1. He's a voice. It's unmistakeable, isn't it, the Carlin-style?
2. Where else can you see Roger Whittaker and Dollar treated as serious reference points? (I'm not mocking; I love them both.)
3. MC's posts so often leaving you likcing your lips in anticipation. A friend of mine used to call Church of Me 'Church of I've Got to Have That'.
4. Even if Marcello's writing doesn't cure his own depression, it does wonders for mine.
5. Depth and breadth of knowledge plus lightness of touch. A winning combination.
6. Who else would have the good sense and good taste to point out that 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' is a brilliant record?
7. Rosie Vela.
8. The Joe Meek post invented a whole new genre. (First k-p alternate history of pop post to come some time soon.)
9. Even if 95% of music today is crap, 5% is still an awful lot of stuff to write about.
10. So much still to say. So many years still to cover.
Posted by mark at June 16, 2004 12:24 PM | TrackBack5. I forgot this one, but currently it's the most important reason of all: it's too frigging HOT to blog!
6. I was 3000 words into a piece on the Shadows but then Bob Stanley's article in last month's Mojo saved me the trouble (now THERE'S someone I wish would (a) start a blog; (b) get in touch with me!).
7. The You Are The Quarry piece is near completion but I've been asked to do some writing for Poptones and I'm wondering whether it wouldn't fit in better there (hint for impatient tongue-lickers: with this piece I am doing something that, to my knowledge, no music writer has ever tried before, and I shall be rather pleased if I can pull it off, ooer missus).
Posted by: Marcello Carlin at June 16, 2004 01:24 PMI for one would love to read a piece by you on the Shadows. Heard an excellent radio documentary on them a couple of years ago saying that they virtually invented the rock group as we understand it. How can you allow 3000 words to go to waste?
Posted by: mark k-p at June 16, 2004 01:58 PMAlso, I wanted to question Morley's rather lazy comment in Words & Music that "you would think that a group called the Shadows would be mroe interesting, more shadowy, than they actually were," whereas their music was clearly all played in some kind of shadow or another (also the name was Jet Harris' idea). Hank Marvin is an extremely strange character when you think about it.
The other thing I did in the piece was to talk incidentally about John Howard's Kid In A Big World, which I haven't done on the blog yet, because Tony Meehan produced and arranged that record, and in a sense it's yet another example of "something the Shadows could have done if they'd stuck to their guns and told Cliff where to get off re. panto etc."
(all based on the natural assumption that the Shadows were always a zillion times more interesting than dull old Cliff!)
ah heck, I'm going to end up finishing this bloody piece, aren't I? ;-)
Posted by: Marcello Carlin at June 16, 2004 02:16 PMah heck, I'm going to end up finishing this bloody piece, aren't I? ;-)
Ah, so my cunning plan has worked! :-)
also cf Chris Cutler in File Under Popular
btw, d'ya know why Hank M turned down the OBE?
Posted by: mark k-p at June 16, 2004 02:36 PMYes mate, was gonna say, you're clogging K-Punk's comments box with sentences that can and should be extended into paragraphs. Get to it.
One last reason why you should head back to the keyboard: I fucking hate the Shadows and there's no way I'm going to waste time reading an indulgent fan's meditations on them.
Go on. DO IT TO SPITE ME.
Posted by: paul "Essex boy" meme at June 16, 2004 04:15 PMdon't think i'll bother now.
Posted by: Marcello Carlin at June 16, 2004 04:29 PMSpoilsport!
Posted by: mark k-p at June 16, 2004 08:36 PM