warren ellis, patti smith, leonard cohen and alex fucking turner
two things made me laugh today…..
this from warren ellis:
“i also think i hallucinated a show called cash cab, where a cab driver appears to abduct new yorkers and ask them gameshow questions. if they get the questions right, the ceiling of the cab lights up, the cabbie gives them cash money, and they leave the cab, where local criminals are lying in wait for them because let’s face it it’s not hard to spot the cash cab when it’s lit up like a 70’s disco floor inside. if they fail the quiz, the cash cabbie dumps them on wasteground in brooklyn in the middle of the night to get sexually assaulted and skinned. i’m pretty sure i made this show up during some early morning fugue episode. i mean, the discovery channel would never fund something like that. right?”
and the guardians great lyricists booklet.
yesterday was patti smith whose birdland i consider one of the finer pieces of modern prose whether it’s a fucking rock song or not:
His father died and left him a little farm in new england.
All the long black funeral cars left the scene
And the boy was just standing there alone
Looking at the shiny red tractor
Him and his daddy used to sit inside
And circle the blue fields and grease the night.
tomorrow is leonard cohen who not only knows a thing or two about writing songs, but is a bona fide published poet who wrote lyrics in amphibrach. and this:
today, today was the guy from the arctic fucking monkeys. honest to christ. alex turner, that fifth rate morrissey now considered alongside chuck d, patti smith, joni mitchell, bob dylan and leonard cohen. i coughed and spluttered, choked and fumed. i was shocked and appalled, bamboozled and befuddled. i laughed and guffawed, sneered and mocked.
come on guardian people, really?
28/06/2008 at 6:16 pm
I agree, it’s a complete joke. It might be acceptable (though I’d still disagree with it) to include Turner in a list of 100 great lyricists, but to have him there alongside Dylan etc is ridiculous; it’s a blatant – and misfiring, since I doubt Arctic Monkeys fans particularly care about free Guardian booklets – attempt to seem ‘down with the kids’.
28/06/2008 at 9:57 pm
And yet and yet. Simon Armitage, self-styled poet-laureate in-waiting, writes a gushing intro. Perhaps that just reveals him (armitage) as an indie kid who got lucky rather than a serious force in poetry. Dunno to be honest, I’ve never read any of his stuff. Prefer my poets old and grey, or long dead.
28/06/2008 at 9:59 pm
Oh yeah – and Noel Gallagher must be feeling snubbed!
30/06/2008 at 1:04 pm
tom: down with the kids? i’m not sure the kids still listen to arctic monkeys, do they? their dads might. seems a bit silly and slightly desperate including them.
and chuck d seems a little incongruous among the bog standard guardian readership middleclass heavyweights. trying for the urban vote as well i s’pose and about twenty years too late.
30/06/2008 at 1:30 pm
ah simon armitage. the victoria wood of modern poetry. i find it difficult to take someones writing seriously when part of their canon is a short story for a paul weller album booklet. maybe that’s just me. he’s just tries to be a bit too accessible, hence the arctic monkeys chat. which is fine for kids but as mr tom says they’re not exactly a guardian demographic. personally i like my poets bitter and drunk and grim. dead or alive.
08/07/2008 at 9:57 pm
these classic publicity stunts make me sad.
I mean I enjoy “dance like a robot from 1984″ as much as the next meat head but once again a dying medium is trying to get a grip in the new world. Let’s never speak of this again.
aww gawd i just did. Curse you Giardian!
voyno.
10/07/2008 at 12:15 pm
it’s one thing to enjoy a throwaway pop line and quite another to compare it to piss factory. it’s pandering ill-advisedly to a non-existant audience. curse you giardian indeed!