Friday, May 20, 2011

Maggoty Lamb on Arthur's afterlife and a resuscitated NME

What's it all about, Arthur? A lucky drip of critical perspectives, finds our Lamb. Elsewhere in the music press, there's a meeting of minds and a creative spark at NME

It should be a strange and rather sad feeling to stumble on the last rites of a music publication you never read ? like wandering through the aftermath of a party you might have really enjoyed if you'd only received an invite. But the main emotion prompted by a speculative trawl through the bounteously still-up-and-running archives of sadly defunct American underground newsletter Arthur is one of pure enjoyment.

In a month when the publication of Greil Marcus's latest Bob Dylan anthology has prompted a rash of the kind of music journalism technically described as "canonical bollocks" (regular readers will know how this column hates to point the finger, but in the context of a book which is at best Live at the Budokan to Invisible Republic's Blood on the Tracks, Mojo's five-star review does have a rather knee-jerk quality to it), it's a treat to come across Arthur's lucky-dip of much fresher critical perspectives. From brazenly pseudonymous record reviewers "C&D" daring to face up the apparent simple-mindedness of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On in May 2006 ? "Maybe it's only a love singer who can bring the super-commentary that lasts" ? to Pavement's Stephen Malkmus (in March 2008) talking a lot of sense about the historic backdrop to the evolution of US golf-course design but showing considerably less of an aptitude for political prophecy ("President Obama ? I'd probably be surprised by that too"), Arthur's best contributors retain the capacity to surprise and delight even as former editor Jay Babcock ponders his next move.

"My girlfriend and I are putting in an enclosed vegetable garden today at our home in Joshua Tree, California", Babcock reassures concerned former readers, "near our outdoor shower and compost toilet." And for those ? like me ? struggling to come to terms with how they could have failed to get on this particular publishing bandwagon before it drove into the digital ravine, maybe we simply got Arthur mixed up with the Kennedy family Vanity Fair tribute-magazine George, just as zoologically unfocussed British indie fans have sometimes been known to confuse the very much alive-and-flapping Stool Pigeon, with the sadly extinct Lime Lizard.

This month's Word magazine brings together two of the most feared and formidable operators in the history of Anglophone pop culture journalism. "But enough of Allison Pearson and Jude Rogers," I hear a voice in the wings observe mischievously, "how does the 'rock critic power summit' between Nick Kent and the aforementioned Greil Marcus go?" Well, it's more of a meeting of minds than the similarly heavyweight Eurovision head-to-head between Charles Shaar Murray and Cheryl Baker from Bucks Fizz, but the unusual structure of the Kent/Marcus encounter gives the proceedings a welcome extra edge.

It is normal for such public conversations between eminent individuals to be brokered by an at least nominally neutral umpire, but in this case, Kent himself is on transcribing and introduction duty. In one sense ? history generally being the propaganda of he or she who has the kept the interview tapes ? this gives him an advantage, but in another it makes him vulnerable to the perception that his need of media exposure might be greater than that of his distinguished contemporary.

To compensate for any consequent diminution in status, Kent starts by getting Marcus's name wrong ("In my ignorance", he disingenuously confesses, "I'd pronounced it Grail") and later proclaims himself "pleasantly surprised to find that he [Marcus] also possessed a very ready sense of humour, something that tends to stay hidden when he writes". These waspish pleasantries aside, Kent ultimately gives a commendably fair-minded account of the ideological division between his vision of rock journalism as "fundamentally an action-driven medium" and Marcus's "harvesting of cultural obsessions in a quest for literary epiphanies". Both parties also have interesting things to say about Bruce Springsteen (insofar as that is not a contradiction in terms), and the only real disappointment served up by this dichotomous duo is their disappointingly safe choices for top turn of the last 20 years ? Marcus picks PJ Harvey, Kent plumps for Radiohead.    

Hamish MacBain's well thought out expos� of the hypocrisy inherent in Thom Yorke and co's attitudes to the music industry is one reason an avid and well-informed rock press reader of my acquaintance was only half joking when he proclaimed the 23 April edition of NME (the issue with Lady Gaga on the front doing Hazel O'Connor for Stars in Their Eyes) "the best ever". No doubt he was also quietly impressed by Peter Robinson's readiness to front up to Lady Gaga over the possible melodic kinship between Born This Way and Madonna's Express Yourself ("If you put the songs together side by side, the only similarities are the chord progression", Gaga snaps back, somewhat inconclusively. "God sent me those lyrics and that melody").

While not sufficiently venerable to know every Danny Baker singles page by heart, this particular newly satisfied customer is certainly well-seasoned enough to recall the halcyon days of wilfully confrontational Steven Wells letters pages and 6 Music's Stuart Maconie writing about important underground Northern bands such as The Railway Children. This puts him in an ideal position to notice that Krissi Murison is proving to be NME's boldest and most imaginative editor in decades.

What a shame it would be if the paper were to go the way of Arthur just as it's finally emerging from years in the journalistic doldrums. Maybe a few more disgruntled ex-subscribers should reallocate some of the resources they might have squandered on one more book about Dylan and give NME another chance for a few weeks ? if only as a gesture of collective confidence in music journalism having a future as well as a past. After all, if they don't like what they find, there's always the paperback to save up for.


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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/may/19/maggoty-lamb-arthur-nme

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