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posted by
davidt
on Monday June 29 2009, @10:00AM
Uncleskinny posted the link in the forums (original thread):
Obituary: Steven Wells - The Guardian Iconoclastic music journalist who went on to write about sport, politics and culture David Quantick The Guardian, Monday 29 June 2009 Excerpt: ...But before that, he had spent most of his career officially writing about music. From the awful Morrissey to indie kings Belle and Sebastian, from emo to Bono (who once sent Swells an axe, asking to "bury the hatchet"), if you weren't the spirit of punk, or pop, incarnate, if you weren't the Sex Pistols or Kylie Minogue or Pansy Division, you were worthless. Especially if you were Belle and Sebastian, whom Steven described as "self-loving, knock-kneed, passive aggressive, dressed-up-in-kiddy-clothes, mock-pop-creepiness-peddling, smug, underachieving, real-pop-hating no-talents celebrating their own inadequacy with music so white it's translucent". He invented the word "saddo". He had to; there weren't enough words to castigate the enemy so he needed to invent new ones.
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Steven Wells obituary by David Quantick - 'awful' Morrissey mentioned
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This doesn't make me very saddo (Score:0)
If you weren't Kylie Minogue... (Score:1)
(User #22516 Info)
I'm Happy You're Dead (Score:1)
And secondly I very much doubt that he invented the word 'saddo'.
(User #13749 Info | http://somedizzywhore.com/)
Swells (Score:0)
No he wasnt a fan of dear ol Mozzer although he was rather infatuated..
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/arts-and-culture/big_mouth_strikes_again-38463039.html
Re:Swells (Score:2, Informative)
thanks for the link - i've never supported the put-it-all-together character-assassination which swells rehearses in his article. i'd defend anyone's right to say 'reggae is vile' forever (in moz's case it was the correct rebuttal of a stupid presumptuous self-righteous question: 'what's your favourite reggae track?').
but swells was spot on about moz's mindless utterances to NME in 2007 (which whatever the 'context' i'm sure were accurately quoted - or could NME be even stupider than i thought?):
"The English have always been good at hybridity. We're a hybrid people. Total mongrels. It's our greatest strength. It's what makes us English. It's astounding Morrissey has never grasped this.
Morrissey is talking shit. And--given the rise of racist anti-immigrant rhetoric on both sides of the Atlantic--it's dangerous, poisonous shit."
i agree with every word. events since the NME interview and ensuing debate (BNP elected to European Parliament and London Assembly, Romanians attacked in Belfast) demonstrate thriving racist elements in this country whom pop stars should not risk encouraging with idle comments. it's not moz's fault that the Sun co-opted him for a hysterical full-page anti-immigration diatribe (which made no mention of how many people are leaving the UK), but if he'd thought about what he was saying rather than 'vomit up' a load of inaccurate hyperbole, they wouldn't have used him like that.
what worries me is that while i'd have thought the Sun piece (with 3+ million readers) did more to affect his reputation than the NME interview, there was no comment from moz on that, let alone a lawsuit.
(User #12826 Info)
Parent
Never heard of him . . . . (Score:0)
Reading the article it gives the impression he spent his life savaging those whom were talented and creative and successful. Regardless of whether their art is to our taste or not - they enjoyed their vibrant, energetic careers and seemingly, continue to do so.
Jealousy does nothing but destroy.
(User #22701 Info)
Swells (Score:0)
My understanding of the article... (Score:0)
David Quantick (Score:1)
(User #20608 Info)
David Quantick is an idiot (Score:0)
Big Mouth Strikes Again (Score:1)
Soooo this idiot is walking on eggshells and God knows, he should be walking on eggshells, because we all know how scared he is of bothering to get himself sued. He wants people to think that he is not scared of Morrissey, yes, he wants readers to think that he is not a coward. Whereby, all he is really proving, ironically is that he is one. Because, we all on these boards, cannot be convinced that he believes the gorgeous, most talented, intelligent man – whose name is Morrissey … we cannot be convinced that anything that comes out of his lying garbage infected sewer mouth, mouthpiece is worth anything.
The only thing that I can grasp from David Quandick’s, no amount of intelligence, writing skills. Well not really skills, because he has none. All I can conclude is that he is shivering, shaking, and just trying once again to show the world what a pathetic, spine of a jelly fish, dimensions – he was, is, and shall always be. I mean I’ll even say that other than the tape of the Jackson 5 that I brought to college … because I liked the song I Want You Back, so I could listen to it on the four and a half hour trip in my car … Michael Jackson’s lyrics, they were awful … in my opinion. Now the ‘ Jackson 5’, and Michael Jackson’s lyrics, ‘they’ were awful in ‘my opinion’.
(User #12664 Info | http://www.morrissey-solo.com/)
Very low (Score:1)
(User #13144 Info)
Swells can... (Score:1)
(User #16308 Info)
awful NME (Score:1)
(User #22602 Info)
bye bye bye bye bye bye baby goodbye (Score:0)
Awful (Score:1)
(User #19086 Info)
Quanticks; the bitterest, ugliest man in... (Score:0)
Swells was actually an interesting, witty writer. But Quanticks is an utterly vile character.
totally unfunny, permanently sarcastic, like some dysfunctional, utterly twattish 15 year-old boy in the body of a fat, ugly 50-something with the most hideous accent in the history of the spoken word.
forced to apologise to Moz over his greatest hits 'review' article in Word, the man brings a new dimension to the word 'loser'!
r.i.p (Score:1)
(User #1727 Info)
I hope that Morrissey (Score:3, Funny)
It's quite an honor.
(User #14203 Info)
stephen (Score:1)
(User #220 Info)
This Article Should Be Withdrawn (Score:1, Insightful)
The vitriol (Score:3, Insightful)
However, Quantick did choose to editorialize in an obituary, which is never a good idea for obvious reasons; this should have been about Steven Wells, not Quantick, and certainly not Morrissey.
A strange error in judgement from a professional music journalist, and testament to the extremity of his disregard for said singer.
(User #14203 Info)
Parent
Well, (Score:0)
-RWRW
ugh (Score:0)
Wells (Score:1)
For someone who spent the majority of their lifetime ripping apart music and attempting to corrupt young readers into channeling his warped view of the world, I find it quite apt that he suffered from a painful form of cancer. Death doesn't always take the good ones.
(User #19284 Info | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mystvD33Ac&feature=channel_page)
Reading some of the vitriol posted here (Score:1, Funny)
-------------------------------
Morrissey Attack
By Steven Wells.
The television was the colour of a television tuned to really mental TV show about giant men in rubber suits ripping Japanese Defence Force F16s out of the sky while stomping on screaming salarymen like they were man shaped and flesh and suit and shoe coloured paper bags full of over-ripe loganberries.
“What you doing?” asked incredibly fit 23-year-old Afro-Saxon bodyguard Karen X.
“Blogging,” replied 48-year-old publishing sensation Steven Wells.
“What about?”
“This TV show,” said Wells, pointing at the 85 inch Sony Fuckoffatron suspended from the ceiling of his luxurious Tokyo penthouse suite by the wire guts of an Apache attack helicopter.
“That’s not a fucking TV show, you stupid old cunt!” snarled six-year-old Tracey Trotsky Spinoza Jones through a gob full of steroids as she swayed ever so slightly atop the exercise beam where she was practicing to win 18 golds for Team GB in the 2012 London Olympics.
“Nah, that’s real,” confirmed black super-tight cat-suit clad Karen X.
“Fuck me, really?” gasped Wells. “Giant fucking monsters stomping down-town Tokyo? That’s so fucking clichéd. That’s exactly the sort of lazy, half-arsed shit you’d expect some burnt-out hack to hammer out if he’d been asked to contribute a short story about Tokyo or something to a quasi-literary website and he’d forgotten about it and was now desperately churning something out just like the medical cocaine-crazed Robert Louis Stevenson on the day after his mad wife used the manuscript for Dr. Jekyl and Mister Hyde to light the kitchen fire.”
“You’re all doomed! Doomed I tell you!” screamed Neville Himmler, chairman of the International Fascist Brotherhood of Hyper-uncritical White Supremacist Morrissey Fans as he swung—gaffa-taped up like some obscene flesh piñata—by a titanium chain from the ceiling.
“Shut up!” barked Tracey Trotsky Spinoza Jones, spanking him in the head with a nail studded cricket stump. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
“Fuck it,” growled Wells.
“We’re on the 859th floor of the Tokyo Attack Towers—the hardest fucking building every built. A thousand fucking mad Muslim piloted jumbos packed with Anthrax, napalm and AIDS needles couldn’t dent this cunt!”
Just then a thousand mad Morrissey fan piloted jumbos packed with Anthrax, napalm and AIDS needles and BNP election leaflets crashed into all nine sides of Attack Towers Tokyo, bouncing off harmlessly but showering thousands of innocent geishas and sexy schoolgirls and salarymen and manga artists in the street below with disease and fascist propaganda.
“We’re under attack! Cool! This needs a soundtrack!” roared Wells, hitting a button on his remote that caused Guitar Wolf to pop out of the floor and perform a particularly splenetic version of ‘Jet Generation’.
Everybody pogoed for a bit. And then moshed. And then did a bit more pogoing.
“According to the news,” murmured super-sexy ninja-assassin Karen X, “downtown Tokyo is being stomped not by Godzilla and chums but by…”
There was an incredibly tense pause.
“A giant Rudolf Hess! And a David Irving! And a giant Morrissey!”
“But how do they know?” asked Tracey Trotsky Spinoza Jones. “I mean, how could they possibly tell them apart?”
“That’s not going to matter – when they’re tearing YOU apart!” grunted Morrissey fan club Fuhrer Neville Himmler through a face that looked like the alien out of the film Alien had taken a semi-sentient dump after a human head and face feast.
“He knows something!” snarled Wells.
“Talk!” commanded Tracey Trotsky Spinoza Jones, as she beat the spinning Morrissey fan piñata with her cricket stump.
“Yes, talk!” roared Wells and Karen X gleefully as they too picked up cricket stumps and whupped the screaming Morrissey fan upside his
Steven You Did Eat Meat (Score:0)