Momus: Classic or Dud

Will you ever make a record with the scuffling vole?

Wasn't it Momus who wrote a vicious little song that went:

We corrupted Swiss chocolate
We laced it with strychnine
And said we'd only stop it
For a cool six million

We corrupted Swiss chocolate
And moved to the Philippines
We've come to know exactly
What being fabulously wealthy means
It's beautiful

...and got it into the Japanese singles chart?

Is Momus really an immortal kicked off Mount Olympus for criticizing the other gods, and is there really a Cafe Momus in Act 2 of Puccini's opera La Boheme, as well as a chapter of the New Orleans Mardi Gras called Momus (not to mention lots of gnarly, bearded Dungeons and Dragons players)? And is there a character in Kafka named Momus?

'There's no point lying about this: Momus and I are both active participants on the I Love Music and I Love Everything message boards, and we've butted heads a number of times about a number of things. I still don'T agree with him most of the time, but he's a gracious arguer and a terrific sport, which predisposes me toward liking him. Wish I could say the same about his music -- let's just say he likes Serge Gainsbourg and Japanese pop a lot more than I do, not to mention that his in-your-face amorality I'd find a lot more interesting (not to say endearing) if he weren't so fucking gleeful about it. But I'm going to the show anyway -- partly because I want to meet the guy in person, partly because he's smart enough that I suspect his stage patter will be more interesting than his actual songs.'

You're a funny guy, Momus. But you're no Jon Langford.

Mr Diamond, no.

Speaking of oop north, which famous Britpop group approached Momus asking him to produce their next album and were somewhat miffed that he didn't even write back?

(It's Frasier, BTW)

Does the current edition of British art magazine Modern Painters, in a four page feature, really trumpet Momus as 'a Scottish Serge Gainsbourg with a reputation as a producer to rival Brian Eno's'?

Is it true that Bill Drummond of the KLF demanded £11,000 to remix 'A Complete History of Sexual Jealousy (Parts 17-24)' in 1998?

And did Channel 4, after securing Serge Gainsbourg's permission to be interviewed by Momus for a show called World Cafe, really demand £2000 from Creation Records to cover travel expenses?

Irony is sadly in no way dead. That, however, is not stopping me from being all about the "new earnestness".

Did Momus once get a commission from the editor of the NME to interview the late satirical chansonnier Jake Thackray only to arrive at the nominated pub one hour late and miss him?

Is there anywhere I can download it? because there's not way I'm going to buy it, honestly..

Q: How many Momuses does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: It's Momae, you ignoramus!

Is it true that the somewhat prudish Kahimi Karie refused to leave her house for two weeks after having the line 'the chastity belt round my throat' explained to her after the 'Journey' record came out?

I don't see what's wrong with "Momuses."

Sonny, they're demos. The finished record was made with the Dufay Collective, with real medieval instruments like viols, crummhorns and sackbuts.

Is it true that Ernst Jandl is Momus's biggest incentive (this month, anyway) to keep recording? And is it true that listening to BBC Radio 6 this weekend almost persuaded him to give up?

I don't think I would like to hear these songs with medieval instruments either :(

Did Momus really make a brief appearance in the documentary about Britpop that screened in the UK this week as a funny bald man mopping the toilets at the Hacienda?

Does the recent Broadcast album 'Ha Ha Sound' contain a backwards message in track 7 which says, in a whispery voice, 'Momus holds the key'?

That's a song from their first album.

Does Momus carry around in his left pocket a supply of black cardamom seeds, without which he can't drink tea?

But is it true that Momus has a collection of pet newts?

Q: Did Tony Blair lie to the British public?
A: England's greatest living songwriter is a Scot with an eyepatch and a line in whoppers.

A lot of people don't think "drunk" is the past participle of the verb drink, but it is.

Is it true that Momus recorded a song for the soundtrack of Derek Jarman's 'Blue' at the home of one of his heroes, Brian Eno, and yet failed to meet 'the Scaramouche of the synthesiser' (although he did meet his mother)?

And is 'Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)' in fact a Momus album that Eno has merely reverse-plagiarised thanks to an ingenious time-travelling device which allowed him to hear Momus' 2006 album several decades before its release?

Debate me.

Can this really be 'the gaunt minstrel of modern angst', photographed at home in Berlin this weekend?

Have you listened to Xiu Xiu yet?

Q: What's the meaning of life?
A: 43.

A propos, in which Momus song does the narrator sing:

'And Aubrey Beardsley sketches me
And Oscar Wilde comes round for tea
But I still feel so Japanese
When I'm alone on Piccadilly

And Sherlock Holmes is my good friend
I have a trust fund I can spend
And I am ready to defend
My immorality to anyone'?

What do I win?

A pewter mug with a saucy friar's ruddy face, Jordank.

One of these is Shakespeare and one is Momus. Which is which?

1. Fillet of a fenny snake,
    In the caldron boil and bake;
    Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
    Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
    Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
    Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—
    For a charm of powerful trouble,
    Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

2. Ariel is the name I bear
On the bat black night I fly
I'll have music wherever I go
Till Phoebus 'gins a rise
The gods, my friends, smile down on us
The wheel of fortune turns
We shall be spared the plague and the clap
When the fire of London burns

Your starter for ten, 'Sperm-drinking Gokkun Princess' appears on which Momus album?

...not that that's a bad thing....

yYes, but he didn't do it with time-travel. He did it because of the nonexistance of time: 2006=1974!

Just kidding. Hope all is well. Stars Forever rules, as does your record of Internet cowboy songs. Coincidentally, I'm the dude who questioned the artistic benefit and cost of your "patronage" in that SonicNet essay five years back. Writing a good record hushed that argument ... put egg on face ...

What am I gonna do then?

This is the binary that Momus is always proposting, and it's part of what I dislike about his schtick: "if you take issue with what I say, you're a puritan!" But taking offense at Momus isn't necessarily puritan, moralistic, etc. Neat trick, though, demonizing the opposition in order to discredit any point they might have. One might actually, and fairly, call such a trick somewhat "Puritan."

1. At last convicted of statutory rape by Japanese officials ("I just couldn't keep my grubby hands off that cute fascist schoolgirl uniform" proves to be a disastrous defence.)
2. Having his Hello Kitty-promoting, orientalist ass literally kicked in by a real Japanese musician like Keiji Haino
3. As he continues to age, he continues to look even more like a scraggly Richard Branson
4. The remainder of his recorded output joins the rest of his oeuvre in the Asda bargain bins
5. Ceases to jump on each and every bandwagon, no matter how dubious

and, worst of all and bye-bye Boho derive ...

6. His parents finally halt their financial support

*feels like buying a bottle of vodka (but won't do that)*

Don't be ridiculous - that was The Most Important Man Alive!

< O' Level Latin Pedant mode >

Technically I think it should only be Momae if the singular were Moma (i.e. 1st Declension, Feminine).

Surely the plural of 'Momus' would be 'Momi'?

Only if Momus is 2nd Declension Masculine.

If Momus is 2nd Declension Masculine, the plural should also be Momus

If Momus is 3rd Declension Neuter however, the plural would be Moma

< / O' Level Latin - hopefully for good this time >

Of course (as I'm sure you've all realised) what I really meant to write was: "If Momus is 4th Declension Masculine...."

'In one of his many clever songs, Nick Currie compares his quest for fame to God's and wonders why the big fella gets all the coverage. The answer is that God is a nicer guy.'

Well, I guess I'll concede on that point, Christgau. Though I didn't invent sex and death, just sing about them. I may have a dark sense of humour, but 'the big fella's often seems darker. Christgau ends:

'...no matter how well-turned the lyric, very few listeners actually enjoy songs in which snobbish dandies trot out their sexual egomania and baby envy.Deep down, most people have some cornball in them. And this is a good thing.'

I guess this is the same point you're making, Jesse, when you say 'People won't start getting Momus until well after Momus starts getting people, which, as I shade my eyes and look toward the horizon, is not even a tiny speck.'

This comes down to something akin to religious belief, something to do with our conception of human nature. You see, Christgau and you apparently want artists to be affirmative, to hold up a positive, instructive, heartwarming and even 'corny' image of human nature. You believe that if an artist portrays people as jealous, sexual, rapacious, violent and so on that means the artist hates or misunderstands people. Momus 'doesn't get people', for you, presumably because there are Momus songs in which a man confesses to his intense jealousy of babies, or wonders about the meaning of his addiction to certain forms of ejaculation.

My opinion is the opposite. I think songs like these are evidence that not only do I 'get people', but that it's possible to see the worst in people and still love them, still celebrate them. And, oddly enough, that's something on which 'the Big Fella' and I are in complete agreement.

One day, we'll wake up. And people will suddenly "get" Momus.

Actually, this happened in America in 1998 (the same year Christgau deigned to notice my work). Momus was trendy because Momus was so Japanese, so European, so sophisticated, so amoral. Interviews, car commercials, film soundtracks, collaborations, concerts attended by Winona Ryder in sunglasses, it all happened. And it continued happening until America went into a phase when it no longer found 'people who think differently from Americans' interesting and went back to comfort food and what Christgau calls 'good cornball' values. In 2001 it ceased (thanks to the concerted efforts of Republicans and Islamic fundamentalists) to be fashionable to be ambivalent about anything. No more singing on the fence. You're cornball... or you're against us.

But what I like about you (even when I don't like what you're saying), and what your fairer critics can appreciate about you is that you're mostly just being you, and that's mostly quite original.

Sonny, please chisel 'quite original' on my headstone.

Arooga. Arooga (lethargic, exhausted sounding of dead-guy-calling horn): Oscar Wilde to thread AGAIN... please please please will the "I can neither distinguish reality from art nor the character from the writer" disease EVER be cured? Baah...

There's a Momus lyric to the effect: "In life remain considerate / in Art the devil's advocate / in games there should be no forbidden things /"

... but if you won't take it from Oscar Wilde you won't take it from a living guy you can insult, so... how many people will waste their breath explaining before killjoys figure out that deliberately instructive do-goody art is in fact the only art that does damage?

And who says giving randy teenagers what they want makes you an asshole anyway? I've played both roles in consensual "statutory rape" and it's been quite nice. Was I a stupid prey creature when I was a teen? Am I a monster now?

Wow, this thread just needs somebody posting about how they loooove cold weather and it'll have all my pet peeves on it.

As for insulting Momus, I have only two defenses: 1) Momus, unlike virtually every other poster here is a (very, very intentionally) public and (very, very intentionally) controversial figure who makes all sorts of spectacles of himself, and thus is to my mind qualitatively different from most posters. For all I know, Nick Currie is a mensch. But Momus is pretty clearly an asshole. Note that this is also why I have little patience for silly net pseudonyms -- I'm not interested in leaving myself this sort of out, as I think it's, for lack of a better word, gauche. 2) To paraphrase art spiegelman on Ernie Bushmiller's comic strip "Nancy", the genius of the whole aesthetic construct being presented here is that Momus is the one person it is actually easier to make fun of than it is not to make fun of. I confess, I am only human. I'm sure Momus loves me for it.

Don't know what's sadder: the presence of sentiments like Jesse's on ILM or someone like J0hn Darnielle agreeing with them... "Oh, Momus is FAMOUS, making a SPECTACLE out of himself, it's OBJECTIVE, so then it's my RIGHT to be stupidly insulting!" So very American and civilized of you, mister. Some of us consider Momus as the, by far, most interesting writer here, and, even though that isn't the point here, love his records. Another thing: I searched for Jesse's name on ILM and gee that guy really has a need to pop up every time there is a Momus slagging going on (come to think of it, the same goes for JOhn Darnielle, again, why? You are above that really). One word: pathetic.

Stefan, thanks for de-lurking. Over the past however many months/years/year-and-a-half on ilx0r I've actually taken a liking to Momus personally: he's always game for a heated discussion, seldom backs out of arguments he's helped instigate (though he often prevaricates within same), and his ability to maintain composure under fire is (generally speaking) a good example to all and sundry! But. The whole point of Momus's schtick is its ideology. (In deference to said ideology, it must be said that the whole point of any & everbody's schtick may well be the ideology.) Momus's ideology is right up front at the center of his work, ahead of the tunes, formal qualities, etc. It is the first and most important aspect of Momus with which one must engage; he has set it up as the gated entryway to Chez Momus.

Routinely, however, when one takes issue with said ideology, Momus hides behind epithets: "Puritan!" "Censor!" etc. His bit above, about how Xgau wants artists to present him with a world in which only nice things exist, was a particularly egregious example of this: that one doesn't care for Momus's (pick one: worldly, misanthropic) schtick is NOT equivalent to wishing we all lived in a sexless, sterile world, and to imagine that that's what motivated Xgau's comments ignores Xgau's entire career, pretty much. Momus himself makes ideology the issue, and he himself almost never complains when threads spend a page or two in Momus-bashing; given the type of work he does, some resistance is an inevitable, healthy, productive part of engagement with same. I do think he's worth discussing; I continue to think that the Momus persona is both misanthropic and misogynist; this does not constitute "slagging." I am not "above" engaging with a fellow-traveller in the craft on exactly the terms by which he has publicly asked to be engaged. I hope, rather, that I am worthy of such an effort.

I haven't read much Christgau. I wonder if his endorsements of Randy Newman, Eminem, etc are based on 'tunes, formal qualities, etc', though? Persona is a tremendously important element in pop. I prefer the word 'persona' to the word 'ideology', and, although I've been influenced by works of pure ideology, like, for instance, Erich Fromm's 'To Have Or To Be?', my work is closest to what Mishima did in 'Confessions of a Mask'. It is theatrical rather than political. It dramatises perspectives rather than laying out some diabolical, epicurian or contrarian gospel.

Christgau, insofar as he comments on the formal qualities of my work, does so positively. My songs are 'clever' and lyrics 'well-wrought'. Yet he thinks I am an immoral person, and this prevents him endorsing my songs. This is an American echo of British music press comments, which, ten years before, ping ponged between 'By now there can be little doubt that Momus is a pervert' (Barbara Ellen) and 'If we judge music on the personal morality of its makers, well, that's a steep sloping path and there are fires glittering at the end of it' (Stuart Maconie).

My reaction to this sort of comment is exactly what Ann said above:

will the "I can neither distinguish reality from art nor the character from the writer" disease EVER be cured? Baah...

Then again, J0hn is quite right that 'some resistance is an inevitable, healthy, productive part of engagement with same'. Except that by 'same' he means ideology, whereas I would prefera to say 'mask' or persona. Critical friction and even personal against 'Momus' is the result of a struggle between the writer and his or her 'inner Momus', not between the writer and me.

the countdown to getting called a cockfarmer starts NOW

And which the guy at nick@momus.demon.co.uk will defend, hence the fireworks.

I doubt if you say this that you can really be 'all about personae'. Anyone who was 'all about personae' (ie any actor, and some songwriters) would check the following things too:

1. Make-up.
2. Tone of voice.
3. What Brecht called 'quotable gesture'.
4. Nervous tics.
5. Star sign.
6. Blood type (especially if Japanese).
7. Decibel level. (I might agree with something you whisper, yet disagree with the same thing when you shout it.)
8. Sexiness.
9. Capacity to seem polyvalent (ie a glimpse of Marshall Mathers looking schoolmasterly in glasses, or the very spiritual Prince photo inside 'Sign O The Times'.)
10. Does the persona have bad breath? Oh, sorry, that's irrelevant until someone invents smellovision.

Homo sum, humani nil à me alienum puto: I am human, I let nothing that is human be alien to me.

'I'm a bit hard of hearing, you see, so I make stuff up. That might not be true, actually. I'm an 'unreliable narrator', you know. That's why M likes me. He's always loved unreliable narrators.'

In re the Terence quote, I'd go with "I am a human being, I hold no human thing as alien to myself" - clunkier, but preserves the rather important active voice of "puto." As to whether the character who speaks through your songs can fairly align himself with Terence...well...I mean, it's nice if that's your intention, but the body of work doesn't bear that out very well, since as we both know, authorial intentions don't count for jack. Xgau's problem with your work is mine exactly: the overall mood of it seems mean-spirited, pro-"our-kind-of-people" but generally anti-people, otherwise.

I still think one shouldn't read one's own bad reviews, all it does is give one fits and lead to public plaints of "they haff not understood me," but it's yer thread!

Anyway, I've been thinking about this issue of the moral probity of artists some more.

The big question that distinguishes persona artists from ideology artists (and they could be the same artist at different times: early Tolstoy versus late Tolstoy, for example) is the way they answer this question:

'Which, if you could only be one, would you rather be, interesting or right?'

(Substitute, if you prefer, 'original or exemplary' or 'entertaining or responsible'.)

On this question of 'who we really are' (and hence what the 'Nick Currie solo album' would sound like), I tend to go along with Liam Hudson, the humanist pyschologist, who, in a book called 'Contrary Imaginations' divided people into Convergers and Divergers, ie those who tend to converge down to 'the one right answer' (they usually become scientists of some kind) and those who diverge up and away from the immediate stimulus into a confetti shower of possibilities, never committing to any of them. (Artists, schizophrenics, confidence tricksters and show offs.) BUT, crucially, Hudson saw these as merely 'rival systems of defence', ways of keeping one's true self hidden. You can hide behind objective facts or you can hide behind fictions and masks, but either way you're basically hidden and defended.

I, too, would be extremely curious to hear the Nick Currie solo album. Especially in terms of musical timbre.

Here I totally disagree. Calling someone an asshole is refusing to look at context or contingency, origin or outcome. It's a trite, misanthropic rejection of a human being, a way of ruling a human being 'out of order' and 'out of account', a reduction and a trivialisation. I have never, in all my days of mockery, called anyone an 'asshole', because it's the end of analysis rather the beginning, the refusal to understand rather than the desire to understand, the denial of commonality rather than its shamefaced admission.

Calling someone as asshole is not a good start if you want to 'get inside the character', unless you want to crawl up a back passage. Let me warn anyone who tries: the soul is not located there.

Anyway, as for Momus's final warning, as usual I think he's completely wrong. But I certainly enjoy the back-and-forth here, and admire his attempt to maintain an appropriately Olympian demeanor.

"What I like about ev psych most of all is that it essentially turns morality into a pragmatic engineering problem to be solved, like all pragmatic engineering problems, within a reasonable margin of error. Yes, the default state of humanity is to be kind of a solipstic asshole. Big deal -- that's just one more thing we share with every other species of animal, vegetable, and protozoa. Now, what can we do to mitigate this? That's the interesting question."

Just to put my claims of assholery in perspective, is all.

If love is good, as most agree
Loving two must be twice as good
And loving three... well, you get the idea'

If there's one thing that characterises Momusworld, it's this emphasis on divergence and pluralism -- on doubles ('My Doppelganger'), triangles ('The Beast with 3 Backs'), and parallel worlds ('Mistaken Memories of Medieval Manhattan'). And the way you react to Momusworld depends on whether you're the kind of person who thinks Wire's 'Forty Versions' is a better portrayal of the human soul than 'Don't Ever Change'.

(Cue argument about how rhetorical love songs like 'Don't Ever Change' are poignant precisely because they misrepresent the complexity and inconstancy of life, thereby conjuring up a parallel world and increasing the range of possibilities.)

(And it must have been a Freudian slip that I left 'pervert' out of 'My Pervert Doppelganger' the first time I typed it.)

Wouldn't Momera be more likely -- as for genus and opus -- if this were the case?

It actually is 2nd decl masc, though, following its declension in the original Greek Mômos, with grammatical plural Mômoi.

Is the morphology of Momus' moniker -- the Latin form of a Greek god's name -- a symbol of his contempt for pur(itan)sm, or merely a result of youthful sloppiness?

Momus is good because he made me understand fruitcake and laptop music. Erm, and that's about enough being nice about him for the rest of my life!

Oho, ho ho, how much the champion of postmodernism likes binary oppositions when they suit his purposes! As I've pointed out, though I like to avoid dragging my own work into things whenever possible: I am all persona, work-wise. I don't write confessional songs. My issue is not with persona per-se. It's with the notion that once a persona is in play, anything it says/does is interesting/"allowed" big scare-quotes since, hey, it's a persona. One can be both interesting and unconnected with noxious stances.

the speedfreak who stole my Ovaltine while camping out on my couch when I was eighteen and then told me I needed not to be so attached to material things wasn't stealing the Ovaltine in order to wrest me from my consumerist prison. He just wanted my Ovaltine. But God damn it, that God damned Ovaltine wasn't for any lousy tweeker who waltzed in through the God damned door.

I'm seriously LOLin', here.

Try some, buy some!

Momus, on the other hand, does not seem in any way to be criticising his narrators (vide Lear, above, and Browning, and Poe, and Lovecraft, ad infinitum or at least ad lib) and in fact states that he wishes to celebrate their humanity. This is a crucial difference. The use of personae is perhaps the most interesting thing in all art for me, hence my constant harping on one of its finer points: does persona offer blanket immunity to its wearer? I say no.

Anyway, any pretext to debate persona with Darnielle (I think we're in wuv this month) makes for an interesting thread.

im sure this exact sentiment has been expressed upthread, but its true.

It's weird how many ILM discussions(rockism vs. electronic music, Momus vs his detractors) are covert versions of "culture wars" debates, ie. some approximate version of humanism versus some approximate form of post-modernity.