what do you think of Jon Savage?

Any Vagues are worth picking up and reading if you can find them, I particulatly love "The West Eleven Days of my Life".

Also: the book Teenage that he's working on is supposedly about youth culture from the turn of the century? Haven't really heard a lot about it.

Surely this could be better: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Savage

Hey, apparently that Haçienda Must Be Built book even has a Fac number!

Vague back issues, and the anthology The Great British Mistake: Vague 1977-92 (Savage interview included), are available from AK Press, it looks like.

also looking fwd to the gay-pop-thru-the-ages comp he's putting together for this year, also on Trikont

That comp thing sounds fantastic!

Also:

http://69.93.254.120/G/storage/site1/files/24/51/42/245142_76323876e8d154tarctm06.jpg

Has anyone here read "Teenage" yet ?

no. i was like huh? i thought it was going to be about postwar teenagers. or, the invention of the teenager i guess. but it's a prehistory. is he doing another volume?

I don't know. Not sure how music oriented it is in any event. Just wondered whether anyone had road tested it. He is a writer I do like but am not sure about this one.

Great source of info on Joy Divison but I can't stand reading this liner notes on the Joy Division releases, especially the Collector's editions the past few months. I even can stand Morley's big ol' essay on the Heart And Soul box set more than Savage's, which is saying a lot. (Not that I don't enjoy some Morley pieces, but THAT one was a doozy.)

His Kinks book is great!

Also:

― RoxyMuzak© (roxymuzak), Friday, September 29, 2006 10:22 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is good to know. iirc quondam ilxor mark s said he had the hell of a time writing it, and i was unsure whether the book was not good as a result of this.

back to the well: the england's dreaming tapes

Isn't Simon Reynolds doing something similar with the Rip It Up tapes?

has done so already!

Thanks for the tip, I didn't know this was available.

I just read England's Dreaming cover to cover again last month. It was good at 15, 25, and now 32. I appreciate that book more and more each time I read it. I am looking forward to 700+ pages of the source material.

Just finished England's Dreaming, a compelling and fascinating read for the most part. I think I would second the views expressed upthread that Savage is more of a historian than a critic. His ability to tell the story and to contextualize it is nothing short of breathtaking. And when he does take the time to describe the music he does so in ringingly persuasive terms.

I thought there were one or two strange omissions though, firstly there was hardly any mention at all of John Peel. Given that one of Savage's major themes is the way punk was filtered through the media, and given Peel's key role in the development of punk, this seems very strange.

Secondly, this is kind of lascivious but there was also precious little mention of sex in the book. Except for a brief reference to Sid going "so who's gonna fuck me tonight?" after a gig, you'd have thought none of the Pistols ever got off with anyone. I'd have liked to read more about whether or not they had girlfriends, groupies and so on. I can't imagine Jones and Cook doing badly for themselves, but Lydon has always seemed something of a sexless figure (there was the famous quote about "two and a half minutes of squelching").

i think steve jones was a sex maniac and fucked loaves of bread and stuff like that

I thought there were one or two strange omissions though, firstly there was hardly any mention at all of John Peel.

Savage was sort of associated with Throbbing Gristle/ Gen P-Orridge, I think? And they never had much time for Peel, and he didn't play them much.

i think steve jones was a sex maniac and fucked loaves of bread and stuff like that

― end to end berners (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 10 May 2011 14:55 (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he whacked off in Glen Matlock's sandwich but I think that was less about him being a pervert and more about Glen Matlock being annoying