Tell Tchaikovsky The News
Mr. Bailie asked me to join him for a full two-hour show the other evening, which I was, as ever, more than happy to do (What qualifies as happiness in excess, I’m not sure: ecstatic, perhaps? Jubilant?). The theme that I suggested was that of the pop music/classical music cross-over, something that has concerned me [...]
A Recluse Loose Aboot This Hoose
Further to Monday night’s incoherent gamming about Scott Walker on Radio Ulster.
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The first observation that an initiate would make, in the 1980s, the 1990s, the zero-zeros and the nows, is that Mr. Walker is a recluse. One doesn’t see him around all that much and, goodness, he doesn’t offer interviews with any frequency. The two [...]
The Chatter of Pop
An Essay sprung from Visions of Joanna Newsom, edited by Brad Buchanan (Roan Press)
“The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean.”
Pop music is kept buoyant by hot air. It is the heat of hyperventilating fandom, the prefab puffery of the press release, or the hyperbole of the press room that fills [...]
