Last night a DJ ruined my life: a Valentines Day playlist

My resolutely unromantic Valentines Day playlist this year consists of:

- Robots in Disguise, ‘Chains’
- Einstürzende Neubauten, ‘Jet’M’
- The Bush Tetras, ‘Too Many Creeps’
- The Slits, ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’
- Amy Winehouse, ‘Back to Black’
- Pulp, ‘Bad Cover Version’
- Magazine, ‘Permafrost’(apocalyptic version off one of their Peel sessions)
- Super Furry Animals, ‘Juxtapozed With U’

It can be listened to here on 8tracks, if you like.


A quick request (re. images of women in post-punk).

So: I’ve written a chapter on female post-punk musicians* for a forthcoming women-in-music book. I mostly talk about the Slits, the Raincoats, Linder Sterling, Lydia Lunch (unavoidably), ESG, the Au Pairs, Delta 5, Pauline Black, Barbara Ess, Ut., Mars, the Bush Tetras, the Bloods, Malaria!, Kleenex/LiLiPUT, and latterly Erase Errata, Sonic Youth, Scissor Girls, Karen O, Nisennenmondai etc.

Now: I didn’t include any illustrations with the writing, because my grasp of decent visual art is comparable to Boris Johnson’s grasp of his handlebars after a heavy night out. But apparently it would be nice to have some.

Therefore: I’m looking for suitable images – photographs, illustrations, cartoons – for inclusion in the chapter. Anything relevant considered especially if it pertains to the bands mentioned. Full credit given, further details on request, please pass this on if you can think of anyone who’d care. Thank you.

Also: it is my birthday. I’m going to celebrate with fresh air and daylight.

* Of which there is an excellent overview here.


Subtle Subversion: how I learned to love The Raincoats (a bit)

Written for Bad Reputation.
*

“So, I’m supposed to buy her some noodles and a book and sit around listening to chicks who can’t play their instruments, right?”
10 Things I Hate About You

As a twelve-year-old in a post-industrial backwater, I discovered punk a long time after the fact, but when I did I took to it like a mohawked and safety-pinned duck to water. With the snobbery and omnicognisance of youth, I quickly developed a doctrinaire approach whereby if ‘punk’ songs weren’t short, sharp, and shouty, I didn’t want to know. Man, did London Calling fuck with my head, with its rackety punk take on reggae and soul and funk and lovers‘ rock and, god forbid, jazz. When I first heard London Calling I swore never to listen to a good two-thirds of it again because it clearly wasn‘t Real Punk. Like all teenage girls, I was insufferable. Read the rest of this entry »


The outside of everything: a Howard Devoto primer.

Speaking of boredom, let’s start with Tony Wilson’s gloriously earnest and nonchalantly pretentious Buzzcocks/Magazine documentary from 1978. In many ways it seems far longer ago than that, what with girls who work in Woolworths and all that quaint smoking indoors. Don’t make ‘em like this anymore, eh? Read the rest of this entry »


The Raincoats, Odyshape

Written for Wears the Trousers 26.08.11
*

The wave of musical experimentation which took place in the wake of punk generated many new and startling sounds, some of which endured and grew in influence while others became lost to musical history. The Raincoats, a London-spawned, ever-shifting collective based around the partnership of Gina Birch and Ana Da Silva, are now firmly in the former category. Their self-titled debut was described by Vivien Goldman as “the first woman’s rock album” to emerge, its lack of musical or vocal hierarchies or focus-pulling solo virtuosity pioneering an arresting and persuasive kind of rock without the cock. In 1981, Odyshape continued to shift the rules of the game. Read the rest of this entry »


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