Taylor Parkes: Classic or Dud

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And what da hell is he doing these days?

― Venga, Friday, 13 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Shall we get this out of the way right now? Are the following c/d: Paul Lester, Simon Price, Reynolds, Stubbs, Paul Oldfield, Chris Roberts, Ian Gittins, Mark Sutherland, Collins & Maconie, Steve Lamacq, Simon Williams, Gavin Martin, Dele Fadele, Gina Morris, Mat Snow (actually, Mat's a prince among men), Neil Taylor, Len Brown, James Brown, Jack Barron, Helen Mead, Cath Carroll, Ian Penman, Ian Pye, Danny Kelly, Paul Morley, Ron Rom, Dave Cavanagh, Sian Pattenden, Miranda Sawyer, Charles Aaron, Sacha Frere-Jenkins, David Fricke, Stephen Dalton, Stephen Daly, Barney Hoskyns, Kodwo (and Ekow) Eschun, Rob Young, Mike Barnes and - last but by no means least - Mark Sinker?...

― Mark Morris, Friday, 13 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Blimey — Micro-celebrity Big Brother. (I am Vanessa Feltz: Goodbye.)

― mark s, Friday, 13 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yeah, time for ex-moderator avuncular guidelines, or something.

Threads about state of music journalism, general threads like "who writes best about dance music etc." = ace. Vaguely constructive - check this person out - or at least fun.

C-O-D threads on individual journos = not ace, if the ET-is-a-cunt thread is anything to go by.

In answer to the question, he contributes a lot to the OneTouchMusic board which is somewhere on dottwo.com, so you could always go and ask him yourself. ;)

― Tom, Friday, 13 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The above is my opinion by the way, not some law of ILM.

― Tom, Friday, 13 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Welll, in that case I'll sneak in a quick Classic verdict, of the post-Reynolds writers at MM he was only second to Kulkarni. And I'll make special mention of his 'Transient Randon Noise Bursts with Anouncements' review, which is one of the classics. I should re-read it, since at that time I was a bit of a saddo who cut out the best bits of MM and filed them away. Oh boy.

― Omar, Friday, 13 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

At the time I was, shamefully, obsessed with Taylor. I now think he's a little embarrassing and certainly not a positive influence on me; his defence of Oasis in particular reveals a journalist who still yearned for national consensus however much it would have excluded him. A handful of his reviews, though, still classic.

Tom - he also writes brief album reviews for amazon.co.uk which he is on record on this very forum describing as "crap". Given that at least one of these albums was by Wings, I can see what he means.

― Robin Carmody, Friday, 13 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Answering my own question here but...his S*M*A*S*H interview (dismemberment would be a more accurate term) in MM in 1994 stands for me as the finest piece of music writing of the Nineties. Who remembers it?

― Venga, Friday, 13 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Screw the S*M*A*S*H interview (entertaining though it was!) -- how about the Gene interview he did along with...EVERETT TRUE! ARGH!

ET liked Gene, Taylor didn't. I loathe Gene to the depths of my soul. Big surprise!

So yeah, Taylor in part rooled them early nineties as I saw it. Just enough elegance to matter. Someone invite him over here, he'd like it.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 13 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes, Taylor always seemed very dissatisfied with Britain per se, though more from the Momus-worn "they're hostile to intellectuals" line than anything else.

The S*M*A*S*H piece was basically an extended dissection / destruction of the perennial naivety of sixth-form political ranting. And it worked, as such.

― Robin Carmody, Saturday, 14 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What did they say?

― DG, Saturday, 14 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, a typical passage read:

"'Ed says it's not that he wants to kill them (the Tory government), it's that he wishes they'd never been alive in the first place', explains Rob.

I see.

'You know', adds Ed, 'I wake up in the morning thinking about some Tory nutter, and I wanna kill somebody! And I don't like feeling like that. That's what it's really about. The audacity of these people to put these thoughts in your head in the first place. It's just a matter of what, who, where, why and when.

I see."

You see where it's going ... Taylor making their ranting seem unbelievably naive and childish, albeit with a slightly patronising streak. He *could* go too far in the "take no bullshit" ethos, I think.

― Robin Carmody, Sunday, 15 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ooh, nasty. Nice deadpan use of "I see", I see.

― DG, Monday, 16 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

C-O-D threads on individual journos = not ace, if the ET-is-a-cunt thread is anything to go by

To be fair, the Everett True COD was done as a joke since discussions of his "hallowed" status had sprung up on the Stevie Wonder COD. Wasn't meant as a launching pad for random abuse, though.

― Nicole, Tuesday, 17 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one month passes...

Don't know the geezer's other works, but his comments on EC were an embarrassment. Did, if that was representative.

― the pinefox, Sunday, 10 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Did?

DUD.

― the pinefox, Sunday, 10 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

two weeks pass...

I've tried to be prudent by deleting a few posts right at the end here. Please don't post things that are defamatory.

― Josh (ILM Moderator), Saturday, 30 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Even if they're true?

― Allie, Saturday, 30 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

And for many years *I* was a public schoolgirl fetishist.

― Robin Carmody, Saturday, 30 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, with things like you posted, I can't really tell, now can I, Allie?

― Josh (ILM Moderator), Saturday, 30 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Did I miss something?

― Perret, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

yes

― David, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

oh. I see.

― Perret, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

one year passes...

it was all about TP sniffing bicycle saddles outside Cheltenham Ladies' College, wasn't it? someone had written to Taylor *pretending* to be a frustrated girl in said Madonna-favoured boarding school, and he believed the claims.

the disturbing thing is: that is precisely the sort of thing *I* would have done if I'd had the guts (it wasn't me, though).

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Wednesday, 16 October 2002 18:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Thanks for re-posting that, I missed it the first time around. Can someone e-mail me the full story, as I collect these sort of things (the best one was that I refused to eat anything but potatoes). There's no truth in it, of course, but I suspect that only the fact I was supposed to have gone to Cheltenham will have raised any eyebrows.

― Taylor Parkes, Monday, 21 October 2002 02:12 (twenty-two years ago)

sorry Taylor, I don't have the full story, but do you still adhere to the rather sneery comments you made about the Backstreet Boys in an All Saints interview around the time of "As Long As You Love Me"? This came into my mind when I heard the song earlier today: one of teenpop's saddest moments ever (I'd *kill* to have written an opening line like "although loneliness has always been a friend of mine", my own songwriting stabs at melancholia are so cumbersome singer-songwriterly by comparison).

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 01:11 (twenty-two years ago)

two weeks pass...

Yeah, I do. Although I don't remember them.

― Taylor Parkes, Thursday, 7 November 2002 02:38 (twenty-two years ago)

five years pass...

Reading the Kulashaker 'K' thread I was remembering how great Taylor Parkes and Neil Kulkarni sometimes were in Melody Maker, certainly about the only things worth buying it for at the time. Does anyone have any links to any of the reviews/interviews? I already know about the S*M*A*S*H one. Does the same Taylor Parkes reviews books for When Saturday Comes, now?

Also, does anyone know what happened to Chris Roberts?

― flowersdie, Wednesday, 19 March 2008 17:28 (seventeen years ago)

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=43266194

― henry s, Wednesday, 19 March 2008 17:34 (seventeen years ago)

two years pass...

http://www.wsc.co.uk/content/view/5703/38/

TP on ITV's World Cup coverage, and James Corden's World Cup Live in particular.

"No one's forcing him to breathe all over everything; to become, as he has, as ubiquitous as sadness"

― like an ant to a crumb (DavidM), Sunday, 22 August 2010 18:42 (fourteen years ago)

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