Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

I went up to Merton College in 1993, a kid who'd got a scholarship to a minor private school.

Get away. Well I never. Who'd've thought it?

most of tanya gold's articles seem to be about some deep seated bitterness/resentment at school bullies or being ostracised.

She coped by becoming a drunk. Where's the downside?

Wonder if I could get a gig writing about some dude I had a fight with in 1983.

"First thing I did on entering college was ask where I could hang my flat cap and if there was a good place to keep whippets."

First thing I did on entering college was be mildly disappointed when I realised Hull didn't have a beach.

"Oxford is hellish. It needs to be broken apart and stuffed with kids who've got a scholarship to a minor private school- for its own good"

six fucking pages of comments, 95% of which are "I went to Oxbridge and had a cracking time!"

5% of which are quality zings

Renoir
Oct 02 08, 11:48am

Czarnykot: naughty but funny and horribly revealing. There's something quite Oxford student journalism about Gold's pieces, which adds to the irony.

Actually, those are some harsh percentages, Miss Gold's getting some great and sustained stick here.

The final paragraph of that blog post is shite of the highest order.

(I mean the 'that liberal media, they love the intolerant Muslims' one, not the 'I spent three years at Oxford weeping into my gin' one).

LOL OMG go to Page 6 of the Oxford article's comments, and check out the contributions from "WorldWide"

Oxford was about Power, Cambridge was about Religion. Both had Soul but were loveless.

This is Bobby Gillespie, right?

"It was as a wee bairn who got a scholarship to a minor public school that I first met Sun Ra, Holger Czukay and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Of course, all them gadgies were listening to the Rubettes at the time. I soon turned them on to the good stuff."

The women/girl students were uniformly ugly but had potential for later bloomage.

Maybe it's Antony Worrall Thompson.

Did this masterpiece get due recognition?
The art of bumping into geniuses

How does ET cope with being the Paul Burrell of music journalism?

How is it that, throughout my time as a critic, I have often encountered unusual talents, geniuses if you will – Jad Fair, Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, Lydia Lunch, Thalia Zedek of Come, Daniel Johnston – often, early on in their "careers", and yet none of their star or selling power has rubbed off on me?

Wait! I know this one!!

Another 500 word tract on why no one recognises the true genius of ET.

I prefer him when he's in embarrassing ignored namedropper mode to his "Here is my new favourite girl band consisting of a bunch of women who look, dress, and sing like oversexualised toddlers"

"It was as a wee bairn who got a scholarship to a minor public school that I first met Sun Ra, Holger Czukay and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Of course, all them gadgies were listening to the Rubettes at the time. I soon turned them on to the good stuff."

Not quite got the hang of the Glaswegian patter there, Noodle

I'm at work, I couldn't access the standard translation site.

Plus no mention of the Chris McClure Set or Jack McLaughlin

Yeah, can a Sub clear that up please?

How is it that, throughout my time as a critic, I have often encountered unusual talents, geniuses if you will – Jad Fair, Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, Lydia Lunch, Thalia Zedek of Come, Daniel Johnston – often, early on in their "careers", and yet none of their star or selling power has rubbed off on me?

The AWESOME SELLING POWER of Thalia Zedek (of Come).

I think I'm seeing Thalia Zedek play tonight so maybe I could ask her why none of her star power rubbed off on Everett True

ha xp

Quipped a disgruntled Sun Ra: "Eh! Boaby! Ye telt me ye wis gonnae get Johnny Gilmore tae play tenor in ma band - no Johnny Beattie!"

Johnny Beattie: "Ah cannae get the hang o' this glaikit notation. Can we no' just dae My Woman My Woman My Wife?"

Sun Ra: "AH DIDNAE BEAM DOON FRAE THE PLANET SATURN FIR TAE PLAY FECKIN' JERRY VALE!"

Bob: "Here, gie's a fuckin' brek Sunny, you know how difficult it is tae find a fuckin' Venusian in Glesga? Aye, awright, maybe no' that difficult after a', ah'll put an advert up in Sound Control this efternoon"

Bob: "Tenor Saxophonist Required For Myth-Science Arkestra. Must Be From Saturn. NO CLOWNS OR TIME-WASTERS"

Quipped Arkestra singer Calum Kennedy: "Eh, I'm no' sure aboot a' this Space Is The Place stuff. D'ye no mean Bonnie Bonnie Loch Lomond Is The Place Whur Ah Wis Born An' I Walk They Proud Glens..."

Sun Ra: "Yir FIRED, so ye are!"

'geniuses if you will'

we will not

<3 ET, but that's not one of his better pieces by a long way.

I prefer him when he's in embarrassing ignored namedropper mode to his "Here is my new favourite girl band consisting of a bunch of women who look, dress, and sing like oversexualised toddlers"

― Carrie Bradshaw Layfield (The stickman from the hilarious 'xkcd' comics), Monday, 6 October 2008 09:53 (1 hour ago)

Back in the day it was more american bands with heroinish looking female vocalists I think? The oversexualised toddler thing was just babes in toyland, and courtney love when she was knocking off their look I think? I might be wrong, it was all a long time ago.

Worst thing he ever wrote was when he interviewed ultrasound and compared the bassist's looks to those of myra hindley, and made out that it was a favourable comparison. Eh.

Funny how it helped to be a 14-year-old girl if you wanted to approach ET for a job on Melody Maker back in the day...

i rang him once -- 1995? -- looking for a couple of contacts. he was fantastically helpful. therefore, he will always be prefaced by the words "that good dude" in my mind.

(by which i mean: i rang him out of the blue, and he could very well have gone: "fuck off, son.")

Who here would say 'fuck off, son' if someone rang them at work seeking advice?

*looks round, expectantly*

maybe not the 'son' bit

pinefox: a lot of people working at music magazines would. ET wouldn't (and didn't, to me, over a decade ago) because he is a decent dude. he's also easily one of the best editors I've ever had the good fortune to have worked with, and still one of my favourite writers.

I spend my entire working life phoning up journalists I don't know for contacts and have never been told to fuck off. You'd be surprised how many go beyond the call of duty to help you out.

They're all dead inside, probably searching for someone to save them

DC is surely correct - most people want to be polite.

If someone rang me at work innocently seeking advice and I told them to fuck off, I would expect them to make a complaint and that I would be disciplined. It is just not professional behaviour and should not be tolerated. Do music journalists really behave this way? One of my best friends is a music journalist, and I can't imagine him doing it.

i was told countless times as a student that all journalists, esp music ones, were rude, socially inept backstabbers who'd tell you to fuck off if you even spoke to them, but i think there must have been a bit of ~projection~ going on there cuz most people i've had dealings with are lovely.

lex, you should meet some of my erstwhile colleagues.

personally, i've always tried to go out of my way to help people. but i've worked with hacks (and indeed still do) who wouldn't give a random caller the reek off their arse, let alone precious contact details.

pinefox: you might have noticed, from my posts passim, that i tend to swear a lot. i wouldn't necessarily have expected ET to say, word-for-word, "fuck off, son". however: i'm sure you can appreciate that there are 1001 ways to imply "fuck off, son", even very politely. what i'm getting at -- why in the hell am i actually spelling this out? jesus -- is that i was enormously impressed that one of the most respected music hacks of that time would go out of his way to help me out, given that he didn't have a clue who i was and i was calling him out of the blue at what could well have been his busiest time of day.

whatever line of work we're talking about, that kind of thing deserves respect.

pretty much all the editors i currently work with are sweethearts who reply to emails and are fun to chat with on the telephone. this is because i reached a point a while back when i realised that it just wasn't worth the bother of talking to the ones who were consistently rude or unhelpful. there were plenty of them, believe me.

I think the reason is that journalists just relish any opportunity to sound authoritative about something.

cf: ILM

Maybe I'm dead inside, but I *have* told an-unknown-person-who-called-me-at-work-seeking-advice to 'fuck off'. In my defence, I'd already spent a few minutes racking my brains to get them a number for the right person for their out-of-the-blue, inane query when they started complaining that I wasn't being helpful enough because I couldn't put them through directly

I think that pretty much anyone, in pretty much any line of work, should behave respectfully and politely towards a member of the public who politely and in good faith asks them a question. Perhaps there are exceptions to this rule (spies? bomb disposal experts? racing drivers?), but music journalists are certainly not among them. So no, I don't think that to give a polite and reasonable response deserves any special 'respect'.

Yet it is still possible to go beyond the call of duty (politeness / respect = duty here, I suppose); if a journo responded to a query by saying 'hey, why don't you come into the office one day, I'll take you out to lunch and we'll discuss all this?' - etc - then that would indeed be striking. Perhaps ET's behaviour on this occasion was indeed somehow helpful beyond the call of everyday respectfulness.