Julian Gough is an Irish novelist living in Berlin. He is the author of Juno & Juliet and Jude: Level 1, one of the novels of the last decade, a “brilliant satire of modern Ireland which mixed the comic sensibility of The Simpsons with Flann O’ Brien, Joyce and Beckett.” His story, ‘The Orphan and the Mob’, represents Ireland in Dalkey Archive’s Best European Fiction 2010. A book of Julian’s poetry, including lyrics from his band Toasted Heretic, will be published by Salmon this year. In the meantime, here are the last 14 tracks Julian listened to (though not necessarily in the right order). Julian writes: “I won’t tell you whether or not they were my own choice, whether or not I liked them, or whether or not I was bound and gagged and hanging upside down in a dungeon at the time, someone else’s iPod playing softly as they melted the wax. A girl needs to maintain a certain mystique.”
1. ‘Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes’ - Modest Mouse
2. ‘Woodcat’ - Tunng
3. ‘I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl’ - Nina Simone
4. ‘The Village Green Preservation Society’ - The Kinks
5. ‘Warsawa’ - David Bowie
6. ‘O Superman’ - Laurie Anderson
7. ‘Jazzman’ - Carole King
8. ‘Holes’ - Mercury Rev
9. ‘Scriptures’ - B12
10. ‘The Card Sharp’- The Clash
11. ‘Sonata XVI’ - John Cage
12. ‘This Is the Life’ - Amy MacDonald
13. ‘Buffalo Ballet’ - John Cale
14. ‘Sing Swan Song’ - Can
The follow-up to a massive hit can go several ways, but the main possibilities include: 1) an almost exact simulation, a lucky strike turned into a formula or 2) the hit is used as a springboard to go deeper and weirder, with the added confidence caused by unexpected success. The results in the latter case can be explosive: just think of the Kinks’ ‘All Day and All of the Night’.
Bedsitter came off the back of ‘Tainted Love’, Soft Cell’s 1981 bestselling single. Their cover of Gloria Jones’s northern soul classic (which segued, on the 12-inch, into the Supremes’ ‘Where Did Our Love Go’) was a minimalist anthem that both betrayed the duo’s north-western origins and made the most of their performance art leanings.
These came alive on their Top of the Pops appearances. There was an echo of Sparks in the heightened mismatch between David Ball (static, moustached) and Marc Almond (mobile, androgynous). Arriving in the middle of Margaret Thatcher’s first-term, Almond’s camp strutting and hootchy-kootch voguing came over as highly provocative: an outrage and an inspiration.
Soft Cell lacked both the blandness of Spandau Ballet and the all-round appeal of Adam Ant, then in his deserved pomp. There was a gleeful glint, if not a hint of steel, in Almond’s eyes as he minced and postured across the nation’s TV screens: he made gender bending (as it was soon to be called) seem both totally natural and immense fun.
& In Hilobrow, Matthew De Abaitua on John Carpenter: “Few cultural scraps are as redolent of lo-fi VHS genre pleasures than a movie trailer with Carpenter’s name above the title and his own analog synth score.”
By Robert O’Connor.
Over the weekend, the Studs Terkel Memorial Bridge in Chicago was rededicated. It’s a run-down dingy bridge built in 1904 - eight years older than Studs. It’s one of many events that are taking place around the city to celebrate his 100th birthday this Wednesday.
Before the event, organizers sold copies of his books [...]
Tom McCarthy in conversation with Marita Gluzberg. * Dylan Trigg on disorientation and uncanniness. * Roland Barthes: myths we don’t outgrow. * 1977: the Queen’s punk jubilee. * Palettes of famous painters. * Three early short films by Peter Greenaway. * Black and white pictures of life inside the Chelsea Hotel. * Stiv Bators interview, [...]
The wonderful Deborah Levy interviewed on France 24 (video). *A review of The Space Between curated by Michael Bracewell. * Robert Walser’s Thirty Poems to be published by New Directions later this month. * Quentin Meillassoux’s The Number and the Siren (on Mallarmé) reviewed. * László Krasznahorkai interviewed: “You will never go wrong anticipating doom [...]
Tom McCarthy’s brilliant essay, Transmission and the Individual Remix: How Literature Works, is published as a Vintage Books eBook Original on 22 May. Here’s an extract from the blurb:
“In his novels Remainder, C, and Men in Space, McCarthy explores the theme of signals and transmission. Now, he blows the concept wide open and identifies the [...]
