Friday 26 June 2009

Never mind Michael bloody Jackson

Swells is dead! Steven Wells, the wonderful, angry, witty, committed music writer from the days when NME did more than print bands' press releases. He died of the seemingly inevitable cancer: his final column (for the Philadelphia Weekly) treats cancer pretty much the same way as he treated all the bands I liked - with total contempt.

How I loved buying NME on Wednesday morning to see what fresh torture he'd inflicted on the English language to express his true feelings towards Slowdive, the Field Mice or anyone else who wasn't absolutely bloody furious every single day. Charlie Brooker learned everything he knows from Swells, though he as yet hasn't managed to write an anarcho-Trotskyist novel entitled Tits Out Teenage Terror Totty.

2 comments:

Dan said...

I'm probably going to buy his book next. The one with the rude word in the title. As Ewarwoowar pointed out to me yesterday, the ending of his column is very weird considering the events of late last night.

The Plashing Vole said...

Ending with an MJ quote was freakish. Cheapest copy around is £40!