aidan Advanced Member Posts:638  
| 2/20/2009 2:19 AM |
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It wouldn't be new-U2-album time without a John Waters article on their socioreligioculturoaesthetical importance. Basically, he likes the new album. I think: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper...87052.html You can just picture the giddy Pseud's Corner editor at Private Eye clearing his desk with a dramatic sweep of the hand and telling his secretary "Cancel all my appointments and order in lunch. This could take all weekend." |
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Idiot Kid Basic Member Posts:217
| 2/20/2009 5:00 AM |
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I haven't read it, but as it's John Waters can I assume it has something to do with fatherhood and how men are repressed?
Speaking of Waters, how can he be bald and yet have long hair at the same time....what magic is this?
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aidanAdvanced Member Posts:638
| 2/20/2009 5:23 AM |
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Posted By Idiot Kid on 20 Feb 2009 05:00 AM
I haven't read it, but as it's John Waters can I assume it has something to do with fatherhood and how men are repressed? No mentions of fatherhood, unless 'Achtung Baby' has a special significance for him. |
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Idiot KidBasic Member Posts:217
| 2/20/2009 6:59 AM |
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I've just read it through, twice, as I didn't really understand what he was on about the first time around.
He's no Barry Egan (in terms of people who should be lined up against a wall and shot for their 'journalism') but I really don't like the guy. I like to think of myself as somewhat intelligent, I mean I have many leatherbound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany but when you want to criticise U2 and say this:
Latterly, they have been about a Proustian rampage through the debris of a music that happens too quickly for clarity, excavating pieces that seemed like they might have contained something more than they revealed first time around
Instead of:
The Edge has been getting away with using the same riff for twenty years and did you realise Bono may have once read a bible
You really are thinking more about being paid by the inch rather than the tolerence of your readers.
I don't know if you've seen the Prius episode of South Park but that's John Waters, that is.
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aidanAdvanced Member Posts:638
| 2/20/2009 7:16 AM |
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Any time someone uses 'Proustian' or 'Kafkaesque' or 'Beckettian', they lose readers. They're all just pretentious and exclusionary ways of saying 'nostalgic' or 'nightmarishly bureaucratic' or 'bleakly funny'. And 'latterly' instead of 'lately'? I'm all for an intellectual and challenging approach to writing about music, but this type of self-satisfied blather reinforces the (mistaken) idea that popular culture isn't fit for serious discussion.
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whiterob81Basic Member Posts:162
| 2/20/2009 8:53 AM |
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Posted By aidan on 20 Feb 2009 07:16 AM
Any time someone uses 'Proustian' or 'Kafkaesque' or 'Beckettian', they lose readers. They're all just pretentious and exclusionary ways of saying 'nostalgic' or 'nightmarishly bureaucratic' or 'bleakly funny'. And 'latterly' instead of 'lately'? That's brilliant. I'm nicking that. Just read it, didn't think it was too bad until I reached the second last paragraph and I preceded to watch him disappear in a verbal wankery. I recently read an article by a publisher who said that ornate prose is something to be avoided rather than aimed for and it's a piece of advice that seems to occur to very few writers. Some of the article belongs in the Liam Fay school of organising your thoughts around lame wordplays. His review of the actual album seems to an overly elaborate version of every Sonic Youth and Fall album review from the last 15 years ("This is the album they should have made after Daydream Nation" or "We can now admit that the last few albums were awful but, honestly, this time.....") |
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aidanAdvanced Member Posts:638
| 2/20/2009 9:56 AM |
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Posted By whiterob81 on 20 Feb 2009 08:53 AM
Posted By aidan on 20 Feb 2009 07:16 AM
Any time someone uses 'Proustian' or 'Kafkaesque' or 'Beckettian', they lose readers. They're all just pretentious and exclusionary ways of saying 'nostalgic' or 'nightmarishly bureaucratic' or 'bleakly funny'. And 'latterly' instead of 'lately'?
That's brilliant. I'm nicking that. Oh, great :( Re: good/bad writing, the CLUAS writers' guidelines page gives advice like 'good English is simple English' and 'good writing is concrete, not flowery or gassy'. I believe it was that dashing young CLUAS Foreign Correspondent (Paris) who wrote it: http://www.cluas.com/forms/writing-guidelines.htm |
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GangofGin New Member Posts:8
| 2/26/2009 10:32 AM |
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John Waters seems to be trying too hard to mythologise U2 or incorporate them into higher culture (or something).
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aidanAdvanced Member Posts:638
| 2/27/2009 7:11 AM |
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Posted By GangofGin on 26 Feb 2009 10:32 AM
John Waters seems to be trying too hard to mythologise U2 or incorporate them into higher culture (or something). He's sincere and fair play to him for trying to start a serious discussion on the social significance of pop culture. But just because U2 are artists making music, it doesn't mean they have any sociocultural importance beyond any other Irish band of the time. U2 are huge because they're great businessmen, not because they're great artists. Their work in general (apart from one exception, below) can't sustain the weight of Waters' claims for it, so he has to argue by force of language (that Pseud's Corner prose style) rather than solid analysis. That said, the 'Achtung Baby'/Zoo TV period deserves that kind of analysis because of how it captured/inspired the spirit of its times, and also because it's a great piece of art. |
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| 3/2/2009 10:00 AM |
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Bought the album yesterday. Listened to it all day. 5 out of the 11 tracks are up there with the best stuff they've ever done, the lead single does not belong on the record...aul lads at a wedding is all i'll say...
Bono's vocals are the best i've heard in ten years, the lyrical content however sounds lazy and last minute on alot of the tracks.
John Waters is an articulate aul soul...however he no longer resides on this planet...he's a really smart guy no doubt but like his subject matter he overthinks things a little....its popular music.....nothing to do with Proust or Beckett.
Anyway the underlying point in his article i agree with is that the record is a winner overall. It wont be popular with the trendys but those of us who are old enough will know that U2 never were....
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PeterQuaifeBasic Member Posts:436
| 3/3/2009 5:37 AM |
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Posted By aidan on 27 Feb 2009 07:11 AM
Posted By GangofGin on 26 Feb 2009 10:32 AM
John Waters seems to be trying too hard to mythologise U2 or incorporate them into higher culture (or something). "U2 are huge because they're great businessmen, not because they're great artists."
surely its a combination of both? Whilst not being a big U2 fan, I appreciate and enjoy most of their musical output.
PQ
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aidanAdvanced Member Posts:638
| 3/3/2009 7:11 AM |
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PQ, what I mean is that they became The Biggest Band In The World through their ambition and (with Paul McGuinness) their business savvy. I love 'Achtung Baby', 'Zooropa' and the whole 'Zoo TV' era, when they briefly almost became The Best Band In The World. But those are two different things, being huge and being great. Since 'Pop' they've still been huge but never great, never even close to great.
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