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.”
Our job is done: we’ve finally made it into Private Eye‘s legendary Pseuds Corner! Ok, it’s cheating a bit. The offending article — which appeared in “The Missing Links” — is in fact a quote from Dan Holloway about his wordless novel Evie and Guy. Thanks Dan, we’re sharing this accolade with you.
Hello, I am editing fiction for 3:AM Magazine this summer. Guidelines. A couple of things I would like to add: Ezra Pound’s poem “Portrait d’une femme” was “rejected by the North American Review in January 1912, according to Pound, on the grounds that ‘I had used the letter ‘r’ three times in the first line, [...]
Hi. Susan Tomaselli is taking a well-earned sabbatical from 3:AM this summer, so I’ll be stepping in as co-editor in chief, focusing on non-fiction. I’ve been commissioning for 3:AM since 2011, so some of you will know me, and will have worked with me already. But I’d like to say that, right now, I’m open [...]
The many identities of Fernando Pessoa. * Rare 1952 William Faulkner documentary. * The London nobody sings. * Kindergarde. * The Academy of Modern Ruins is turning an abandoned petrol station on Route 66 into The Philosopher’s Library. * Nostalgia for the Net. * Rhys Tranter‘s fascinating interview with Rick Cluchey. * 3:AM‘s Anna Aslanyan [...]
