Has Momus lost it?

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There's a vigorous debate on this subject going on at Momus's livejournal at the moment. Personally, I actually prefer the stuff he's doing now to his 80s and 90s heyday. I thought Summerisle was an interesting new direction, and I like the "travelogue" feel to the MP3s he's been posting to his livejournal.

― european son, Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:17 (twenty-two years ago)

(obligatory "did he ever have it?" post)

― Chris Ott (Chris Ott), Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:20 (twenty-two years ago)

beat to the punch by Ottally

― rentboy (rentboy), Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:25 (twenty-two years ago)

*insert penis joke here*

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:27 (twenty-two years ago)

the ol' scot's still gots the touch

― youngturx4eva (James Blount), Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:27 (twenty-two years ago)

love touch obv.

― [email protected] (James Blount), Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Momus's next album will be Lodger. Roll on Let's Dance I say!

― Bela Lugosi's Dad, Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:31 (twenty-two years ago)

I have a personal stake in the question, but I disagree violently with the whole notion of artists "losing it" - what people mean by this, I think, is that they have a rather restricted view of what "it" is. Is Momus working hard? Obviously yes; I think of art as having more to do with blood & sweat than with tears, so no, Momus hasn't "lost it" - some people who liked the work he was doing earlier aren't as interested in the work he's doing now, is all. I really think this whole question of "it" & having or losing "it" is pernicious.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:32 (twenty-two years ago)

it's auteurist bullshit also

― cinniblount (James Blount), Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:34 (twenty-two years ago)

There are people who work hard and shed their fair quota of blood, sweat & tears, and yet still they don't produce anything of worth. Art may be about hard work, but without the drop of vermouth in the martini, it isn't a martini. The idea of "losing it" isn't necessarily pernicious, as long as you don't fetishize "it" - I think we're all familiar with the idea of people going off the boil, either for a while or permanently.

However, to get back to the topic, I think what Momus is doing is more interesting than his previous material. I have a feeling that when Momus was young he desperately wanted to be famous, and now that hasn't exactly happened, he can simply focus more on the work rather than the celebrity aspect. Of course this may well be complete cod psychology on my part.

― european son, Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:41 (twenty-two years ago)

(This is an aside, don't wanna derail. But: I'd consider early work as an apprenticeship, evidence of whether a person is an artist in whom one is interested or not. Thereafter, "has it/lost it" aren't useful constructs: one doesn't forget how to make chairs once one's learned the trade. One may, however, make a few chairs that please oneself but on which fewer [or different groups of] people care to sit. I always liked the answers interviewees'd give on Yo! MTV Raps when asked about a particular artist: "Hey, Ice Cube, what do you think of MC Hammer?" Cube: "Hey, he's makin' money.")

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Momus said this in an interview "Well, I really believe that the most important thing you can have is a 'right to make mistakes', a 'license to err' (and even to 'um'). Without that, there can be no experiment, no adventure, no advance in music. The more mistakes, the longer the career! I've had twenty years of glorious mistakes.", which might explain his currentreckless depature of style, which I happen to love, by the way.

― sol 2, Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't think the analogy fully works, John. Art is not a craft one can learn by being an apprentice for some years. That is an aspect of it - and there may be an awful lot to learn, if you want to write symphonies, or there may be not much to learn, if you want to put dead sharks into tanks. But the learning is not the crucial aspect of it. It's the originality that you bring to it, and that isn't something that's learned except in a very broad sense of the word (i.e. not anyone can just 'learn' it). And I do think a good artist can turn into a bad artist. Of course, it's all subjective value judgement, but what else is there? Otherwise, we don't have anything to say about art.

― european son, Thursday, 13 May 2004 16:03 (twenty-two years ago)

haha apparently cube changed his mind about hammer when it came time to make the 'true to the game' video

― cinniblount (James Blount), Thursday, 13 May 2004 16:05 (twenty-two years ago)

"originality"'s a false trope also

― cinniblount (James Blount), Thursday, 13 May 2004 16:06 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't think "originality" is a false trope. Absolute originality may be, but the originality that encompasses taking existing things and rearranging them in new and interesting ways, that is what it's all about.

Momus is spot on when he talks about the right to err. The people I like are all ones who walk the tightrope and occasionally fall off.

― european son, Thursday, 13 May 2004 16:12 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't seperate an artist's work from their life. An artist's work is their life. It's who they are. But artists, in their life, don't always go down roads that I want to travel on. This doesn't mean that, in the future, I might not want to take a walk with them sometime.

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 13 May 2004 16:18 (twenty-two years ago)

carry on derailing by all means - much more interesting than the orig. question... which I can't answer anyway not having heard any Momus.

this thread may provide useful food for thought:
The Cult of the New?

― zebedee (zebedee), Thursday, 13 May 2004 16:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Do I know what a song is?
I'm not sure.
Do I know what a song should be?
I don't like the implication that it should be any one thing.
I like the idea that a song can become what a song is not.
Do I like the idea of 'timeless classic masterpieces'?
No. 'No more masterpieces!' was Artaud's battlecry. I agree with his idea that 'the reverence for set masterpieces is the lowest instinct of the petit bourgeoisie'.
Mark E. Smith forever! He just goes on and on making those Fall albums, one a year.
Do I know what makes my own work 'good'?
No, not really. All I understand is glamour, and my work as a way to stalk it.
Have I lost it?
I think I may have caught it by the tail. But is it the right tail, and will it lead to the right beast?
The kappa is a Japanese monster which lives in water and attacks farm animals, sucking blood from their anus. I think I will write a song about that.

― Momus (Momus), Thursday, 13 May 2004 16:31 (twenty-two years ago)

"limjob"

― cinniblount (James Blount), Thursday, 13 May 2004 16:33 (twenty-two years ago)

sucking blood from their anus

album title?

― cutty (mcutt), Thursday, 13 May 2004 16:33 (twenty-two years ago)

I always thought the "lost it" thing was just consumers/critics wanting a way to be let off the hook and not have to pay attention an artist's work anymore. it's a lot of work to keep up with every album someone puts out, especially if they're prolific, and I think it's a natural instinct for people to want to say (or be told) that "everthing after ____ sucks" so they have a reasonably limited amount of stuff worth checking out.

as for whether it actually happens, I think yeah some people do lose "it", whatever it is, but it's not as hard to come back/refind it as people seem to think.

― Al (sitcom), Thursday, 13 May 2004 16:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Momus, you should collaborate with someone on a new version of Artaud's The Cenci. I could really see that happening.

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 13 May 2004 16:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Euroson, I'm a classicist: I think originality is The Big Lie

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Thursday, 13 May 2004 16:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually my next album is going to be called 'The Artist Overwhelmed By The Grandeur of Ancient Ruins'. On the cover I will be seen making a Romantic sketch of some Classical Ruins -- which, when you look closer, turn out to be my own gigantic mouldering corpse.

― Momus (Momus), Thursday, 13 May 2004 16:55 (twenty-two years ago)

"The Colossus of Rhodesia"

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Thursday, 13 May 2004 17:05 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the proverbial "it" is just the desire to work creatively, the "fire in the belly". Momus obviously still has that... and the only song of his I ever heard was that Darla comp one about liking to like people to lick you or whatever. That was funny.

Momus wins!

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 13 May 2004 17:11 (twenty-two years ago)

'Oskar Tennis Champion' was my favorite album of last year, so definitely not. How is everyone able to hear the 'Summerisle' album? I thought it wasn't out until next month.... I can't find it in stores are online....

― Patrick South (Patrick South), Thursday, 13 May 2004 19:56 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the quality of Momus current work is on par with whatever his 'hey-day' years are considered to be (i.e. great). That said, one can always do even better!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 13 May 2004 20:01 (twenty-two years ago)

I would like to envelope my vagina around this man.

http://www.imomus.com/michaelangelo.jpeg

― Rosetta S., Friday, 14 May 2004 09:17 (twenty-two years ago)

My dear, if you're as wide as the open goal you just left here, I do not think even Nick could help you.

― suzy (suzy), Friday, 14 May 2004 09:42 (twenty-two years ago)

if you zoom in on that picture you can see he's really wrapped it in a few pieces of bacon.

― matthew james (matthew james), Friday, 14 May 2004 10:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I am certain that Momus is not a virgin. (See, because "lost it" could refer to virginity. Yeah, I am funny. Bastards.)

― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 14 May 2004 12:54 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.ville-lege-capferret.fr/images/phare.gif

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 14 May 2004 19:59 (twenty-two years ago)

I hear those are electronically automated these days.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 14 May 2004 20:09 (twenty-two years ago)

(rod stewart is english btw)

― zappi (joni), Friday, 14 May 2004 20:56 (twenty-two years ago)

A bedtime story for you.

The Great Cockle Picker Disaster of 2004.

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 14 May 2004 21:46 (twenty-two years ago)

But I mean, no one's suggesting that the concept of artists becoming less interesting as their careers progress is inherently flawed, are they? It's not an inevitability, obviously, but the landscape is strewn with examples of once-interesting artists (or craftsmen, if you prefer) gone to pot. When exactly it happens -- or even if it has happened -- is a subjective judgment (like, uh, all critical judgments about art, and blah blah blah), but surely it's not illegitimate somehow to note that, say, Paul Westerberg (or Bob Mould, or Prince, or your favorite Minneapolis genius here) ain't what they used to be.

More interesting might be the question of why popular musicians seem more prone to the falling-off phenomenon than, say, fiction writers, poets or painters. (If that's actually true; it seems that way to me, but there are plenty of counter-examples.) What contributes to falling-off? The boredom of the artist? The boredom of the audience? The distractions of other things in life (family, addictions, whatever)? Is popular music so novelty dependent as a medium that falling-off is just built into it? But if so, what about all the exceptions? What makes them different?

― spittle (spittle), Friday, 14 May 2004 23:25 (twenty-two years ago)

I've always wondered if it has something to do with 20somethings making the decisions as to what "has it" and what doesn't, and thus mostly being interested in the sorts of things that other 20somethings are doing. Whereas, for example, those last few Dylan albums mostly seemed to resonate with, you know, middle aged guys.

On the other hand, the people who mostly decide whether books or poetry "have it" are older. So their interests might align with older writers.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 14 May 2004 23:54 (twenty-two years ago)

The obvious answer is that pop music is pop and pop changes muuch faster than the literary canon, by nature.

Also I would like to say that I love Momus

Dear Momus,
Kisses.

Love,
Sonny

― Sonny A. (Keiko), Saturday, 15 May 2004 00:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I think that when you're young and think you might make it, you have:

1. All to play for
2. All to prove
3. All to try

Of course, if you're young and ambitious, you may well stifle 3 for the sake of 1 and 2. If, later, you become a 'sustainable failure' (like me, ha!), you have a diminished sense of 1, certainly, but 2 and 3 can still seem wide open, which I think is good incentive for strong mature work.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 May 2004 05:46 (twenty-two years ago)

http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=tbn:z5T_ExbDBFIJ:www.projecttruffle.com/store/images/FOURME_SM.jpg

― suzy (suzy), Saturday, 15 May 2004 09:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, some things get better with age! But we mustn't get complacent. Gainsbourg, to justify his smoking and drinking, pointed out that smoke is used to preserve fish and alcohol fruit. Shortly afterwards, he died.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 May 2004 09:25 (twenty-two years ago)

the way to kill a kappa was apparently to bow to it - it's head was hollow and filled with life giving liquid, and when it bowed back it would pour out and die. Or at least that's what I read, I've never seen one with my own two eyes...

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Saturday, 15 May 2004 11:15 (twenty-two years ago)

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