "The Charm of Innocence" countless times on repeat. once, this song (in its re-recorded '95 version - I've still never heard The Tender Pervert) was my favourite by anyone, ever. it still sounds impressively evocative of a particular existence (the fetishism and life-as-grand-opera of the pre-WW1 German aristocracy) as it always did, although I probably now think

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1080092388922965752004-03-23T17:39:00.000-08:002004-03-23T17:42:18.186-08:00

for the benefit of the various interested parties out there, i can be reached by email at robin@elidor.freeserve.co.uk

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1080001022891675692004-03-22T16:17:00.000-08:002004-03-23T16:51:46.466-08:00

OK, SO I'VE BEEN LISTENING TO "THE FINAL CUT", OK? Amazing how many people over the years have recommended to me the album which saw Roger Waters hijack the Pink Floyd name and identity for what was effectively his first solo album (Wright had either got sick of it or been turfed out, depending on who you believe, and Gilmour and Mason were pretty much glorified session musicians), considering

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079989155464336422004-03-22T12:59:00.000-08:002004-03-22T13:01:43.936-08:00

Some time in the Heath era, Sir Ian Trethowan (the friend of Ted who sacked Kenny Everett from Radio 1 for a harmless joke about the wife of Tory cabinet minister John Peyton, who unbelievably is still in my local phone book listed as "Lord Peyton of Yeovil"), was defending the MI5-inspired secret vetting procedures at the BBC, which were often used simply as a means of making it as hard as

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079987355495336212004-03-22T12:29:00.000-08:002004-03-22T12:31:43.653-08:00

More proof of how opposition to the Iraq war is creating extraordinary, previously-unthinkable alliances; one of the consciously "radical-left" Filger / Pisk acolytes on uk.politics.misc is now reproducing, and praising, an article on anti-war.com by ***Pat Buchanan***.

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079920667273426302004-03-21T17:57:00.000-08:002004-03-21T20:43:14.936-08:00

Oh, and for those who care - though I suspect many will fall asleep when they see this - there was a letter in the Times in January from someone who knew Antonia Forest, claiming that "fifteen years ago" (ie, presumably, the late 1980s), she had completed the next Marlow book, which concerned itself with Karen Marlow having great difficulties with EEC (as it then was) regulations while running

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079919163684160492004-03-21T17:32:00.000-08:002004-03-21T17:38:51.200-08:00

quick response to somedisco's Richard Kurt / Man Utd stuff (in turn a belated reply to my postings here last year); shortly after writing those postings I came across an MUFC fansite very much in the "Republic of Mancunia" vein, which had a gang of Reds boasting about the way they'd worn Elvis masks against Juventus in last season's Champions' League (think it was in Turin, as well). Now that's

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079913745714882722004-03-21T16:02:00.000-08:002004-03-21T16:04:53.280-08:00

Ten-years-ago flashback; what influence did Blur's "Parklife" have on the upsurge of broadsheet analyses of the young middle classes' embrace of Estuary-speak which characterised the year or so following its release? I certainly think NuLab's emergence that year had an influence; it provided an easy piece of symbolism in which hacks could frame their analyses of how the middle classes were

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079913392785439442004-03-21T15:56:00.000-08:002004-03-21T15:58:59.610-08:00

Why do I think the Norman Cook remix breathed life into Cornershop's "Brimful of Asha" and elevated it from being merely a very good single to true greatness, when I despise practically everything else that could ever have been called Big Beat? (for those who remember my defence of it against Neil Kulkarni's well-aimed criticisms in Melody Maker in 1998, those are certainly not my views today)

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079895695815535792004-03-21T11:01:00.000-08:002004-03-21T11:04:03.186-08:00

Another epilogue to the offshore radio thing; in 2002 a political party with a strongly New Right agenda emerged calling itself the MP3 Party, because it wanted to use a name which would resonate with its "target audience" of young people. Some were surprised, equating cultural modernism with more compassionate, progressive politics, but if they'd known the political history of the offshore

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079895409988100472004-03-21T10:56:00.000-08:002004-03-21T10:59:16.590-08:00

Come to think of it, Simon's claims in '99 that US music generally seemed dull and predictable (perhaps: *devoid of cultural energy*) in the Clinton boom, as cited in the aforementioned ILM post, *could* be interpreted as the wishes of the immature leftie, concerned more about "fighting the establishment" from their own perspective than about the general health, maturity and liberalism of US

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079756221017506532004-03-19T20:17:00.000-08:002004-03-19T20:21:10.513-08:00

Increasing cynical anti-leftist drift of ILM confirmed with whoever it was (Michael Dieter, wasn't it?) dissing Simon R as a "disenchanted leftie" or similar for his affinity to black Americans and disdain for the lack of "cultural energy" (that great intangible) in present-day dance music. Personally I *love* Simon when he gets into ridiculous over-analogising mode because it reminds me of

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079754576942682582004-03-19T19:49:00.000-08:002004-03-19T19:52:02.200-08:00

blimey Dilated Peoples on Westwood (who, after the madness of last Saturday when I genuinely thought he was about to have his Peter Finch in Network moment, is back to relative rationality tonight) are rhyming over "Eleanor Rigby", which millions surely heard for the first time coming from the North Sea laissez-fairists ... piquant to see the ultimate icon of the Wienerised new middle classes

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079754366627690182004-03-19T19:46:00.000-08:002004-03-19T19:48:31.920-08:00

Welcome welcome welcome David Stubbs to the blogosphere; his first posting is possibly the best analysis I've ever read of cultural compartmentalism as, perhaps, the ultimate English disease (a view I've long held especially, yes, when reading Private Eye). I knew you'd come through like this, David. Stick around. http://www.mr-agreeable.net/stubbs/default.asp?id=32

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079754158013025812004-03-19T19:42:00.000-08:002004-03-19T19:45:03.360-08:00

Addendum to the below offshore radio epic ... - Offshore radio renegades as key forces distancing the Right from its fixation with old money pursuits like, mmmm, foxhunting: Tony Blackburn ranted against bloodsports during his shows so passionately that one of his contracts in later years specifically banned him from "expressing his personal views on foxhunting", and ex-Caroline DJ Roger Gale,

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079676026839661592004-03-18T22:00:00.000-08:002004-03-18T22:04:44.593-08:00

"Waldorf Salad" on UKTV Gold as it now calls itself (horribly cumbersome though that name is, I'm actually rather pleased that it isn't besmirching the exact, specific name of a once-great archive channel anymore). The Guinness Book of Classic British TV calls it "arguably the worst episode" of Fawlty Towers, and I've certainly always thought it's the most psychologically dated of the twelve;

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079675436883628632004-03-18T21:50:00.000-08:002004-03-19T06:37:37.186-08:00

THE POLITICS OF OFFSHORE RADIO, AND OTHER THINGS (in response to Marcello's point - a while back, I know - re. Kenny Everett's Toryism) - The main thing that distinguished Thatcherism from earlier Conservatism was its clever, cheeky invention of means of separating the young middle classes from their parents' institutions and aligning them instead with American capitalists and their lackeys.

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1079671298023505042004-03-18T20:41:00.000-08:002004-03-18T20:44:02.233-08:00

one of the last things I read on benighted ILM was Gareth's point about Jamaica's declining musical influence on Britain (oddly just as it's becoming a bigger influence on US hip-hop than it's ever been); surely that is simply a matter of the passing of time and the emergence of at least one generation of Black British people for whom their Jamaican ancestry is merely a detail of history, no

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078893466829706212004-03-09T20:37:00.000-08:002004-03-09T20:40:02.263-08:00

Another measure of how long I've been around now; I may not recall the miners' strike (other than going to the Christingle service when I was four and my mum donating toys for the striking miners' families while "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was playing, which is possibly my earliest memory of any pop record), but I do remember when the generation of bands coming through were - quite often -

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078809853396923432004-03-08T21:24:00.000-08:002004-03-08T21:26:27.996-08:00

That "End of the Wu-Tang?" thread on ILM (yes, I still read it, a bit) really gets to me; makes me realise more than ever that the era I came from, the era that formed me in popcult terms, is over, that there's a generation now who knows nothing of the stuff I was obsessed with (realising that some kids now think Wu-Tang were as commercially marginal as Aesop-Rock is at the moment, I thought back

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078808353518914642004-03-08T20:59:00.000-08:002004-03-08T21:01:28.340-08:00

I guess if anything really frustrates and angers me about the way the world is right now, as opposed to the way it seemed to be heading - to many of us, at least - in the mid-late 90s, it's the sheer *unenlightenment* of it all, from all sides. I define myself now as pretty much stateless, I suppose because the British state so clearly doesn't want me so I don't want it back, and that's why I'm

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078807743834054362004-03-08T20:49:00.000-08:002004-03-08T20:52:35.310-08:00

Just how young is Ashman, who's rhyming on "How It Is" on Channel U (for those who don't know it's Channel 467 on Sky Digital, and is the closest thing we have to a British public-access channel for what is euphemistically called "urban music") at the moment? I'm equally frightened and awestruck at one so young firing words like that; it does make you realise just how much of an edge this

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078807039613637312004-03-08T20:37:00.000-08:002004-03-09T20:52:18.060-08:00

What was it with Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling In Love" blasting out of the Sunderland tannoy the moment they got to the FA Cup semi-finals on Sunday? The side of me which believes that David Kelly was murdered suspects it was a 20-years-on-from-the-miners'-strike rub-their-noses-in moment, like "we defeated you stick-in-the-mud puritan socialists forever, we humiliated those of you who

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078806600337082032004-03-08T20:30:00.000-08:002004-03-08T20:32:14.873-08:00

VH1 CLASSIC / OLD-SCHOOL BRIT-CAFE MEETING POINT The video to the Bluebells' "Young At Heart", which already looked like a museum piece when it was shown endlessly on TOTP in 1993 when, in lieu of anything else that people could even come close to agreeing on, the nine-year-old song somehow made it to number one for four weeks ("the only song in this week's Top 10 that isn't a club record!",

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078723777592347642004-03-07T21:29:00.000-08:002004-03-07T21:31:51.030-08:00

Oh, and up by my old school last week there were the torn pages of some kid's French dictionary straggling on the ground, meshed by the rain, waiting for a gale to blow them the other side of the world, destroyed through sheer disinterest. An apt postscript to my tale of Lubitsch and Jam & Spoon, I think.

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078723489146795032004-03-07T21:24:00.000-08:002004-03-07T21:27:02.653-08:00

LYRIC OF THE MOMENT Wiley: "I remember / things were the other way round / But the world got colder / and it changed round / I go to every manor / and it's all changed round ..." He's got the sceptre of pre-emptive war and Homeland Security - as concepts, as mentalities, as a collective ethos - on his mind, I'm sure. Maybe I haven't heard his best stuff, mere grime dilletante that I be, but

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078722578619236202004-03-07T21:09:00.000-08:002004-03-07T21:13:25.046-08:00

ILM AUTOPSY ANTECEDENTS the embrace of the populist by the highly educated, the celebration of American culture by those educated in the European academic / intellectual tradition, and the occasional dismissal of the passionately politically committed ... a sort of aesthetic anti-socialism which *can*, if left unchecked, become unconsciously right-wing: "Time Out's coverage of the cinema has

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078719733077102122004-03-07T20:22:00.000-08:002004-03-07T20:24:26.576-08:00

VH1 CLASSIC (slight return) Isn't the Small Faces' promo film for "All Or Nothing" one of the most EVOCATIVE things ever? London before the great breakdown-of-consensus of which a key element was politically engineering a Tory BBC chairman whose appointment to the equivalent job in the ITA had been condemned by the Labour PM of the day four years earlier when he was opposition leader (and I

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078718049749935562004-03-07T19:54:00.000-08:002004-03-07T19:56:22.780-08:00

Can it really be that there's still a song in the Top 10 - a great one, of course - which was released in the UK when Antonia Forest was still alive? Sometimes it feels like a fucking century since she died.

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078200323551638322004-03-01T20:05:00.000-08:002004-03-01T20:07:31.263-08:00

Peter fucking Andre, though. And Chris fucking Moyles. Fuck every one of you (including the grinning, complacent apologists on ILM). It's at times like this I'm glad I tore up my passport last year.

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078200140789671412004-03-01T20:02:00.000-08:002004-03-01T20:34:41.233-08:00

Simon R has it just about right on Ludacris; there's something I find inherently *unclean* about him - rightly or wrongly, my puritan streak comes through, and I just find it somehow *wrong*, although I know that he's incredibly good at what he does because sometimes, especially in less important times than these, I've found myself enjoying it, and I can fully appreciate it on a functional level,

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078196386779239452004-03-01T18:59:00.000-08:002004-03-01T19:01:54.513-08:00

TOP 10 OF THE MOMENT DEPECHE MODE - Enjoy The Silence CHANGING FACES - G.H.E.T.T.O.U.T. (whatever happened to this lot, incidentally, and why can't I download "I Got Somebody Else" anywhere? tying with Sparkle and R Kelly's "Be Careful", which is probably Kelly's best moment, for my favourite slow jam of the mid-late 90s) KANYE WEST - We Don't Care PUBLIC ENEMY - Welcome To The Terrordome

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078119637447953152004-02-29T21:40:00.000-08:002004-02-29T21:42:43.903-08:00

EXTREMELY BRIEF ARCHIVAL TV THOUGHTS MINDER (Paramount, was Granada Plus a couple of years back) Doesn't the London of this series look so *pre-modern*? (sorry, I'm struggling to find the exact words for its aesthetic, and I know I haven't got it at all right ...) There's something evocative about even the tiniest details - Acton Central BR signs, you know the kind of thing I mean - which

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078117742792854092004-02-29T21:09:00.000-08:002004-02-29T21:11:09.513-08:00

I think I hate those who will still defend Blair now more than any other group of people because they are neither radical nor romantic-nostalgist; I can't hate anyone who is one and/or the other, but these Blair / Iraq war apologists, they're so fucking *middle-ground*, so *nothing*. What's most offensive, of course, is that what they defend is far from "nothing".

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078117501960332182004-02-29T21:05:00.000-08:002004-02-29T21:07:08.716-08:00

I think it was Enrique in *that* ILM thread who wanted to see me writing about "European culture" as a general concept. Weeelllll ... ------------------------------------ The best-remembered, most loved and most contentious song to have been released in May 1995 includes the line "pretend you never went to school". When I was fronting in social circumstances (I don't think I'd ever do it now,

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078029522823316802004-02-28T20:38:00.000-08:002004-02-28T21:11:52.310-08:00

Dave ... I really am sorry. It frustrates me all the more because I know we potentially have a hell of a lot in common. Your dislike for the ILM clique, in many ways, echoes mine. It is just that I have *bigger things* to deal with at the moment. And, yes, protest about. These will always be my main concerns, above all pop-cultural ones. All that being said, I hope we can continue to talk

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1078025816683996422004-02-28T19:36:00.000-08:002004-02-28T19:46:09.186-08:00

big up somedisco once again; although alluding to the Great Cafe Wars of Feb '04, his claim that "wasted elegies for elegant old tings can be all aestheticism" relating to me could also describe my (i suspect) much-misunderstood euology for Antonia Forest last December; my fascination with her and her world was purely borne out of interest in details, anachronisms, curiosities, seen through a

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1077951353325646812004-02-27T22:55:00.000-08:002004-02-27T23:18:50.716-08:00

God, I have stirred something up, haven't I? Maybe it's a sign of my essential immaturity that I still think you can do this AND GET AWAY WITH IT, or at any rate not offend anyone. I was testing the water. Maybe I wanted to break the ties with the ILX clique once and for all. It's probably done that, but was it worth it? At this time I am genuinely not sure. Certain things from the mammoth

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1077857834588035732004-02-26T20:57:00.000-08:002004-02-26T20:59:18.420-08:00

i need some sleep. luka and the joycean chap alike, i wuv u.

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1077857594984538842004-02-26T20:53:00.000-08:002004-02-26T20:55:18.840-08:00

Oh God I am SO CONFUSED at the moment (ha I do like that 2 Play song ...)

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1077857564937460802004-02-26T20:52:00.000-08:002004-02-26T20:54:48.810-08:00

Oh but Enrique - for all your faults (I can't really put it in words) your claim that all grime threads on ILM should be called "pop vs folk" is probably the most accurate thing anyone's ever said. I still wuv u, u bastard.

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1077857013861441322004-02-26T20:43:00.000-08:002004-02-26T20:46:54.280-08:00

Or, to put it another way, I've changed a hell of a lot in the six months and a bit since I started doing this. Those Who Know always say that for those of us with Asperger's Syndrome, emotional maturity (as opposed to the abstract-intellectual kind; that usually comes, as it did with me, at a very young age) comes agonisingly late, sometimes when you've resigned yourself to the thought that it

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1077855906291557642004-02-26T20:25:00.000-08:002004-02-26T20:27:09.826-08:00

I am the most serious-minded person I think I've ever met. That's why I feel I'm not One Of Them when I read ILM at the moment. I have no idea yet whether this is good or bad, but I have no problem whatsoever with feeling this way.

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1077855702459740132004-02-26T20:21:00.000-08:002004-02-26T20:23:46.030-08:00

The Katharine Gun affair in a nutshell: the government didn't want to disclose Lord Goldsmith's report on the legality of the Iraq war because they knew they'd be exposed and publicly humiliated again, but they couldn't let the trial proceed without disclosing it to her legal team because then she'd have been able to claim - quite fairly - that she was being denied a fair trial, which would have

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1077854583520288702004-02-26T20:03:00.000-08:002004-02-26T20:36:59.436-08:00

St*lfox you bounded mind! The whole point of my posting was the idea that there are no such thing as "innocent observations" about music, or at any rate no such thing as observations which have no possible political implications - EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD is potentially political on some level. I'm not offended by a few harmless incongruity jokes, but Dave went over that line - he made a clear,

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1077774616197664372004-02-25T21:50:00.000-08:002004-02-26T20:38:11.733-08:00

Where did the first two months of 2004 go? Well, we know how fucking sickening the events of late January were. The climax of New Labour's turncoatery, their subservience to the elite they once promised to replace (cf the absolutely disgraceful torpedoing of an EU proposal to quash vast CAP handouts - considering the constant calls by the govt to reform the CAP over the past few years, combined

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1073537302583707592004-01-07T20:48:00.000-08:002004-01-07T20:49:35.810-08:00

RIP Joan Aiken.

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1072238288867576712003-12-23T19:58:00.000-08:002003-12-23T19:59:07.123-08:00

What was I thinking of back there? Worlds of Possibility is nothing to do with Mr Stelfox; it's actually the work of a sharp, clever Australian called Jon (sorry don't know the surname).

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1071900054811604282003-12-19T22:00:00.000-08:002003-12-19T22:01:50.000-08:00

to David and any other Americans who may be interested: "Upper-class when that meant something" = before our class structure became more like yours, ie about money and celebrity rather than inherited wealth and attendant privileges. Antonia Forest's England was a place truly foreign to Americans; conversely I think David could pretty much recognise the country I live in, beneath the distancing

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1071899793841128312003-12-19T21:56:00.000-08:002003-12-19T21:57:28.250-08:00

A few (tentative?) answers for David at sleepnotwork.blogspot.com: Antonia Forest was a British children's author (a Google search will reveal all). The Marlows were the landed, upper-class (when that meant something) British family who were the subject of very nearly all her books. "Run Away Home", published in February 1982, was her last book, the inconclusive final instalment of the Marlow

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1071585895609373052003-12-16T06:44:00.000-08:002003-12-16T06:45:46.560-08:00

RADIO 4 VIGNETTE Interviewer (to MC Solaar, of all people, who had just been expounding the French high-cultural influence on his rap style): "It seems very strange to English people to have hip-hop and 16th Century poetry in the same mind, the same culture ..." Me, in dismayed-at-assumption-of-cultural-compartmentalism voice: "Not to me it doesn't!" Wonder if Westwood was listening?

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1071461341715974532003-12-14T20:09:00.000-08:002003-12-14T20:12:50.436-08:00

Couple of vignettes for tonight's new number one; around 6pm I actually happened to chance upon that Birmingham apprentice quoted in - I think - Pete Fowler's pop-cult-as-Class-War 1972 polemic "Skins Rule", praising the early Stones / Yardbirds / Animals / Spencer Davis Group prole-or-wannabe-prole aesthetic and condemning the embourgeoisement of popcult in the summer of '67 with "fucking Sgt

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1071382833349175262003-12-13T22:20:00.000-08:002003-12-13T22:30:17.950-08:00

Westwood never sounds better than when listened to while researching info on the American writer Martin Wiener's 1981 book "English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit: 1850-1980". TW's triumph is a key part of the dominant theme of the last 20 years in Britain; the refutal of the pattern which Wiener attacked and set out as the main reason for Britain's economic decline, namely the

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5651081.post-1071117106230363982003-12-10T20:31:00.000-08:002003-12-10T20:42:54.983-08:00

Somehow it's as if everything I mentioned last night was haunting me first thing today: woke up bleary-eyed at 11am and one of the first things I heard was Dido's "Life For Rent" (the song, mercifully not the whole album), clear as you like throughout this street, like a crushing realisation of the New Mundanity's triumph. But then I gasped at the Times' Court and Social page (which I only saw

Robin Carmodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12805210782267662460noreply@blogger.com