Shocked, stunned and, let’s be honest here, not a little embarrassed, to tune across to the re-emergent Ian Penman's weblog, as one does, only to discover there a link to - wait for it - this page.
And I’m, like, “say what?”
[stunned silence]
And I’m, like, “gosh”.
[at which point a foolish and somewhat gormless grin breaks out]
I’m pretty sure I have already bored everybody of my acquaintance senseless about what an influence the NME of the late seventies/early eighties was on me, in particular the writings of Penman and Charles Shaar Murray. As a shy and sheltered boy growing up on a farm, with little or no first-hand exposure to Culture, I made an instant connection with these two, and with their tastes in music, and in many ways they made me what I am today (whatever that is).
But to find little old me with what I take to be an endorsement from Penman himself? Heck. I’m not a writer, or a music critic, or a cultural theorist, or a cineaste. Not a purveyor of memes, or a surveyor of themes. Or anything at all, really. I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam.
But in the absence of an email address on his site, this is the only way that I can say “Thanks, Mr Penman, for everything.” Which I now do.
***
(En)forced segue corner:
And speaking of Ian Penman, it was interesting to read in the most recent Observer Music Monthly the other half of the NME’s Glummer Twins, Paul Morley, writing with some degree of convincingness (? - see, I told you I wasn’t a writer) of the idea that your music-listening experience should revolve around a combination of MP3 files and vinyl, and that the CD as a medium can (and should) now be done away with as a redundant, environmentally unsound and aesthetically pathetic artefact. In other words, download music, throw it on your iPod, and take it with you. Then go home and hold the record in your hand; put it on the mantelpiece; worship it.
(Interesting that Patti Smith’s “Horses” is one of his examples. The inadequacy of the Compact Disc TM is conclusively demonstrated by putting the (vinyl) album cover next to the miserable little CD cover. Mapplethorpe’s iconic (oops, sorry, Ian) image refuses to be reduced. (In fact, if “Horses” had come out in the CD era, perhaps “that” photo would never have become “iconic”.) Sure, you can buy the CD (I did) so as to be able to listen to the music with a clarity that your trashed-almost-to-death vinyl copy lost many years ago. But the object on which that music comes to you is as good as useless for any purpose except cluttering up the house unnecessarily.)
You could, I suppose, argue that affection for vinyl is correlative with age, and is nothing more than a kind of William Gibson-type retro-techno-fetishism. But it is interesting, is it not, that a large part of the stock of your local “dance” music shop consists of vinyl, and those are not places many people born before the advent of the CD are known to frequent.
