Friday, April 25, 2008

Steven Patrick: the original wannabe music blogger

Via Martin at Counago & Spaves comes the wee gem of Morrissey's youthful letters to the NME.

I think I've seen excerpts of the letters before - maybe from Johnny Rogan's 'Severed Alliance'? - but this month's Uncut music magazine captures the letters in all their glory.

Read on as a 'Steve' cribs from my school of music journalism when penning a lust letter about the 1974 Sparks album, Kimono My House: 'Here are my favourite tracks in descending order. Don't you dare contradict me'.

Fast forward to 'Steven' doing the original 'I heard of this band before you lot. Suck it up as you cling for dear life on the back of my superior musical knowledge' type music blog post as he coughs up a love you more type letter about the Buzzcocks.

And don't forget the 'guilty pleasure' type music blog post as he mentions having to put his Carly Simon, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Phil Ochs albums on a "smouldering . . . low light" since discovering Johnny Thunder and the Heartbreakers. (Guilty pleasure music blog posts always make me do a double take 'cos I'm like, 'What do you mean you're not supposed to admit in mixed company that you think that S Club 7 rocks?')

Saying that, guilty pleasure or not, I never would have pegged Mozzer for a Phil Ochs fan. Not Moz in any of his musical or personal permutations: Not going by the name of 'Steve', 'Steven' or 'Steven Patrick'.

But I'll take that on board when I listen to Phil Ochs's wonderful 'Love Me I'm A Liberal' in the future. I'll think of Moz and his number one fan in the political blogosphere, Harry Place's David T.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

NME are wankers though.

Imposs1904 said...

Haven't read it for years, tbh, and I only ever read it for a couple of years in the nineties.

I went from Smash Hits -> No.1 magazine -> Record Mirror -> NME/Melody Maker -> Select/Vox -> to complaining about 'what's this shit on the radio? What happened to the decent tunes that you could sing along to . . . such as Throbbing Gristle, Pop Group and that German Industrial Brand whose name sounds like Eintracht Frankfurt?'

I miss Record Mirror more than the rest.