I was delighted to be asked to contribute to the Words On Music blog, part of a project to investigate the state of rock journalism, which is currently ’missing, presumed dead’. Words on Music is the brainchild of Simon Spence, whose new biography of The Stone Roses, The Stone Roses – War And Peace looks well worth a read. My piece argues that ‘pop music journalism’ has been engulfed by the digital world, and that this is no bad thing.
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I am a writer. Sometimes I write about music. At one point in history, I was even some kind of ‘music journalist’; I used to write for The North’s independent muso rag Sandman Magazine.
So why am I here to defend a remark I made recently on twitter that was pretty damning about music journalism? During the Words On Music live discussion event I tweeted:
#wordsonmusic it is time for music journalists to STFU and to let the music, and the technology, and the young people speak for themselves
Apparently my comment was picked up and retweeted by quite a few people, maybe in agreement, maybe in disgust. But it certainly, excuse my metaphor, struck a chord.
I stand by the sentiments expressed in my tweet because I think music journalism is spectacularly slow to cotton onto the social media revolution that is happening around it. And that has been happening for quite a long time! Whilst musicians and fans have been eagerly taking up the opportunities for sharing, promoting, discussing and making music provided by platforms such as Myspace, spotify, garageband, youtube, and bandcamp, writers have seemed to resist change. Maybe they resent the ‘democratisation’ that comes with new media, because anyone can be heard writing and talking about pop music now. This reduces the status of journalist ‘experts’ and completely removes their role as ‘opinion leaders’.
The last time I remember buying an album due to a review in a newspaper was when I read about The Decline of British Sea Power in The Guardian in 2003. Nine years on, I rely solely on word of mouth recommendations, online chats with twitter muso pals, random youtube discoveries, friends’ spotify playlists and, viral music videos to switch me on to new bands and artists.
For me, any arguments about loss in ‘quality’ or ‘depth of knowledge’ of trained, experienced pop journalists are overshadowed by the sheer breadth and variety of voices, styles and perspectives that come with twenty first century music discourse. In a piece in which admittedly I did protest too much about my annoyance with Manchester’s Master of Miserablism, I wrote: ‘I hate Morrissey because listening to middle class white men analysing pop music was already boring enough’.
For example the list of people involved in the Words On Music live stream discussion event this year seems to include about twenty men, two women, most (or all?) of whom are white.
But, having spent some years completing a Phd on gender inequality in the creative sector, and then running a social enterprise training women in the music industry, and having grown weary of feminist rhetoric, I am not going to sit around asking where are the women? Or where are the ethnic minorities? Or indeed where are the young people? In pop music and journalism.
Because I know where they are. They are online, in their studios, at gigs, on Logic and Ableton, on the ball, on form, in tune, on time, in synch, out there, at work, outperforming the old guard.
The future is already here, and we may as well join wise cats like Tom Robinson, Cornershopand – yes – Lady Gaga, and get with the programme. There is still a place for words on music, but those words have to take into account the changing culture, technology and times we make music in. This is no country for out of touch hacks.
Apart from the fact Moz’s 2007 (?) performance on a chat show confirms my belief he has become a ‘psychotic lounge singer’ I couldn’t help but smile rather ashamedly at the lyrics.
In a previous post of mine about ‘subjectivity’ ‘objectification’ and narcissism, a frighteningly astute commenter likened me to Morrissey. He quoted me:
“He [Roland Barthes] positioned himself as the ‘amorous subject’ and that seemed to me like the font of his creativity and knowledge and writing and work. If you are always the ‘object’ of someone else’s affections, it is a very passive role. What do you actually do?”
And then said, damningly:
‘This is Morrissey in a nutshell. A continually fascinating aspect of his work is how melancholic longing is always a form of activity, even attack. Always pursuing, its unimaginable that the “amorous subject” of a Morrissey lyric could ever be the pursued. You are the quarry.
His work is constantly recriminating the loved object for its passivity. And here there is a secret collusion between lovers and enemies: “And what do you do? You just sit there”.’
To draw the circle back on itself, my ‘morrissey-esque’ sensibility has become rather exposed of late, since relations between me and Mr Simpson (author of Saint Morrissey) have gone sour.
Morrissey sings here:
‘You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone’.
And I am pretty sure there is an email somewhere sent by me to Mr Simpson, that uses almost those very words.
Even now, though, as I sit here, embarrassed to be ‘found out’ , I am like Morrissey, who never seems to regret anything or recriminate himself for doing or saying anything, only everyone else, and I still think I’m right!
Mark Simpson DOES need me. I am obviously not all he needs . I am not quite as arrogant as Moz. But I do think without the inspiration, research, insights and hard work of QRG, he will struggle to dominate metrosexual theory, to be ‘The (Metro)Daddy’.
Part of me hopes I am wrong. Another, louder part, is standing on the stage next to Morrissey, two psychotic lounge singers, certain and confident in our own necessity to someone else. All You Need Is Me.
Mark Simpson’s 1996 book, Its A Queer World, begins with an enigmatic dedication:
‘For M – (whether he wants it or not)’.
The line, ‘whether he wants it or not’, reminds me of the 1994 Morrissey track – The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get. The particularly resonant part of the song is: I am now /A central part /Of your mind’s landscape /Whether you care /Or do not . Could the ‘M’ in Simpson’s dedication stand for Morrissey himself? Or is it the initial of an unnamed lover maybe? I expect I will never know.
But the fact I am asking the question, gives me away. As what? A fan? A person who has taken a scalpel to Simpson’s words in a way nobody else has to date? An unwanted visitor? A pain in the arse?
Biographers (and critics) are all these things and more. The dedication in It’s A Queer World, and my interaction with Simpson and his work overall, have also reminded me of Janet Malcolm’s extraordinary work: The Silent Woman. The book tells the story of the ‘afterlife’ of Sylvia Plath, and in particular her biographies. Malcolm considers whether or not the biographies were accurate or compassionate portrayals of the poet’s life. In a review at the time of publication in 1994 a journalist wrote:
‘Malcolm is right, though, when she says that there is a difference between an interview and a biography. The interviewee has at least agreed to the interview, whereas biographical subjects – and, in the case of Ted Hughes, their estranged husbands – are written about whether they want it or not. In the battle between Ted and Olwyn and the biographers, Malcolm has decided to take the Hugheses side. She tries to imagine how it must feel for Hughes to be ‘buried alive’ each time Plath’s remains are disinterred in a new book, and she shrewdly suggests that what he finds most unbearable is being treated as though he too were dead and on the anatomist’s table. Yet even here, there is a nagging paradox. For she is doing exactly what Hughes can’t stand: ‘reading’ his mind on a speculative basis.
Significantly, Malcolm never gets to meet Hughes. In a book full of interviews he is conspicuously the Silent Man, though he looms large in her imagination and haunts the narrative like a hulking ghost. People keep telling her about his enormous sex appeal, and Malcolm reports how this affects her response to his letters, which become hugely attractive in her eyes. Drawn by his magnetism, she hangs around sheepishly in the road outside his house like an unrequited lover. If this attitude seems less than dispassionate, Malcolm would argue that it just goes to illustrate her belief in the ‘psychological impossibility of not taking sides’. She not only tells us, but shows us, how our sympathies and antipathies – even, or perhaps especially, those of biographers and journalists – boil down in the end not to logic but to prejudice and emotion.’
‘biographical subjects – and, in the case of Ted Hughes, their estranged husbands – are written about whether they want it or not.’
If you care or do not. Whether he wants it or not.
I am not writing a biography of Mark Simpson, but I am writing criticism, which, when concerned with the work of a living author, mirrors or collides with biography at times. I don’t have the subject’s consent for my project. But Simpson is no stranger to the quagmire or the wonder of biography – for his most well known book Saint Morrissey is a ‘psycho bio’ of the singer. So he of all people, will understand, if not quite endorse my plight.
‘Hilary went to her death because she couldn’t think of anything to say
Everybody thought that she was boring, so they never listened anyway
Nobody was really saying anything of interest, she fell asleep
She was into S&M and bible studies
Not everyone’s cup of tea she would admit to me
Her cup of tea, she would admit to no one’
- Belle and Sebastian
As some of you know, I am currently writing a book called Death At The Mall , based on the work of Mark Simpson.
Simpson’s most popular book is his ‘psycho bio’ of Morrissey, Saint Morrissey. But, now I have finally read the whole of Simpson’s oeuvre, I realise that Saint Moz is my least favourite.
The reasons for my problems with the tome are largely personal. I’ve already said I hate Morrissey because…
And also I have worked in the music industry, and one of the things I disliked about it most – the thing which makes it go round of course – is this reification of individual ‘stars’ to godlike positions. Obviously Simpson was interrogating that process but I think in the end, Saint Morrissey contributed to the ‘hagiography’ (which is still a macho fagiography) of pop music rather than dismantling it.
My real passion for Mark Simpson’s work revolves round his theories of metrosexuality. And whilst Saint Morrissey contributes to those theories, particularly in its discussions of the narcissism of its subject, it does not really have metrosexuality as its central theme.
When it comes to pop music I think it is most illustrative of metrosexual culture when it is shiny, trashy, transexy, in your face exhibitionist.
Morrissey, however much we reveal him to be a ‘tart’ or a showman, or a narcissist, or a gender bender, takes himself, his music and his words seriously. If he had have had a talent for literature I am sure he would have rather have been a poet or a novelist than a popstar, even though those activities would not have satisfied his ‘need to be loved’ as much as his pop career has.
I love this song (see above) by Belle and Sebastian ‘If you’re feeling sinister’, because it satirises that self-absorbed, ‘gothic’ attitude that characterises Morrissey and his fans. Why don’t you just get over yourself it seems to be asking. Well, because then we wouldn’t have such gems as Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now or I Am Hated For Loving.
Maybe I can’t cope with Saint Morrissey because I see too much of myself in it. I certainly haven’t quite got over myself yet. But I think I’m trying.
I’m not sure where Simpson’s only ‘mainstream’ book is going to fit in my appreciation of him. I am not going to spend ages pulling it apart. It’s obviously a great piece of pop culture history. I noted recently, that it also might well have been his last work, if a certain quiet riot girl had not come along and encouraged Metrodaddy to release his Metrosexy thesis.
Perhaps I just didn’t want Morrissey to have the last word.
‘Don’t rake up my mistakes. I know exactly what they are…’
Vauxhall and I. Made Morrissey make sense, entirely, for the first time, for me, separately from The Smiths (because The Smiths only made sense as Morrissey/Marr).
Briefly. Gloriously. Complete.
And now I hear echoes of 1994, and the way hope is contained in sadness, and loss is contained within joy, and endings are contained within beginnings, and the way the music and the words of that album summed up that feeling precisely.
And then they catch ‘im, and they say ‘e’s mental…
(I saw some great live vids of this song being performed but the fans jumping on stage to grab a bit of Moz got on my nerves, and the sound quality wasn’t great so I went for the album version instead. It was the album and its purity I fell in love with/to, after all…)
The problem with writing is it never finishes. Foucault’s Daughter was supposed to mark the ‘end’ of something but it has failed in that.
I started talking about fandom, and Pulp and (Saint) Morrissey, and the Great Men of Pop Mythology. Of ‘fagiography’ .
And then I remembered The Uses of Literacy.
The artist Jeremy Deller curated an exhibition of fan art by Manic Street Preachers fans. Yes, there are other fans apart from Morrissey fans. It was also made into a booklet which I own, a shiny silver cover with the set list for one of the Manics’ gigs on the front. Or is it a list of album tracks? I don’t know. I am not a Manics fan. I am a fan of fans.
This is the Deller/Manics book made as a record of the art instillation. I’d forgotten it was called The Uses of Literacy after Richard Hoggart’s book. Hoggart is part of my own, personal childhood hagiography. I cannot escape the Great Men of History.
Deller’s art is all about real and ‘imagined communities’. The cultural studies analysis versus Simpson’s Freudian one. Both are compelling but I think the cultural studies version is more democratic and less hopeless. I think Simpson (you know who he is but as citation, via my random Simpson post generator: http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2011/07/01/the-end-of-gay-mark-simpson-interview-on-gaydar-nation/ ) embraces the community of fandom to an extent, but in order to do that convincingly in Saint Moz he would have needed to have been more ‘democratic’ in citing a variety of sources and bringing to life more voices. He could have cited Deller and the Manics fans if he had have wanted to, as The Uses of Literacy was made in 2000, three years before Saint Morrissey was published…
Being a fan is what joins us together not what sets us apart from each other.
‘QRG is a good example of someone I want to respect because she’s smart and sometimes says interesting things — but her constant grandstanding and insistence on trying to dominate discussions that have nothing to do with what SHE wants to talk about*, always piss me off. She doesn’t listen to moderators, she dismisses attempts at facilitating a calmer discussion, she demands that everyone focus on her at all times, and she refuses to acknowledge that she might ever be at fault when discussions go explodey.
It’s a shame, because I think that if she were more willing to have a real conversation, she might actually be able to do some of what she claims to want to do. I am leaving this comment because there are always tons of lurkers reading these threads, and I want to make it really clear why I think her behavior is bad, because if someone else has the same level of intelligent disagreement she does, she’s a really good example of how NOT to communicate about it.’
*This comment was made on a discussion about ‘rape culture’ in which I made comments about ‘rape culture’. It was not ‘nothing to do with’ what I wanted to talk about, it was just that I disagreed with the majority view on the subject.
I am a rubbish fan of both Morrissey and Mark Simpson. Although I love them both, and feel they have touched my life in quite profound ways, I have never been to a Morrissey gig and I have never bought or read in its entirety a book by Mr Simpson. So I decided to rectify one of these failings, when I told a writer friend of mine about St Morrissey, Simpson’s ‘psycho-biography’ of that Icon of English pop, Mozzer.
My friend, who I shall call here ‘Mr Canada’, exclaimed ‘Holy Crap!’ when he heard about this book, as he is a Morrissey fan, and probably a much less rubbish one than me. He is also more postmodern than I am, so whilst he read the e-version of St Morrissey on his I-pad, I ordered the hardcover (second-hand, again, a rubbish fan) from Amazon and away we went.
Here is our conversation on having read St Morrissey:
Quiet Riot Girl: I have finished the book. I won’t tell you how it ends, as you already know! Was nice to read it at the same time as you. I know for sure that some of the things that pissed me off about it you won’t have noticed as they are very British and parochial to do with pop music culture in the UK. But the good bits were excellent.
Mr. Canada: I finished the book last night. And then spent a bunch of time on YouTube watching a Moz show from 2004, live in Manchester. And now his words have a different meaning. They have the meaning I first imprinted on them but I know more about his life now. I agree – there were things that made me roll my eyes but the good bits far outweighed the rest and overall the book was quite excellent. I gave it 4 stars over on GoodReads. Mark is a lovely writer.
QRG: Well hopefully when Games Perverts Play is released he will get to read you as well. Though he might not find out as much about you from your writing as you have about him from his! He is a lovely writer. I will try not to be too hard on him for his MASSIVE UNFORGIVEABLE misrepresentation of my other favourite band, PULP!
Mr Canada: Well, he doesn’t really like anyone else. He’s a bit harsh on everyone post-Smiths, really. At least everyone English and post-Smiths.
QRG: yes but PULP were PRE-Smiths. They started in 1979. I bet you Morrissey listened to Pulp he just would not admit to being influenced by his contemporary pop musicians!
Mr Canada: That’s true. I always forget how long they’ve been around. Morrissey would never admit to contemporary influences, you’re right. That would besmirch the legend.
QRG: Besmirch? Lovely. Actually I went to a Pulp gig in Manchester in about 2001 and Jarvis was very ironic about being in the home of the God Morrissey, surrounded by Mozzer fans. Someone threw a pack of women’s tights onto the stage and Jarvis pretended to read something scrawled on the back: ‘Punctured bicycle on a hillside, desolate’ he ‘read’. I think Jarvis knows full well that he was part of what made The Smiths possible. Musically and in gender-bending terms.
Mr Canada:Well, he has that satisfaction at least.
QRG: Oh I think Jarvis is ok with not being St Morrissey. He also resisted the ‘star’ role and hated being a teenage fan’s wet dream. Probably hated it more than Morrissey in fact.
Here is Babies.
I might put this convo on my blog- I was going to write something about St Morrissey and this is nicer than me writing some poncy critique! I will make you anonymous for dramatic effect…
Mr Canada: I love drama.
QRG: what was your favourite part of the book then? I won’t just moan about Pulp when the book was actually about Morrissey.
Mr Canada: I had a few. One is the child Morrissey. The upbringing. The absent father. The loving mother. I knew the basic outlines but Mark filled them in for me. Two is learning how long the affectation of being “Morrissey” has been going on. He has played this role for a long time, since puberty essentially so I then buy Mark’s assertion of Morrissey’s “honesty” and how he has given himself totally to his fans. Though each time Mark said “to the world” I had to laugh. There are entire continents that do not know or care about Morrissey, I’m sure. And then, toward the end, Mark does kind of call Morrissey out for his act, his attitutude, and I thought, well, finally. I wished there had been more about his relationship with LA and with Hispanic Americans in particular. This is a fascinating and incredible evolution in Mozworld and deserved far, far more attention. I’m guessing Mark didn’t travel to write this book. And that fact kind of weakens it in the end.
QRG: I think Mark wanted us to believe that he wrote the book from his bedsit in Manchester!
I don’t know about Mozzer’s relationship with HIspanic Americans. Was that within the timeframe of the book? eg before 2003?
Mr Canada: He alludes to it in the end, in the slight LA section. He’s huge among California’s Hispanic population. I think Rolling Stone or Spin did a story on it last year. It’s quite an incredible development. Just enormous among young Hispanics. East LA, etc. Huge.
QRG: Wow I didn’t know. I will look into that myself! I’d like to see some Spanish translations of Morrissey lyrics!
I found the book a bit ‘fatalistic’ about being a fan. As if you are stuck in this monogamous relationship with a single artist whereas in fact, most fans are flighty bastards, myself included. They can declare undying love one day, and then have a new love the next. I have been in love with The Smiths, Bronski Beat, The Beat, The Eurythmics, Billy Bragg, Lloyd Cole and the commotions, Joni, Tom Waits, Pulp, PJ Harvey, Nirvana, Patti Smith, Low, etc etc etc… it doesn’t make my adoration any less, the fact it was spread between so many bands over time. I don’t want to make any parallels between that ‘fatalism’ and how Mr Simpson may approach actual relationships. Then I’d be going all Freudian on his ass.
But my favourite line in the whole book, the only one that made me laugh out loud was when he said that Freud could have written ‘Wilhelm It Was Really Nothing’ for his ‘friend’ Wilhelm Fleiss.
Mr Canada: Yes, that was a good line. The Smiths were one side of me. Really. Because my other side fell head over heels for The Pixies. They were my musical yin and yang in those days (yes, I realize the timelines don’t necessarily work out perfectly) and any sort of evolution in tastes I may have result from these dual obsessions, so that I like loud, interesting guitar rock type music and also a different kind of music, a more introspective sort of lyric and a softer sound that always just threatens to implode. This duality in my tastes probably goes back even further. I’m sure Roxy Music led me into The Smiths (and something as awful as Yes led me into Roxy Music!). And Morrissey always did seem kind of a “how to be a lead singer” type to me. I bought into all of it for a long, long time. Until I grew up at least.
QRG: The Pixies are talented and a very complex band, musically. But I never got really into them. Debaser is a fucking amazing track though.
‘I bought into all of it for a long, long time. Until I grew up at least’.
I expect Mark would be the first to admit that his story is the story of a teenage Morrissey fan that never grew up. In that it has a pathos. And a kind of defiance that Morrissey himself shares.
But the thing is they have both probably grown up really. They seem like ‘men’ to me, not boys. Just maybe they haven’t grown up in their romantic perception of themselves, which will include their CD collections.
Mr Canada: If you stay in character long enough, you stay in character. Morrissey has definitely grown up and that may be one of the reasons his last few have been so weak (in my opinion).
Morrissey and Frank Black (Pixies) have almost remarkably similar trajectories except Morrissey explores himself and his relationship to a place and time and Frank Black explores himself and then projects his insecurities into a kind of 60s pop culture grab bag including aliens and sci-fi, surfer music, horror movies, etc. But he’s talking about himself, really. He grew up relatively wealthy in the suburbs of America and Morrissey didn’t. Makes all the difference in the world.
But Frank Black reconciled himself to his old band and they toured (I saw them two nights in a row when they came here). So perhaps there is hope for some kind of Mozzer-Marr collaboration in the future. Though Marr has really shit the pants since the Smiths break-up. This Modest Mouse stuff he’s doing is too awful for words.
QRG: Shit the pants? haha.
They will never get back together in my opinion. Far too proud. But yes, I agree, ‘if you stay in character long enough, you stay in character’.
I don’t think I ever had a ‘character’ to stay in. I am just developing one now, a little too late, a kind of bawdy, old school, pervert and intellectual misfit. Great. That will be commercially marketable!
Mr Canada: It will. It’s a good mix. You’ll see.
QRG: At least it is a fun ‘character’ to play! I almost believe she is real.
Thank-you Mister Canada, I think we have given St Morrissey and St Mark a little food for thought there. I look forward to our next book group session! You can choose our next read.
Mr Canada: I’m hardly Mister Canada. I’m not even Mister Montreal. Or Mister Mile End (my neighbourhood). Frankly, I might not even be the man of the house….
QRG: Did you know there is a Pulp song called Mile End? It’s a rough area in East London.
You are Mr. Canada to me. You and Don Mckellar.
Post Script:
My favourite section of the book was the part that talked about the influence of A Taste of Honey on Morrissey. I didn’t know all those lyrics were lifted so mercilessly from the film. I liked this part because it brought Morrissey into the context of his cultural and physical history in the North West. And because it added a ‘femininity’ to the narrative with those amazing women characters like Jo, Shelagh, and Elsie Tanner. I think it was the best-written part as well. And then of course there was Sandie Shaw, another ballsy woman in Morrissey’s life…
Hand in Glove sums up the relationship between, not just Steven and his Mum, Steven and Oscar, Morrissey and Marr, or Mark and Morrissey, but with all fans and their favourite writers, artists and bands. ‘It’s not like any other love. This one’s different, because it’s us’. Except, and I am not sure if Mark would agree here, really, it is exactly the same.
