The Mojo CD that comes with the April (Ian Curtis) issue

Still don't understand the appeal of most early Scritti Politti

did you champion cupid & psyche 85 in the other thread? you and I are very differnt people :)

Funny the way Wire's Kidney Bingoes & The Fall's The Classical effortlessly blow everything else on it away by miles.

I would hope so!

Indeed. There's a chocolate cake with white icing and a yellow cake with chocolate icing and we're eating different cakes. But they're both cakes.

i like that comparison.

They weren't very predictable, had these charmingly naive arrangements in regard to the constant changing of time signatures, were loose and sloppy but appropriately messy (made Entertainment! sound very hollow/emotionless/sterile in consequence), had lyrics as oblique as those by Minutemen (but I like Green's lyrics more), the bass was MASSIVE, they printed production costs on their sleeves, made the greatest double-tracked vocals (I don't know how they made Green so perfectly out-of-sync with himself), blended Marxism and pop and punk and soul and reggae into a lovely cohesion by marrying the abstract and unconventional with pop sensibilities, had funny tape loops, weren't as disconcerting to most people as The Pop Group were (love them I do for their fiery "death to rock" sound), and they make me happy as all get out. Need I say more?

Actually, I found myself thinking how fey and wanky "Kidney Bingoes" sounded these days (I loved it at the time) and how dated - all those chorused guitars.

I found this track to be a rather odd choice as it's from much later in their career (`87? `88?). It's a great track, but not really flush with the rest of the disc's aesthetic.

I find typos in MOJO all the time. It's a great magazine but the copy editor must be very rushed... Or something.

they've got a month to do a 146pp mag (admittedly light on ads); they've got an editor, a deputy editor, a consultant editor (ok, i imagine he's never in the office, but hey) and a production editor. and a two-man art department, so i doubt the prod ed is having to worry too much about drawing pages. on top of this i'm guessing they'll have at least one freelance subeditor, if not two, in for at least two weeks out of four.

some parts of the magazine production process are enormously difficult and require skill, flair and genius (ahem). checking people's names and the names of songs isn't one of them. especially when you've got the bloody internet at your disposal. and surely emap have a library/research dept on hand to help out?

i haven't bought mojo in ages; i bought this one entirely because of the JD/NO stuff. i don't think i'll be rushing to buy it again.

Yes, much as I love it (especially for the "high...high high high...loooow a low low low!" at the end) I found that perplexing as well. I just figured that for whatever reason maybe they couldn't get the rights for something earlier, but then if that was the case it might have made more sense to leave it off entirely.

About early Scritti Politti - it certainly is messy. Too messy. Like the guy was just fucking about with some pots and pans like a little kid. It's like he's so determined to do something different that he never lets the songs slip into any kind of reliable tune. They're just all over the place, going nowhere. Nothing wrong with a little experimentation, I mean he was just starting out and I respect that, but why people now see it now as such godly genius I can't understand. If it's not Doubt Beat, Confidence or Is & Ought The Western World, I fall asleep.

Hard to believe just how bad the Essential Logic track is. I've heard some great Essential Logic and some mediocre Essential Logic but this one is just plain bad.

TS Kidney Bingos vs. Bingo Master's Breakout

To me, the "groove" under the "pots and pans" in early Scritti is what I love best. I can't really defend it, it just feels completely natural to me. I never really understand when people say the changes within the songs sound jarring or disconnected--there's always that bass, and always Green's remarkably (inevitably, it would seem) almost crooning pop vocals tying it all together. To me it's just the right combination of comforting/accessible pop and post-punk angularity (though I love a lot that is farther out along the spectrum, too). It took me a while to come to love it all, but I was pretty thrilled the first time I heard them. There really aren't many other bands who sound like them--some had the post-punk artsy flavour and slowly went new wave/new romantic, but not many had it all to begin with.