I heard corpses decomposing on Saturday night

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this was the moment he passed beyond, the moment he justified himself, the moment he entered elysium. every holla, every incitement to uncontrolled physical movement of the sort completely psychologically beyond all British people 40 years ago, every incitement to break every law, disturb everyone's peace, colonise the roads, colonise the whole *nation*, represented the final nail in the coffin of an entire way of living.

every utterance, every syllable, destroyed ten shibboleths in one go. this was a broadcast to wake the dead, and send their bodies hurtling into the air, only to disintegrate again, lying pathetically broken on the ground, just like the life they lived.

he can retire now. he has, definitively, transcended. he has scrawled everything he stands for over the edifice of history.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Monday, 18 November 2002 05:15 (twenty-three years ago)

Good for him!

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Monday, 18 November 2002 05:18 (twenty-three years ago)

but would Tim Westwood be meaningful to me if his father had been a plasterer? or would I actually be saying the same thing, just thinking of the decomposing of Old Labour corpses rather than tweedy Tory ones?

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Monday, 18 November 2002 05:19 (twenty-three years ago)

that's the thing, Andrew: moments like this remind you that you're living through a revolution.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Monday, 18 November 2002 05:20 (twenty-three years ago)

whats a shibboleth

and a tim westwood for that matter

― ron (ron), Monday, 18 November 2002 05:52 (twenty-three years ago)

isnt this about Robbie Williams' tv show?

― stevem (blueski), Monday, 18 November 2002 13:08 (twenty-three years ago)

Or that Bond music show (I was at my girlfriend's and we had to watch it because she loves Diana Kraal) - I think Robin is talking about Marti Pellow.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 18 November 2002 19:30 (twenty-three years ago)

nah, the Radio 1 Rap Show.

but, like I said, it's only his past that makes it mean something: like, Tim Westwood was actually born *before* the Mendlesham TV mast (then the tallest structure in Britain) went up in 1959. he predates everything he's immersed himself in, yet he wouldn't have a life now without it.

*that* is the resonance. looking at the footage of Anglia TV's launch and thinking "bloody hell, he was actually ALREADY ALIVE when even this seemed new and exciting". his triumph - intensifying every week - is the slow-motion defeat of everything he was born into.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Monday, 18 November 2002 19:42 (twenty-three years ago)

surely everyone predates everything they immerse themselves in?

(exception: amniotic fluid...)

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 18 November 2002 20:42 (twenty-three years ago)

surely everyone predates everything they immerse themselves in?

Depends if what they immerse themselves in pre-dates them or not.

Robin, has Tim Westwood improved or something or is it just him being part of the new but with a weird connection to the old that fascinates you? I've always been irritated by him personally. Then again his adoption of a US hip hop persona is probably no different to jazz-loving and lifestyle-adopting British hepcats of the '30s and '40s.

― David (David), Monday, 18 November 2002 21:18 (twenty-three years ago)

theoretically you've got a point, Mark, but come on, surely you get the contrast of extremes? you were after all brought up in a place and time when romantic Toryism, whose death through its own sons I was hinting at, still made a modicum of sense (who was the Shrewsbury MP from 1945-83? the name escapes me, but I could tell he was an old-school quasi-aristocratic patrician just reading the name)

David - Westwood hasn't so much *improved*, just gone beyond, into new heights of hysteria, transcended and validated himself. Norman Fay started a thread on this subject a while back ... if you lose yourself, all irritations become somehow superfluous.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Monday, 18 November 2002 22:25 (twenty-three years ago)

but yes David, obviously Westwood's background is a key factor. if he was just the son of any old Guildford businessman or any old Barnsley miner (to use the two key pre-80s Tory and Labour archetypes) he'd just be another DJ to me, but if he was the son of a union leader a la Scargill he'd probably be equally resonant, just that hearing him would bring on images of the death of working-class collectivism, not middle-class "literal conservatism".

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Monday, 18 November 2002 22:29 (twenty-three years ago)

I haven't heard much Westwood, but the few times I did hear him when I lived in London I was struck by the man's passion, I'm not sure the political connection resonates with me but is part of what you're saying that this amount of enthusiasm for one's work is always deserving of praise?

― Ronan (Ronan), Monday, 18 November 2002 22:41 (twenty-three years ago)

sir john holt?

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 18 November 2002 23:11 (twenty-three years ago)

was he cute?

― Queen G (Queeng), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 00:40 (twenty-three years ago)

Mark ... I always thought the 1945-83 Shrewsbury MP had a more extravagant name than that. it's only the enjoyment of speculation that stops me googling it.

Ronan ... yes, that's pretty much what I was getting at: sheer immersion. the political link will inevitably be meaningless to you: the old English establishment relinquished its power over the place you come from in 1922 (?), so it wouldn't even be something to kick against. it would be symbolically divisive in Northern Ireland, though.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 01:16 (twenty-three years ago)

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