Simon Reynolds on Public Image Limited‘s Metal Box in Frieze Magazine: “At some point he [John Lydon] clearly grasped that his place in rock history (and future income) depended on the Sex Pistols adventure and subsequently threw all his energies into burnishing the Johnny Rotten legend. But I wonder whether another factor behind Lydon’s silence is that the PiL years are painful to contemplate – not just because of bad blood (Wobble was one of his best friends) but because the music of Metal Box, rooted in his true loves (Can, Captain Beefheart, Peter Hammill, dub), meant so much to him”. * The Britpop Story. * Banksy unmasked?: “Gareth Williams, senior picture specialist at the auctioneers, said: ‘The most incredible aspect of the Banksy phenomenon is neither his meteoric rise nor the substantial sums of money that his art now commands but that, as a self-confessed guerrilla artist, he has been so wholeheartedly embraced by the very Establishment he satirises.’ Banksy has let it be known what he thinks of the high prices his works fetch, writing on his website: ‘I can’t believe you morons buy this s***.'” (More here.) * Mark SaFranko on Simenon. * From blog to publishing house success story. * Dali on Garcia Lorca: “He [Lorca] tried to screw me twice… I was extremely annoyed, because I wasn’t homosexual, and I wasn’t interested in giving in. Besides, it hurts. So nothing came of it. But I felt awfully flattered vis-Ã -vis the prestige. Deep down I felt that he was a great poet and that I owe him a tiny bit of the Divine Dali’s asshole”. * Succour Magazine (via dogmatika). * Another play based on Joe Orton‘s life. * Indy & Ink. * Our very own Andrew Stevens — Leytonstone’s finest — on NYC’s late 70s/early 80s Downtown scene. * Sukhdev Sandhu argues that “just as vinyl is flourishing in the age of the MP3, so is the humble fanzine”. * Adam Thirlwell‘s “monumentally annoying” new book: “Thirlwell’s version of literary history is pretty standard, underneath the preening and the straining for effect. He leads us down virgin trails littered with crisp packets and undergraduate essays”. * Sam Jordison pays a visit to Whitby, the “ultimate meta-literary Mecca”: “However, it’s the Bram Stoker pilgrims themselves who really help the town to stake its claim as the apotheosis of literary shrines. That’s thanks to the fact that not only do they flock to the Dracula landmarks in their thousands, but they also dress rather like the titular head vampire himself. …Rather wonderfully, a chap wearing a gas mask told me he was reading Jilly Cooper”. * The Goth-Lolita merger. * More Chinese casual sex. * No metal for Brummie heavy metal fans. *
