JOHN HARRIS RIP

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2134868,00.html

fuck off.

yeah too right. not many agreeing yay-sayers under that article either.

venturing out on Friday night often involves dodging blokes peeing against a wall

Aiming for him and missing?

not very pretty i tell thee

"Ulysses31
July 26, 2007 9:54 AM

great argument...

UNLESS YOU LOOK AT THE CONTINENT WHERE ITS CHEAPER THAN HERE BUT WITHOUT OUR PROBLEMS AND REALISE YOUR ARGUMENT HAS A GIANT GAPING HOLE IN IT.

yeah great argument apart from that minor detail."

otm

no apostrophe, no credibility

http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2184214,00.html

"the best labels still take punts on the basis of taste and belief; no one, I'd wager, signed such recent sensations as Kasabian or Klaxons with an eye on the balance sheet."

London Lite this week referred to El-P as "Old school New York hip hop heavyweight", and yet somehow Harris still wins the "most retarded music writing of the week" award.

Witness the Jam in 1978, commanded by a young Paul Weller, on their third album and floundering. The man from Polydor paid them a visit in the studio and curtly told them their new songs were "shit".

Man from Polydor OTM

omg though. he mentions 'be here now'!!!!!!!

let go john!

"....In the blogosphere, a chorus of voices is no less excited...."

Oh for fukc's sake. "in the blogosphere" kiss my ass.

his hair

i'm glad someone's standing up for proper music, tho.

In fairness El-P could probably stand to lose a few pounds

"....In the blogosphere, a chorus of voices is no less excited...."

All the world's a play and we are merely players.

you think geir reads harris?

All the world's a play and we are merely players haters.

Fixed

BLOGOSPHEAR - CHORUS OF VOICES - EXIT, PURSUED BY TRAMADOL SPAMb0t

Every fucking label going wined and dined Klaxons! He must know this better than me which means he's a cynical liar. No-one can be that stupid.

"the best labels still take punts on the basis of taste and belief; no one, I'd wager, signed such recent sensations as Kasabian or Klaxons with an eye on the balance sheet."

-- titchyschneiderMk2,

that's true though in the klaxons case isn't it?

xpost. oh really? well gawd knows why the early stuff's a racket.

they know what's going to sell cuz nme hypes the fuck out of it beforehand. all in each others pockets, innit.

i dunno if that means it sells. look at i dunno...*BIRDLAND* or something.

never always used to work, seems like it does more often now.

theyre not lowest common denominator indie fare (unlike shitty kasabian) and im sure whoever signed them did so cos they really liked them from their first few singles, but their label goes through a major who pumped loads of money into it and advertised it on fucking tv, the tube, in all the press etc etc. they clearly knew it wasnt going to be a loss.

i remember thinking in 2002 that all those "the" bands like the strokes and the white stripes, etc would be a fad... i guess there's a need for them, for some reason.

"theyre not lowest common denominator indie fare"

a) yes they are

b) that's why they're successful

There has been a real structural change with the NME becoming more important as a tastemaker as its actual circulation has declined and width and depth of coverage has contracted. This ties in to the broadsheets writing more about pop as well and needing the NME to validate their views. There's also the way that actual labels have become less important whilst certain PR companies have become more important.

I kinda like the Klaxons, though not enuff to own anything by them, even in illegally downloaded form.

I just found out I'm in the same Facebook group as intelligent and savvy music analyist Laura Barton. Any messages you peeps want me to pass on?

"Watch out for the guy in the scarf."

http://www.halfpricecostumes.com/images/products/ru2314.jpg

Thalidomide's a bitch

what are the big PR companies? this shit interests me way more than the music.

http://uk.gizmodo.com/yuppie%20beach.jpg

"Hey, I appreciate what you're saying, but I think these... what did you say they were called? Yeah, these "Kasabian" guys are a little too out there for us. We're going to sign Hope of the States instead"

what are the big PR companies? this shit interests me way more than the music.

Me too, but I only know enough to sort of bullshit on a general level about it. Peeps I know who know more are generally too depressed by the whole thing to want to chat to me much about it.

When it comes to Kasabian and Klaxons, the PR shitstorm is way more interesting than the music.

the company that does klaxons' pr does hadouken, futureheads, jarvis cocker, the maccabees, new young pony club, plan b, simian mobile disco, loads of people really... i dont know how much clout they have though, ie can they 'make' mags cover such and such band...

kasabian is just in house record label PR far as i know.

the company that does klaxons' pr does hadouken, futureheads, jarvis cocker, the maccabees, new young pony club, plan b, simian mobile disco, loads of people really

Jarvis is the only one of these to sell quadruple figures. worst PR company EVER.

Kinda weird how Plan B got left for dust after Jamie T and Just Jack came along. And by "weird" I mean "deserved".

"worst PR company EVER"

to be fair, look at what theyre working with.

i think the futureheads have sold more than 999 records, but then i could be wrong xxpost

Nobody buys them but they get in all the mags from the Metro to NME to The Telegraph.

New Young Pony Club are perhaps the worst new band in Britain for a long long time.

Not so much worst as just mystifying. So boring live and on record. So no fun. So not danceable. So not sexy.

one of them is sexy, you know the one i mean. i have only heard Ice Cream but there are 3000 British bands worse than them for sure.

As PR co's go Coalition has, or has had at times, a lot of clout WRT getting its stuff covered. They're not the ones titchyschneider is talking about though

I meant the music isn't sexy. The girls look OK but I don't really care. I could look at internet porn for that.

the company that does klaxons' pr does hadouken, futureheads, jarvis cocker, the maccabees, new young pony club, plan b, simian mobile disco, loads of people really... i dont know how much clout they have though, ie can they 'make' mags cover such and such band...

I'm not sure that you're right there. Klaxons are handled by Chuffmedia, who also do +44, Alberta Cross, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, The Answer, The Automatic, Bowling For Soup, Breed 77, Brigade, Bright Eyes, The Cinematics, Dorp, Engerica, Fall Out Boy, Goldspot, The Grates, The Horrors, The Hours, Ian Brown, Jamelia, James Morrison, Jurassic 5, Kaiser Chiefs, The Like, The Maccabees, The Ordinary Boys, Orson, Shiny Toy Guns, Sohodolls, Stephen Fretwell, Towers Of London and Viva Machine.

Also, I think you're over-estimating the power of PR companies. I deal with them all the time. They just mail out the blah and sort out the interviews.

there's a big difference between print media PR and online media PR though

and at certain levels, the relationship is a lot more complex than just sorting interviews and sending mailouts

Without knocking down the scenery stevie, care to go further?

Well, it's print media PR that I'm used to dealing with, but only at a regional level, so maybe the difference is regional vs national?

klaxons must have changed their PR company then...

"the relationship is a lot more complex than just sorting interviews and sending mailouts"

yeah, lots of bargaining with certain long running companies (ie - you can only get such and such big name if you do this new artist first) and favours being pulled, and advertising thrown into the equation, and politics involving 'contacts' and mutual 'you help me, well help you' etc

Yep, Chuffmedia service regional nomarks like my place of work. Can't think who Klaxons' national ones would be. Might be Toast or someone

Chuffmedia is a good name.

Without knocking down the scenery stevie, care to go further?

well, its not really stuff i have much first hand experience of myself, dom, having only rarely edited any magazines/sections, and never at any of the big magazines. but while my relationship with PRs, as a freelancer, rarely goes much further than them facilitating me with CDs, music, travel and hotel stuffz and asking me to pitch the artists i like at the titles i work for, your typical Section Head is going to be dealing with them as someone who has the power to commission features and reviews, and thus pressure, of a carrot or stick variety, may arise. sometimes, a PR may withold access to a high profile artist on their roster unless a magazine covers a lower profile artist, that sort of thing. as a freelancer, i don't have enough power to justify such pressures being brought to bear upon me, but if i had the power to commission, it may be a different situation.

[can i also say i am not suggesting this is what happened with either band above, as i am wholly ignorant of the circumstances of their success and, in the case of kasabian, as ignorant of their actual music as i can help to be)

Well, it's print media PR that I'm used to dealing with, but only at a regional level, so maybe the difference is regional vs national?

aw yeah, that'll be it.

Yep, Chuffmedia service regional nomarks like my place of work. Can't think who Klaxons' national ones would be. Might be Toast or someone

...is the right answer. Toast is quite the monstah nowadays, since merging with Best. Forthcoming releases:

* CSS - 2nd LP out April/May tbc (tbc)
* Hot Club de Paris - 2nd LP out March (Moshi Moshi)
* Klaxons - 2nd LP Aug/Sept (tbc)
* Metronomy - 2nd LP out March (Because
* Mystery Jets - 2nd LP out Spring (679)
* Plan B - 2nd LP out Summer (679)
* Roots Manuva - Summer tbc
* Semi Finalists – Second LP Spring/Summer
* Spank Rock - tbc
* Tilly & The Wall - tbc
* The Futureheads - tbc
* The Rifles - 2nd LP out March (679)
* The Streets - new LP out March/April (679)

and full roster:

2ManyDJs / Adventures Close To Home Records / Alela Diane / Annuals / Au Revoir Simone / Belle & Sebastian / Ben Esser / Best Fwends / The Beats Label / The Black Ghosts / Black Kids / Born Ruffians / Bumblebeez / Bricolage / Buraka Som Sistema / Candie Payne / Cibelle / Clocks / Crystal Castles / CSS / Dananananaykroyd / Dntel / Does It Offend You Yeah? / Electrons / Elle S'Appelle / Emmy The Great / Enter Shikari / Florence & The Machine / Eugene Francis / Example / Fog / James Ford / Florence & The Machine / The Futureheads / Free Blood / Grizzly Bear / Gruff Rhys / Hadouken! / Holy Hail / Hot Club de Paris / Jakobinarina / Jamie Woon / Jarvis Cocker / Julian Velard / Kano / Kitsune / Kitty Daisy and Lewis / Klaxons / Los Campesinos! / Luke Toms / Mad Decent / The Maccabees / Make Model / Matt & Kim / Metronomy / The Mitchell Brothers / Moshi Moshi Singles / Mystery Jets / Of Montreal / Mpho Skeef / New Young Pony Club / Plan B / Paul Steel / Professor Green / Relish Records / Remi Nicole / Richard James / Roots Manuva / Santogold / Semifinalists / Simian Mobile Disco / Slow Club / Soulwax / Spank Rock / The Streets / Super Furry Animals / These New Puritans / The Teenagers / The Ting Tings / Tilly And The Wall / Tokyo Police Club / Twilight Sad / Two Gallants / Uffie / Vashti Bunyan / The Violets / Vitalic / The Whip / White Rabbits / Yo Majesty

The Rifles got to make a second LP??? FFS

wow cutty shares a publicity company with vashti bunyan. groovy

Tilly And The Wall / Tokyo Police Club / Twilight Sad / Two Gallants / Uffie /

Worst festival line-up ever.

"your typical Section Head is going to be dealing with them as someone who has the power to commission features and reviews, and thus pressure, of a carrot or stick variety, may arise. sometimes, a PR may withold access to a high profile artist on their roster unless a magazine covers a lower profile artist, that sort of thing"

Less powerful or influential the publication, the less likely that is to be true. I don't get those kinds of pressures. I get a lot of begging for the inclusion of new acts, and the criteria - in order of importance - are 1/ are they good 2/ is there a story there 3/ are they likely to be successful (ie, will we look prescient by covering them). I'm not saying the criteria are always applied successfully - my publication has ended up covering acts that turned out to be shit, boring failures, as has everyone else. But I have never commissioned a piece as a favour to a publicist, or to curry favours with publicists. The one publicist in the UK whom everyone suspects of using carrot/stick is Barbara Charone. But I don't run a style glossy, so I'm never going to get Madonna anyway, I couldn't give a sod about Blunt, and I actively despise Gillespie, so that's me safe. Not that she's ever tried carrot/stick with me anyway.

That Toast roster has made me realise there are some MP3 blogs that must be working through churning out MP3s almost entirely from the same PR agency.

Had a CD the other day with a note saying which tracks MP3 bloggers should put online. First time I'd seen that, though I'm print, so I wouldn't know how commonplace it is.

Can't believe he's been gone for seven months now.

Should've been here to defend Morrissey.

i would still far rather have a drink with him (Louis Jagger) than many people on this thread.

:-(

Names:
Blount
Ethan
Jess
All cunts.

This does seem to be a US thing. Maybe they learn it at "high school"

-- Bidfurd (Bidfurd8...), October 4th, 2006. (later)

^^^not up there with "Ban the real trolls: Cutty and Ethan Blount", but still classic material

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2223054,00.html

he pussied out.

lol hot chip, sorry i mean fucking fuck off, hot chip.

crossposts

Oh thank the lord... he appears to be leaving...
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2230303,00.html

"listening to records with half my brain whirring in pursuit of some opinionated point for next week's 650 words."

kind of breaking the 4th wall a bit there j-dog!

Old bands of the day

You couldn't make it up.

"This Old Town by Paul Weller and Graham Coxon is my single of the year, and I don't care."

i had survived the year without knowing this existed, and it kind of saddens me that it does and i do.

thing of it: jude rogers is even worse than this dude. RIP.

the words of "bato" come to mind - "guys, no-one cares". Which could equally apply to us picking this stuff over, or Harris himself.

Top ten alternative candidates to take over Worzel's column:
1. Henry Porter
2. Cristina Odone
3. Giles Coren
4. Simon Barnes
5. Lynn Barber
6. Patience Wheatcroft
7. Nick Cohen
8. Bel Mooney
9. King Boy Pato
10. Jimmy Young

torn between patience and estie there.

11. Decomposing corpse of Ivor Cutler

That's no way to talk about Polly Toynbee.

"Bel Mooney" hahahahaha. God

This dude would catch the right tone

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/ilove/years/1986/gallery/340/rhodesboyson.jpg

Petridish really ought to have gone easier on the candy bars there.

i like Hot Chip

lol

they's sorta ok except vox/lyrics i guess, if kind of thrown-together. indie as balls.

How does he shot Hot Chip?

He just shot them over and over.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2240298,00.html

lol irony: professional britpop nostaligist laments backward-looking cultural paradigm.

I see no reason why anyone should lament looking backward.

Establish acts dominated most 2007 end-of-year lists. And they did so not because their 2007 albums were all that impressive, but rather because they were no new acts that were able to come up with albums that were good enough to beat them.

2007 was a rather weak year for music. It would have been easy for somebody new to grab the attention. But it still didn't happen, because they were no new ones who held up.

http://www.megomuseum.com/teevee/images/robot.jpg

Worzel's Top Tips For 2008:
Bandulu
Jack
Octopus
Babybird
Mover
Raymonde
Merton Parkas
Real People
Savoy Brown
Frankie Vaughan

Comments box bringing the pain as per

even the much mentioned agenda for change from Barack Obama seems to be more nostalgia for a time somewhere around 1962 when America was much more confident and "happier".

i'm not going to try and parse that, but may as well call it racism.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_harris/2008/04/hillary_for_president.html

I've only just found out that he quit his column!

With a loft-style apartment like that who can blame him for wanting to spend more time at home?

Look out for Worzel on the Barnbrook campaign trail this week!

Thought I'd pick this one out of the drossel...

I guess people like Harris are more comfortable with limousine liberals than with actual progressives.

So many posts there saying "There can only be one winner" without them then saying who they mean.

I was waiting for him to say "Keep the White House WHITE!" but it never happened.

I think Harris is a lazy hack, but I don't think he's anti OBAma because he's black. I think he did that lame video mainly because he got paid for it and he thought it was a controversial message (which it is; it may be simply wrong too).

HAZEL BL34RS for President morelike

Harris hates Hazel Blears, as do I.

He used to love her, it has been alleged.

seen it now. what a nob, and what an absurd video. like chuck eddy weighing in on the london mayoral election.

He thinks the Abyssinians couldn't possibly have made a better album than the Beatles did. Follow from there.

A man is dead.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/09/thebeatles.academicexperts

I once saw John Harris give a plenary lecture at an academic conference on pop music. While almost everyone else had to pay to attend, he was paid, cash in hand. One of the academic bletherers he despises handed him the dirty cash, one tenner, one twenty after another.

RIP

How much longer are they going to discover posthumous work by this guy? It's almost as bad as Tupac :-/

Yes. But there is surely much more to be unearthed.

My anecdote has just made me realize that another article needs to be written - 'Was John Harris a Poet or a Capitalist?'

Lazy hack takes on half-arsed hackademic, oh joy.

Old bands of the day

You couldn't make it up.

― Dingbod Kesterson, Friday, 21 December 2007 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
"This Old Town by Paul Weller and Graham Coxon is my single of the year, and I don't care."

i had survived the year without knowing this existed, and it kind of saddens me that it does and i do.

thing of it: jude rogers is even worse than this dude. RIP.

― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Friday, 21 December 2007

RIP

The academic he's quoting is wrong, but I don't think Harris is dealing with it in a very mature / responsible / intelligent way. I'm convinced that there is ground for academic & pop cultural critique / writing on pop music to co-exist. Yes, The Beatles were capitalists - "you can buy hippie wigs in Woolworths, man", to quote Danny The Dealer from Withnail, a statement emblematic of the kind of rush-manufactured cash-in memorabilia that's surrounded The Beatles for 45 years, but beyond that, the constant quest for invention, for new ground to hoover up, new markets to exploit (be they literal markets, like America, to sell product to, or cultural markets, like Indian music or psychedelia, to steal ideas from in order to develop your own product). Capitalism doesn't have to be deliberate and targeted and self-aware, far from it.

I've been working with a retired documentary maker this week, and he's moaned about film academics a bit; about them not understanding the actual technology, techniques, and processes involved in film-making, and how this invalidates a lot of their theorising. I'm certain there's a middle ground where the theoretical and the practical / technical / actual can co-exist there, too. Pop music academia is dull and uncreative AT THE MOMENT, but it doesn't have to be.

What's that Chuck Berry quote? Something about "I wouldn't have had time to write those songs if it weren't for the money."

from the comment page of popular news site guaridan.co.uk it looks like j-har has re-enacted the 'subterranean homesick blues' vid

anyone clicked?

almost sbed you just for suggesting it exists tbh

http://www.vegansoapbox.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/why.jpg

Richard Dawkins defends his atheism
Biologist tells John Harris: 'Somebody as intelligent as Jesus would have been an atheist'

Since late last week, more of the budget's failings have come to light, many of them as much cultural as economic. Wiping £30m off the share price of Greggs bakers via the loading of VAT on to hot pies and pasties was not just an attack on a successful and expanding British company, but a clear indication that the government knows nothing of either Greggs' place on the high street, or its place in millions of lunch breaks.

good to see him speaking from the heart

it's such a wan argument, as if the major shareholders of greggs are earthy peasants just cuz they sell pies and not aeroplanes or lasers or sthing

he looks not unfamiliar with the sausage, bean and cheese slice

She is personable enough, though as soon as my voice recorder is switched on, she starts talking to me as if I were a public meeting. Throughout, she maintains an intense stare, and seems slightly angry: what with all this, her nasal, estuarine vowels, and a sense of cast-iron certainty (the EU, she says at one point, "dictates to us how we should think, feel and act"), she puts me in mind of the young John Lydon.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/24/ukip-little-england-east-anglia-lincolnshire-elections

one of the minds of his generation

His journey-into-the-mindset-of-the-modern-British-reactionary pieces are the absolute worst.

it's not much of a journey for him tbf