Pissing, Shitting, And Cumming With The “Philadelphia Weekly”
Ah, Philadelphia. It’s only been two months since I left your slacker ass for New York City, but I’m glad to see that the Philadelphia Weekly is still full of self-righteous rock lunacy. Throughout an irreverent anti-memorial for Harp, former Harp contributor and “punk poet” Steven Wells offers us the transgressive, energetic writing he feels has been sorely lacking in indie music magazines. None of the bodily humors are left behind as he recalls a time when angry lesbain punks were angry lesbian punks and Lester Bangs danced the Charleston on top of the Sears Tower or something. And yes, he is British.
You hear that vile bubbling? That’s the sound of America’s indie rock press violently shitting its beige corduroy colostomy bag as it gasps its last.
…Full disclosure: I worked for Harp for a while. Publisher Glenn Sabin recently described the magazine as “irreverent.” It wasn’t. It licked musician ass until its tongue bled.
…In the early ’70s the likes of Creem and Rolling Stone and NME were staffed by bedraggled refugees from the revolutionanddrugsandfucking-crazed underground press of the late ’60s. Jewfro-ed honkies engaged in fistfights, drug orgies and bondage sex (literally–this is not a metaphor).
…I saw one angry punk lesbian writer–notorious for having fucked a female colleague and then having left her bound and gagged in a cupboard to starve to death–attempt to smash a pint glass in the face of another female writer for being “too girly.” Honor was defended with fists and boots as much as it ever was in print. Bands that spoke homophobic, racist or sexist shit were slaughtered mercilessly. And the prose flowed like blood from a gaping head wound.
…Music journalism–seething with the reckless, showy, young-dumb-and-full-of-cum, anything-is-possibilism of rock ‘n’ roll itself–was drowned in a dull gray sea of mediocre fan jism. Bottom line: If you actually genuinely like Ryan Adams, Wilco, Bright Eyes and My Morning Jacket, you shouldn’t be allowed to write. Period.
Dull writers write about dull bands for dull fans who form dull bands and become dull writers. It’s like punk in reverse. The perfect shit storm. But now the sun is peaking through the clouds.
Crack open the champagne. Let’s go piss on some graves.
Yeah, let’s go poop and pee and wipe our noses on the wimps until they get all bloody and there’s cum and stuff.
Harp On It [Philadelphia Weekly]
