poptimists | Tony Wilson

As I've been terrible at mentioning, it's POPTIMISM tonight at the Cross Kings near Kings Cross, downstairs in the Jester Bar, free entry, dancing until 2.

The guest DJs are

fathands and Jim D, who doesn't have a LiveJournal. Jim is planning to play a Manchester set. He was planning this anyway (and Pete is thinking of responding with a London set so expect Dancefloor War) but I think it's a specially good idea now as Tony Wilson, a non-musician without whom "Manchester sets" would probably be very thin and certainly not anything you'd want to dance to, died yesterday of cancer.

There'll be lots of Tony Wilson obituaries and tributes, and it's not as if I'd ever thought about him in the last n years, but I'm sad because 57 is young and because he was a lively presence in pop when I was getting into it. Here's a link with a (slightly partisan) report on the Wake Up America - You're Dead panel he chaired at the 1990 New Music Seminar in New York - Tony Wilson trolls America, you might call it (but like the best trolls, somehow a lot of the interesting points get made along the way too).