Everett True in a particularly moving passage about Rock:
I want to dress in black, cool, studied, shades a matted mess on my shaking faces, life a riot of colour, (pink and gold and red). I want to conga with Billy Liar, dance on the grave of dead and given up friends and shout in their comatose skulls, leaven this existence, with an enthusiasm that is all the more wonderful because it is so primal. I want to fuck the world and give birth to nobility, a new strain of life.
Everett True in 'Careless Talk Costs Lives' (CTCL) #11, Feb 2002 issue as quoted in Pink Planet May-June 2003 issue. CTCL is an independent British music magazine started a few months back by Everett True. True is a slightly eccentric British journalist, ?credited with discovering grunge, introducing Kurt (Cobain) to Courtney and later busting the door wide open with a now infamous story in Bretain?s Melody Maker?. Later on, he hit the road.. hit the bottle.. wrote books..dropped out of circulation and has now resurfaced with a new magazine. His stated goal is ?Destroying the music industry with 12 issues ? or else we have failed?
Everett is one of dozens of personalities from the zine world interviewed and excerpted in the May-June issue of ?Pink Planet?. This issue is a celebration of print rather than music and introduced me to a host of zines and people I have never had the time or inclination to research. If you are in North America and have access to the magazine, this is definitely one for the keeps. (Incidentally, CTCL is a British magazine and for some weird reason True doesn?t seem to terribly interested in finding distribution)
It doesn?t even sound like Chris Bell; He had never sung that well before, which makes it even harder to take, since it was the last, or one of the last things he did. So confident, and at the same time, somehow so vulnerable. The song itself, the experience of singing it, seems to have done something to him, worn him our. Three and a half minutes have gone by, but he sounds ten years older. The chorus is simple:
I fall every time
Though I know she lies
I can?t stay away
But it?s how he holds the words in his mouth, sings ?stay aawaaay? from the back of his throat, like he?s physically trying to hold himself down in the bed, knowing he shouldn?t go over there, shouldn?t call. There is only one line of harmony in the song. It comes out of nowhere, on the bridge, a quiet falsetto, maybe Bell?s own. You can miss if so easily ? you have to squeeze the headphones to sides of your head. The line is ?keeping me in the dark?.
John Jeremiah Sullivan writing about Chris Bell who sang the track 20 ?You and Your Sister? in Oxford American?s 2003 music issue. Chris Bell died when he crashed into a telephone pole a few days after Christmas in 1978. John Jeremiah Sullivan has a book coming out about horses and fathers in 2004 (Farrer, Strauss and Girox?). The song is available in the album ?I am the cosmos? released by Rykodisc in 1992 and ?The big star story? released by Rykodisc in 2003.
Oxford American is a literary magazine of the South. It showcases music from the South in an issue every year. This year, the accompanying CD has 20 tracks of blues, jazz, soul, folk and pop music from the South. The magazine itself is devoted to describing each track, its singer and the history behind the music. It is worth checking out.
The current issue of PDN magazine out on the shelves is their photoannual. Check it out. I ought to start subscribing to the magazine instead of buying it off the shelf every other month!
Posted by Kaushik at June 02, 2003 08:38 AM | TrackBack