Saturday, November 21, 2009

I like...


















Number 19 in a limited edition of 5. The mighty Royal (Short shorts) Teens.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Late fragment

Stephen King has written a very trenchant piece in the NY Times on Carol Sklenicka's new biography of Raymond Carver. King is very obviously a fan of the writer - of his writing. Carver, the man, his self-destructive hubris, his, certainly earliest, tendency towards cruelty and excess, King, isn't quite so fond. And understandably so. The book really comes into its own; and where it differs from the majority of books on Carver, when it discusses the writer's relationship with his editor grise, Gordon Lish...Sklenicka (and King) acknowledge Carver's debt to the monomaniacal Lish - editorially, there can have been few better practitioners of the art - but, watch out! 'Life and Stories,' is available now.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Thank God, we've got it...

It's easy to overpraise Yo La Tengo. They, and almost only they, hold a uniquely diametrical place in today's increasingly homogenised music world. Jarvis Cocker once said of John Peel that he, "..stood up for the 'sore thumbs' of the music scene." And no-one defines sore thumbdom as unequivocally as YLT. Their Glasgow show of last friday demonstrated once again their extraordinary ability to reduce even the most hardened observer to tears; the most cynical commentator to cheers. Real cheers. Real tears. In their 25th year of making music they continue to plough the most fertile of musical furrows, their collective imagination undimmed, the seemingly limitless depth of their music making talent undiminished.

'Mr Tough'