the Tom Ewing and SR in the Guardian thread

does this work

Laura Barton is away.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/oct/01/hail-hail-rock-n-roll

Pretty good piece, not unlike the kind of stuff that used to be printed in Melody Maker in the early 90s. By which I mean it's a fuck sight better than 99% of music writing in The Guardian these days.

yeah i only got around to reading the music bit this morning and seeing that was kind of o_o

Nice piece. If they could just employ Carmody now ...

tom in, barton out. jol in.

Put it this way, I think Coldplay's touchy-feely pseudo-emotionalism - far more offensive on every level than anything in prog, just as its political mirror is far more misleading and odious than the unreconstructed toffism of old - convinced a young Tory generation during the party's darkest hours (i.e. Coldplay's early years) that they could remake the party's image if they followed this model - all things to all men, a bit of token blackness here and there to tick the liberal boxes as efficiently as the actual music ticked conservative ones, a vague, empty model that is neither public nor private, etc, etc. Coldplay's success convinced the Policy Exchange set that they could escape the shadow of the grouse moors, could present themselves as market-modern, in a way that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. I'm absolutely and completely convinced of this. No Coldplay, no Cameron (in the summer of 2005, wholly or partially privately-educated acts monopolised the top of the album chart for 14 weeks, just before he made his great pitch at Blackpool ... I honestly believe that he would have been laughed off even that stage had Coldplay, Blunt and McFly not cleared the cultural ground).

Jay-Z and Kanye's liking for Coldplay, like the widespread R&B/hip-hop fondness for Phil Collins, has a lot to do with them not having any real knowledge or sense of the cultural and political factors which exist here. It's just music for them (in Collins' case, the R&B singers who like him probably don't even know that he was ever in a band with "the Sledgehammer guy"), and for me their own music is great enough that I can easily forgive them. Indeed, sometimes I think there are worse things in the world than Coldplay - CM's old school happily let South African school rugby teams over during the apartheid era (odious Times arselick of this in '86: "the locals are profoundly indifferent to racial politics", "you do what Sir says", "rugby, rugby"). But then I remember that at least those cunts - and cunts they were, obviously - were honest.

yeah they should DEFINITELY hire carmody.

Jay-Z and Kanye's liking for Coldplay, like the widespread R&B/hip-hop fondness for Phil Collins, has a lot to do with them not having any real knowledge or sense of the cultural and political factors which exist here. It's just music for them

I assume this is meant to be damning, instead of the highest possible praise.

In Phil's case it might the be the sometimes awesome drum tracks.

was just bumping this earlier tonite -- classsssic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9xY_cPenSs

First of a regular column, dudes

Woah. Kind of funny to think that basically ten years after the establishment of NYLPM, Tom is now like UK music crit establishment (but still as good obv!).

good stuff but they'd better fix that link!

haha, are they hiring editors?

good stuff but they'd better fix that link!

This would never have happened on NYLPM...

I feel pretty special when I eat Grape Nuts tbh.

I always forget how filling they are and put too much in the bowl tho.

Congratulations to Tom, and a great piece.