Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Go Fuck Yourself David Keenan! And A Farewell To A Stooge

Today i got an email from Amazon, a notice on an order i placed but hadn’t shipped yet; i thought “Finally!!! I can’t believe it’s actually coming my way now!!”. For a few seconds while the email opened, i was giddy with thoughts.

Turns out, giddiness can be a fleeting thing.

Upon reading the email i learned they had cancelled my order for David Keenan’s England's Hidden Reverse, the paperback edition of a biography of three of the most inspired and important bands coming from the industrial music revolution, namely Coil, Nurse With Wound and Current 93. The order was placed many months ago when a release date was set but then it disappeared, pushed back until even Amazon gave up on them.

The hardcover version, released some years ago, has been out of print for a long time and second hand copies demand quite a few hundreds of dollars.

Why? Why keep a book out of print? The fact that it’s sold on eBay and the like means there’s an audience for it, so why hold it?

But, considering the subject matter, i bet Mr. Keenan enjoys the fact that it’s out of print and commanding quite the pretty pennies, making his tome worthy of such rarities as C93’s Dogs Blood Rising (Mi-Mort tape version), an original pressing of Coil’s How To Destroy Angels 12” or one of the hand-drawned and signed copies of NWW’s Insect And Individual Silenced. If only...

Or are you a cunt like Julian Cope who, by letting his books become rarer, cultivates a bigger cult figure, subject matter or writing skills be damned? Gawd i hope not, what the world needs is less of the likes of him.

So Mr. “Most Everything I Review For The Wire Is Either Sub-Par Or A Work Of Genius”, release the motherfucking book!! i want to read about John Balance, Steven Stapleton, David Tibet and all the people and places they crossed paths with. Release the paperback edition because i can’t pay 200-or-so dollars for a hardcover version, not only because i don’t have that kind of money at the moment but because i don’t want to be disappointed by it and feeling like an idiot for spending so much on something i might not love.

And once i get my hand on a copy, you better not be a Simon Reynolds or a Julian Cope, i don’t want to read your pretentious opinions, i want to read about the music and the bands!

So, if you have something to do with the delay of your book, go fuck yourself David Keenan!

*********************************





















Unrelatedly, Ron Asheton, guitar extraordinaire for not only the amazing Stooges but also collaborator of Destroy All Monsters among other projects, was found dead today.


It’s really sad because he was one of the very greats, the author of the imposibly-simple-yet-orgasmic riffs for “I Wanna Be Your Dog” or “TV Eye”, one of the noisiest and most steady rhythm players in rock (so much that, when the band reformed with James Williamson on guitar, Ron was relegated to bass and he was incredibly solid and forefronting in the sonic excess of the songs...in other words, he wouldn't let himself be in the back, you had to notice his sound and he locked himself up in the rhythm tight as fuck); his solos were wild, free and bluesy, stripping it of it’s past in the hands of black folk players but having as much sentiment; thousands of guitarists still try to blend the recklessness with tradition the way he did.

Sunday i saw a mini-doc about Iggy and also listened to Metallic K.O., not having the slightest idea that something was wrong; it’s a sad day for someone that might not have smeared peanut butter or slashed his chest onstage but delivered something as brutal and exciting as that from his guitar when standing onstage.






























Go listen to
The Stooges and Fun House like right now, any chance is as good to listen to those immortal records. Farewell Ron.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You seem to have a very shallow opinion of David Keenan for some very spurious reasons. Perhaps, rather than making rude comments about him you could ask why his book was not in print.

I've met David on a few occasions, and your rantings do not give a particularly accurate impression, of somebody who I found very engaging. Perhaps, to use your terminology, it is you who is a cunt. Food for thought perhaps.

Grow up!

Anonymous said...

So I know this is way after the fact, but let me get this straight. You're annoyed at Dave Keenan cos a seller on Amazon cancelled your order? You know this has nothing to do with Keenan right? Also I hope you're aware Keenan was not responsible for publishing his book, he just wrote it. Thirdly, you are aware publishing books costs money? The book was released in a very limited print run for what is after all, an extremely niche market. This isn't a Doors biography, they can't have a pulp fiction reissue, if it was reissued it would again be for an extremely marginal group of potential buyers, and the publisher would probably be sitting on a lot of copies for several years. I don't think Keenan is deliberately keeping the book out of print, it's a case of getting someone interested in making th financial and time investment to reissue it.
I know you probably intended your rant as slightly tongue in cheek and deliberately over the top, but it shows you really know nothing about how small private underground works are produced, you have probably never had anything manufactured or created and appreciate the work that goes into this, and frankly, you come across like a jerk.