Arctic Monkeys

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_blissout_archive.html

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I've never read a word of Hoskyns, but Simon makes him sound interesting and not so unlike me (even if I was bored by the Birthday Party). The reason my eyes lit on the name "Hoskyns" is that when Ben Thompson reviewed my book in the Independent he wrote me a note apologizing for using me "as a stick to beat Barney Hoskyns with." So in one little apology note Ben has completely refuted Mark K-Punk's thesis! I am the pop-rock nihilation! You can hit 'em with the Kogan nihilation stick. (Isn't "nihilation" something of a rub word (as you Brits say)?) But - excuse me - does Mark K-Punk think that all social conflict is at an end? The fact that "pop" vs. "indie" is now a particularly boring trope doesn't mean that day in and day out people don't define themselves and their tastes in relation to the other guy's selves and tastes. I think where Simon needs to go with his argument is to understand that "New Pop" vs. "New Rock" is way too broad to encompass or explain Morley vs. Hoskyns, and that the latter (or some equivalent, your girlfriend's middle child vs. your girlfriend's oldest child, for instance) is way more interesting.

I read that "great" Greil Marcus piece that Simon refs when it first came out and thought it was hysterical and ridiculous, the man pumping himself up into a gas-balloon rage over virtually nothing so that he could fool himself into thinking that Nirvana had supervast significance (and he thereby had little to say about Nirvana's actual real-size significance).