Kieron Gillen's workblog

 
             

   
 
 

11/30/2003

 
Just finished the first draft of the second PHONOGRAM prototype script.

One of the odder elements on a Kieron Gillen script is that it opens with a list of everything I was listening to as I wrote it. This is almost always carefully selected to nail the appropriate mood (For example, for CHIMPLANTS I was listening to Andrew WK on repeat).

Okay - for any pro work I cut this off the actual script I send in to the Editor, but if it's going to an artist I know it stays in. As it amuses me, and mostly amuses them. Or, alternatively, they can just ignore it and put it down to Kieron's perpetual Gin habit.

Since you'll probably never see one, here's the latest to laugh at.

Playlist:
23.9.03 – Assorted MP3’s – Main ones – Sheela Na Gig, Lapus Linguae, Jolene, A New England (1-2)
12.10.03 – Gentleman, Afghan Whigs (3-5)
14.10.03 – Holly Golightly, Truly she is none other (Dialogue for 7-10, plus some panel breakdown stuff) And the same day, later: Holly Again, then more MP3 stuff, and then Scout Niblett when pacing down the Scout Niblett bits.
15.10.03 – Falry scene written to Beyonce, Avenue D’s “Do I Look Like A Slut” and Betty Boo.
17.10.03 – Goddess confrontation written to “Horses” by Patti Smith
29.11.03 – Trouble/Pink, Scout Niblett, Kills, Kenickie “At The Club” – for flashback
30.11. 03 – Afghan Whig’s “Gentlemen”. - Epilogue
First draft finished 3.05 as the titletrack fades out.



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11/29/2003

 
Today, I'm so angry with the culture I abstractly report on I would gladly hunt the lot of them down and garotte their whining little bodies.

Then someone does something to restore my faith in videogames.



Thanks Hideo and chums. I may not like your games much, but I needed that.



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"What got me thinking about all this was this site: www.powerlabs.org/emguns.htm. I love that the heading, (PowerLabs Electro Magnetic Weapons!) seems, with its exclamation mark attached, so excited about the subject matter that they can scarcely believe it themselves. The subject, that idea of the electromagnetic weaponry, is one that Rifts dealt with constantly. And let’s face it: theoretical weaponry is just about the best thing ever."

Jim's third editorial at Big Robot explores the subject of influences, with contributions from many of the regular Robotites. Including yours truly.


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Comic Writers, writing columns.

There is an answer to that question, though. The first priority of a review is entertainment. The first priority of criticism is illumination. Which isn't to say criticism can't be entertaining – entertainment is in the eye of the beholder – or reviews can't be illuminating. I'm not suggesting the two disciplines never overlap; they overlap all the time. I'm not suggesting that "reviewers" are second class citizens, or "critics" exist on some elevated intellectual plane. It's just a simple fact: reviews and criticism aren't the same beast, even though we often like to pretend they are.

Steven Grant making some important distinctions that people tend to forget.

"New spectator sport: the sheer, horrible desperation of the music business. As American labels float a call for artists to put fewer songs on a CD (which, as someone pointed out to me, is an excellent way to reduce royalty payments to artists), the British business is now anointing a new Next Big Thing every single week. This week it's Razorlight, a bunch of pale insipidities who would sound like the worst Strokes song you ever heard, if the Strokes had forgotten what little they learned about making a song from their rich daddies' record collections. "Rip It Up" is an embarrassing two-minute lurch from pillar to post, four bladdered pub kids who sound like they forgot what the song was halfway through. Scrubbed clean to within an inch of its life by Steve Lillywhite, it's safe guitar music for the Pop Idol generation. Have a fucking ringtone."

Warren Ellis kicking against the pricks. And name-checking me, which is always a good thing, y'all.



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11/28/2003

 


Negativeland updates.


Episode 1 now available to read. Also, prologue is updated with more contestants.

JPGs have also been reformated to allow for quicker downloads.


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I have just been at Purr.

These people:

(With the second girl from the right swapped for another gentleman)

Sang songs like this at me:

Gazoyngas a plenty! Back pains she had many!
For such knockers hooters funbags boys were not even ready
She could hold your beer! Without hands she could steer!
Smack a grown man in the face so hard he's shed a few tears!
GHOST BOOBS OH YOU HARDLY KNEW ME
GHOST BOOBS OOH WE HARDLY KNEW YE
It was a fad diet! She had to try it!
Chrissy Snow looked pretty hot, so Thighmaster?
Just buy it!
A paid membership at the bulldyke gym
Cuz her boyfriend liked Sue Powter so why not impress him?
What she didn't foresee was that her big'uns would flee
Her thighs and gut both stayed the same but she could now see her knees
Her boyfriend he did weep!
He thought her twiddles would keep
But they didn't know that they would come back in her sleep!
GHOST BOOBS OH YOU HARDLY KNEW ME
GHOST BOOBS OOH WE HARDLY KNEW YE
I thought I was fat
So I went on a diet
If I knew that they'd split
I would've never of tried it
A-Whoa..yeah!!!


Except often far, far ruder

(I had a fantasy since I was nine/'Bout blowin' loads in a butt while loads are blown in mine/Don't blame me for bein' sick for dick/Sometimes it's titties that I wanna lick/I'm such a slut I've tried everything/I've choked down six dix while eatin' Burger King/That ain't shit compared to what I've done/Once jacked off in a hot dog bun/So I got a idea, little boys listen here/.Me and Hunx on you like cheese on a quesadilla/We're almost late for a 12:30 luncheon/It's your ass that we'll be munchin'/Kidnap your ass like you're Patty Hearst/Damn my dick is about to burst/Boy I know that your homework is due/But me and Chunx hella wanna screw")

They are Gravy Train. You too can experience a little of their magic by watching their video to the aforementioned Ghost Boobs or visiting their site.

I, however, go to bed.




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11/26/2003

 
A firm and manly handshake to all the random games-people who are arriving on this blog due to being linked in one of the dozens of Invisible War threads online. The entry you're after is the "Mon Nov 24" one.

Most of the things said are off the cuff - especially the relative size of the maps thing to Liberty Island. The whole opening of the game, basically, is in the two-tiered city of Seatle - the closest comparison is the Hong Kong section of the first game. Once out of the opening, you're able to visit all the areas at will and on my quick finger-count there's about a dozen of them. Clearly, this really is off the top of my head.

Equally, just because I haven't mentioned something in the post doesn't imply that I'm not all too aware of it. This is a personal weblog rather than an attempt at journalism, and my normal stringency of argument doesn't really apply. Or, for example, proofreading.

Anyway: make yourself at home and don't stain the seats.


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The entire Internet being down is beginning to annoy me and makes me worry about the social cohesion of our world. What will happen if our British men are rendered incapable of downloading pictures of American women? Denied constant reinforcement, the sexual peccadilloes of the free world could begin to drift asunder. Given the rate of current carnality distortion, two weeks would be enough to make ourselves and our American cousins physically incapable of being aroused by the same object.

Anyway: Negativeland.

The reason I’m doing a new webcomic is simple: Jim asked me to.

I told him I wasn’t sure I could provide something regular, for a variety of reasons.

He told me “Oh, go on.”

And I folded, as I am weak.

Not really true. I said “I’d think about it. If anything comes up suitable, I’ll consider it”. Of course, having put my mind on the track of thinking about what a regular Big Robot photocomic would entail meant that my obsessive mind would hack away at the problem until it hand rendered a solution. Within ten minutes I had the basic idea. By the end of the day I had the entire story arc of the thing.

The two main problems Negativeland was designed to overcome were simple:

i) No artist is reliable and/or willing to produce comics regular as Jim required it. Monthly could be do-able, abstractly, but would involve a lot of effort chasing people. This would be bad as…
ii) I’m a busy man and haven’t time to write a regular comic for Jim on top of all the other things I’m meant to be writing. Whatever I did, it had to require a minimum of effort. It had to be fast.

However, despite this, I wanted it to be serious work. Minor work, yes, but with serious intent. Various other artistic shortcuts didn’t appeal to me, and I ended up thinking of doing something with the old-fashioned photocomic. This creates new problems – instead of worrying about artists you worry about your models, making them do what you want and their availability. My solution was simple: Naturalism. The vast majority of the stories would be fairly normal people in fairly normal environments. I could get whatever images I needed just by logging a digicam along with me.

Which lead the problem that between my lack of skills and the lack of posing, the photos would be of hugely variable quality. Equally, since most of my friends are journalists of one sort or another, I didn’t want people’s reactions to be “Isn’t that Alec Meer of PC Format magazine” when looking at them.

So I turned all the images into negative. This, along with a little gamma-tweaking, is the only processing I peform – some of the more impressive effects are entirely artefact. When we get to the club scenes, this is especially noteworthy. I think this has been fairly effective so far – the images look like someone, but no *specific* someone. The fact that girlfriends are incapable of identifying their boyfriends – for example, Jane thought the serial killer was me – is a good sign.

Turn your inadequacies into a style. It’s never a bad motto.

I wanted the individual stories to step away from standard archplot narrative, and wander more towards slice of life, mini-plot, moments captured. Simultaneously, however, I wanted to have a hook and a more unusual context for the characters to react to. This lead to the idea of a fairly authentic-sounding reality-television setting, which would allow me to use naturalistic images to tell stories at an odd angle to reality. It also hits some of my favoured themes and obsessions, as well as letting me say some of the things I want to say about the shows. The latter is very much the latter reason, however. Commenting on the shows isn’t really that interesting. Commenting on people? That’s always worth doing.

When I had the setting, some of the characters quickly started to present themselves. Enough to give an idea of structure, which lead to a conclusion and a surprisingly arch-plot twist. I also threw in a character who’s a robot, just to add a link to the name of the site and a little oblique surreality. I’d hate to do anything that could be easily accepted as literature.

Choosing the title as a vague nod towards the sound-collage-cut-up anarchist band, I started work. Or rather, I didn’t start work. This is the complete opposite of what I normally try to do in comics, which is straight Alan-Moore clockwork-design bollocks. This is comics as Jazz. Bad jazz, admittedly, but enthusiastically played.

When it comes to write a story, I have a vague idea of what I want to happen. I take photos. Then, through the images, I tell as story which it suggests and – more importantly - allows. With only so many pictures, there’s huge limitations on what’s possible. I don’t have a picture of something I want? I can’t go back and get it. Work out another way. Or work out another story. I get to a point and I decide two characters should talk, and I just hammer out a conversation (Rather than processing dialogue into snappy, efficient bites, here I’m letting it sprawl, including as many awkward pauses and stumbles as possible.). No time to think. In fact, thinking too much just makes it all the more likely it’ll never get finished. Don’t think. Do.

It’s a different approach.

While only slightly into it, one of the major elements seem to be it functioning as a fictional blog of real happenings. Since I’m taking photos of real people and what they’re doing, it results in the characters they’re playing doing similar things. When we reach the first club scene – episode 5, according to my chart – you’ll see that Walker’s character has a similar moment to real Walker seen down page. Except not.

Put it like this: While I know where the story is ending, and certain landmarks alongh the way, I have almost no idea about the fine detail of the journey at this point. I don’t know what characters are going to appear. I have no idea what they’re going to say. I have no idea who is going to sleep with whom, who’s going to go out looking for Condoms at three in the morning and… well, who’s going to live, in every possible definition of that word.

Anyway – that’s an introduction to the thoughts behind Negativeland. This iteration of Big Robot is to run for a year. It’ll update every second week, adding a new episode. That makes 26 episodes, including the prologue and the epilogue. It should add up to getting on for two hundred pages of comics – maybe more, but unlikely to be less. I’m gleefully using techniques that burn pages, because there’s no reason not to and it’s interesting to see what they look like. The smallest one I’ve done so far is four pages. The largest is fourteen.

If completed, it’ll be my first extended graphical work.

And, no, I'm not telling you who the actors are.




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11/24/2003

 
An oddly anxious, insecure couple of days.

"Insecurity" isn't exactly the emotion which I'm generally tarred with, but beneath the chitinous carapace I'm as soft as everyone. Can't live like an arrow forever. Eventually, you hit something, the shaft falls to the floor and rolls around in the wind, to either rot or be picked up, polished up, and fired. And, of course, sometimes its efforts break it. But that hasn't happened yet, and I'm sincerely hoping it never does.

This is the sort of hope people would describe as "forlorn".

One is the Deus Ex: Invisible War demo, which has had such an overwhelming negative reaction that I feel as if I'm wondering if I was following the Digiworld model and being drunk on Gin when I've been playing preview code. My worry is that, with the game coming out in the US in a couple of week, I'm going to be hammering out a review relatively shortly. If I like it - and from what I've played, I can't imagine not - I'm going to end up feeling like King Canute arguing with the incessant hissing of the waves.

For those who aren't aware of my particular involvement with Deus Ex, it was pretty much an unknown game in the UK before I reviewed it in Gamer three years ago. Sure - it had recieved glowing previews, but it wasn't a sequel, by a Dev people really weren't sure about and had a name that sounded like "Day of Sex". My six page review in gamer is one of the most hyperbolic things I've ever written, and yet I wouldn't change a word (Except for the ones altered by an inexperienced freelance prod, which I'd change back to what they were originally, thankyouverymuch). It wasn't just a game with a very high mark - 95%. It was a game review that seems to have persuaded a load of people to give a damn about something they didn't even register before opening the magazine.

Or so I'm told, anyway.

The thing is I was writing in a vacuum. Only I knew about Deus Ex - how good it was and how it challenged everything that had been before. People were listening with no preconceptions, and played it with none bar what I provided them. Now, everyone has played the demo. A huge chunk actively despise it. And if I like it anyway...

Well, what if I'm wrong? If I'm not, how do you persuade someone with the evidence of their own eyes to act differently? Argue that "The Demo's shit, listen to me?"? While the Deus Ex review was a triumphant riot, this is going to end up feeling somewhat sour and small-mouthed. Would it be smarter to save some of the excess? Will people think going on how great I think it is overkill, and are more likely to respond to a carefully phrased piece or...

See, I'm second guessing, which is a killer. Or more than second guessing (Third? Fourth?), as I don't even know how good it is yet. No matter how it plays out, this is a review played out for huge stakes.

This isn't to say that the DX review wasn't risky. Giving a huge score to an unknown game is the riskiest thing you can do as a games journalist. First iterations, people tend to keep hold of their praise a little tighter, as they're not sure what they're meant to think. They rarely trust their own opinion that much. This is why sequels, often rarely related to their merits, score higher. A sequel proves that people like the game, so confirming whatever they know is a far less critically risky proposition than selling something that they don't.

But these are risks I'm pretty good at taking. Arguing against the whole world is... well... not appealing.

Since people ask, a few notes about the response to the demo. Firstly, whether you like it or not, it's a terrible representation of what makes DX interesting. A lot of the impressions based on it being "shallow" are based upon it being shown out of context rather than anything else. You are given a single set of abilities and left to play, rather than creating a character of your own. This makes - for example - hacking seem incredibly simple, when in actual fact you're in possession of a level 3 jack augmentation. This means that hacking is incredibly quick - as quick as it's possible for the game to be. Stealth is underplayed. In fact, combat complexity is underplayed due to the lack of weapon mods and similar - it certainly doesn't explain the single-reservoir ammunition well at all.

Bar that, the biggest problem is how much of the game they've given away in the demo. People have compared this sample of play directly to what was in the DX demo, and noted the latter was a sprawling epic and this is tiny and shit. They're not wrong. However this isn't because the game's play areas are smaller - but rather that they've given away less. The two interconnected maps in the DX:IW demo are out of the - If I'm counting correctly - twelve maps, arranged in the same style as DX1's Hong-Kong one. While DX1 essentially gave you about 80% of a level to explore, this gives you less than 1/6th. In terms of importance of play of the area in the game, it's of similar import to the first time you visit Pauls apartment in New York in DX1.

In fact, when I played through early code of it, I spent literally forty seconds in the hotel. I went in. I talked to the woman. I paid the bill. I left.

The demo's technical problems really doesn't help, as it's clearly a huge rush-job. Clearly, I still think we've got every reason to be optimistic about this. In some ways, I wish I wasn't. Saying a game's shit when it should be great is easy. Saying something is great when everyone thinks it's shit... well, that's one reason I'm losing sleep.

The second nagging insecurity on my list:



For those who are confused by the uncertain titling, it means "Graphic Novel". It's a big comic about Kurt Cobain's life and death. It is staggeringly bad in more ways that I can start to explain here. Rather than a documentary vibe, it takes a more artistic and impressionistic approach, having the Cobain himself narrate the story of his life from the moments before his death. It's clearly enamoured with the mythology of the man and... but oh my fuck, it's just embarassing for anyone whose love of Nirvana hasn't entirely overwhelmed a sense of propriety and its critical faculties. Stating the fucking obvious, Cobain would have despised this fauning nonsense. Both art and words are in a constant competition to who can succeed in creating the most cringe-worthy moment. I can't chose one. It's almost worth buying - seven quid in FOPP - just to read it yourself.

It's terrible. But, worse, it's also immensely disturbing, as it feels a little like the ghost of Christmas future.

As it's an awful lot like what PHONOGRAM could end up reading like, if McKelvie and myself fuck it up. I'm going to have to rely on every single friend I have to point out if we wander too close to its dread miasma. And even then...

I'm going to have to turn up the central heating. Maybe that will stop the shivers.

The other insecurities? None of your business, peeps. Be on your way.



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11/22/2003

 
There was a quote this evening that was a deliberate attempt to be the opening line in a blog post. I applaud the effort, but I'm not going to let my subjects dictate the flow of this endeavour so easily. If I let go of the reins of this thing, It'll stampede in the direction of the nearest cliff.

I'll be short though: Those who are about to die, I salute you.



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11/20/2003

 
Kieron Gillen's Workblog presents:


John Walker's first booze in three years.


Give him a round of applause, folks.




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11/19/2003

 
From the page itself:
"Hello and you're welcome to the official archive version of Digiworld, the brief online mag about videogames and stupidity which attempted to answer the question, "Is it possible to publish a games mag online and charge for it?" without including the word, "No."

If you were one of Digiworld's special friends and paid at the time, this archive is free to download, flick through disinterestedly then cast into an electro-drawer and play a game instead that we gave about 3%. If you didn't pay for Digiworld and like what you read here, you're obliged to pay the 50p-per-ish charge (ie, £4 altogether for 1,860 pages of shabby old tat. Barg!) via our carefully set-up Digiworld section in the The Weekly Corner Shop corner shop. (Think of it as shareware.) If you didn't pay and still don't like it, hey, that's Digiworld. And if you didn't pay, like the mag but have no intention of paying now, you're chiefly the reason we had to stop Digiworld in the first place and we truly and sincerely hope you die in a big chemical fire. And your family."


Digiworld was one of the major things I was involved with this summer. It was a daily games site, presented in an accurate simulcra of Ceefax and with a heavy spin towards comedy. It failed, for reasons too boring to say again - interesting parties should search the achives. However, creatively, it was mostly a huge succeess and lead to a real rediscovery of my love for both games and games writing.

So - if the bandwidth annoyed you, now is a very good time to download the archive and play with it on your own PC. It's worth it for Godzilla's rapping alone, but there's plenty of other joys buried in its eight-week run, which includes quite literally a lot of content. Of course, this is a Shareware release, so you're morally obliged to give us Tall Dollar if you enjoy it, but you can always lie and claim it was shit in that case. Phew!



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11/18/2003

 
Today is Alan Moore's birthday. To celebrate, Ninth Art are having all manner of pieces specifically related to the man.

I contributed short reviews of A Small Killing and From Hell to their The List: Alan Moore feature.

There was a link provided in the last sentence if you missed it.



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11/15/2003

 

re-launches.




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11/14/2003

 
Kieron Gillen: Invisible war is risky and is going to be controversial - which is the only way that you're going to get anywhere. If you don't take risks and aren't controversial you're going to be in real trouble.

Warren Spector: Exactly. The last thing in the world I want to do and the last thing I want Ion Storm to do, is just crank out another piece of sausage. The fact that there's a figurative "2" after the game is irrelevant to the creative decisions we made every single day. You don't have to avoid risk or repeat yourself to make a sequel. You identify the core of your experience and go with it.


One of the homes that Warren Spector interview found, Eurogamer presents Spector Versus Gillen Round 1.

No falls but, sadly, complete submission.




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11/13/2003

 
Instant Messenger conversation with Rob Hale.

"I came to the conclusion that the reason your specialist area is the Looking Glass thing is because you are on a spiritual and psychological journey to finding enlightenment by understanding human behavior through videogames."

Which is worth posting here, I think.



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11/12/2003

 
"Chrissy Williams’ poems are possibly the most experimental ones in the magazine. "
- The Editor of the Rialto, Current Issue.

Go read some of them here.


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Currently, I'm meant to be transcribing around an hours worth of highly dense interview tape with Warren Spector.

Transcribing is the worst thing in the entire journalistic world.

On the bright side, it can't be anywhere near as hard work as breaking apart my interview with Doug Church. That was a transatlantic mobile conversation with two people who mumble incredibly quickly, recorded onto a tatty dictaphone pressed against the speaker-phone button. Interested parties can find the results in the issue of Gamer thats' currently on the shelves.

On the darker side, I have to listen to myself stumble over the word "Phemonemonological". Why can't I just be a good little games journo and ask how many disks it comes on and whether they'll be multiplayer?

EDIT:
And three hours and 5374 words later I'm finished.

I lied earlier in the post actually. Transcription is work, but it's by far not the worst thing in the job. It's something you dread doing - like the dishes or cleaning the house. However, equally like those most mundane tasks, when you actually get down to it there's genuine satisfaction in the simple perfomring of an action. Clearly, remembering this won't make it any easier to actually get started in the task next time I have a tape full of gibberish waiting to be written down.

Of course, I now realise I've only actually transcribed the interview and not the open Q&A Warren did.

Fuck it.



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11/11/2003

 
Examining reference logs for here. New favourite search that hit me.

"zoids sex porn fuck"

Makes you feel kinda funny, doesn't it?



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11/08/2003

 
Not much time to write, but I wanted to mention last night's Cassetteboy Gig (Put on by the Pedestrian people). While clearly the dystopic cut-up comedy trip-hop doesn't really lend itself to a live experience, by leaning towards performance it worked beautifully. While it'll be easier to recall the image of a man in a George Bush forcibly pushing a man in a Tony Blair mask towards his crotch, while old Tone playfully performs fellatio, what actually sticks in the mind is the DJ at the back. In a terrorist balaclava, beer-gut beneath a "BARRY" T-shirt and boredly smoking fags.

Of course, I'm guaranteed to be on a CIA list for turning up to the gig now, but fuck it. It's not like I didn't want a death-squad of my very own anyway.

And managed to meet another of the Careless Talk writers. Which leads to the following question: How come everyone who writes for Careless Talk is attractive? It's meant to be outsider music. Where are all the outsiders. Bunch of pretty fucks. If it wasn't for dependable ugly-mug Houghton, I'd end up feeling somewhat insecure.

Just finished putting together the first episode - or prologue, to be precise - for the "thing" I'm working on for the relaunch of Jim's Big Robot. When it goes live I'll talk a little more about it - it's essentially experimental comics work leaning towards the improvisational, social literature end of the scale. Serious work, but minor in intent. The site is meant to launch tomorrow, but it'll almost certainly hit a last minute delay in the way these things do, but may be worth checking. I'll update when it does.

Finally, I point you in the direction of this MP3 by The Capricorns, which a friend pointed me towards a week ago and I've only just realised is a stroke of genius. Some of my favourite things are found herein. It's Bis with a Sleater-Kinney-vocal-flow which captures the hysteria of the pop-love, cramming too many words into too small a space because you've got so much to say and you realise that you could rip assunder any second.



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11/06/2003

 
Two moments. One relevant to what I want to write here, one not.

First is walking into Bristol with Jane on the way to work. Take a hard right, into the park. And I'm struck dumb.

On the left, the corroded concrete of the skate-park, wearing its graffitti make-up proudly. On the right, exhibitionist trees with their red-slut leaves piled around their ankles. And above, no sky, just a thick white piece of paper that's low enough to induce claustrophobia.

Oh, England, my England, so ugly, so mine.

The second is on the bus. I take my seat and start reading. I become aware of some schoolkids a few rows behind me mumbling "PC GAMER! PC GAMER!" in baiting tones. I smirk, and ignore it. It's a busy busy and I can do without it, y'know? However, they persist, upping the noise up a notch. It becomes undiginified to pretend not to notice, so I turn around, and nod. "It his him", states the couple of boys. Lads. College age or thereabouts, showing off in front of a couple of girls, about videogames of all things. I turn back and continue reading. The fucking around continues for a while, before their raised conversation turns to other matters - taking the piss out of people on the sidewalk. They joy of mocking. I understand.

The college bus-stop comes up and the majority of the bus disembarks. And now, I'm expecting something as they get off, but really can't predict what. Being kids, it could be anything from quiet giggling to a slap on the back of the head depending on their mood and demeanor. But no, nothing.

Until one of them is nearly off the bus. He turns around and gruffly and simply states: "Good Magazine. Good Writer".

And then he's gone.

Now, you have to understand, that I don't do this for that. But it doesn't mean that every time I think back to it, I'm filled up and grinning like a simpleton.

What makes it all the better is that what I was reading was Neil Kulkarni's much praised Metal column in the final Careless Talk Costs Lives, where he opens up like heart surgery. How defenceless Kulk's been in his writing in CTCL has been one of its major attractions - or, at least, fascinations - of the twelve issues. As one of my formative music writing influences, his original power was the best Hatchett-man the music-press could offer, annihliating all-comers with his swinging prose-bludgeon. As a teenage fan of viscera, I digged it in the same way I dug That Bit In Scanners. I wanted to see people bleed for my amusement.

I exagerate. There was always much more to his writing than simple SplatterSports, but his sense of hardness was unshakeable. No edges to ground down - or rather, only one edge and that's the blade of the axe. It's characteristic that the first time I noticed his writing was when he was extolling the power of Public Enemy. If his writ ing was a band, it'd be Chuck D and Flavor Flav's gang of radicals pop extremists.

(Now there's a game that could be worth playing. Journalist X is the writing equivalent of Band Y. Or, for the tech sorts, game Y. Maybe later...)

But he's changed. In this column, he talks a little of why and how. And, specifically, why Music Journalism and Music is important, and why its worth doing and why Careless Talk was worth doing.

It's a little soppy. Which is fine. In fact, chunks of the final issue tend towards sentimentality. Which is, yet again, fine. The writers have earned it for saying No when everyone else was saying Yes, and doing for free, and meaning it, even if what they were saying was rubbish. All of which goes doubly for my own work, clearly.

So, yes, Careless Talk was prissy and often cloying. It was wrong as least as much as it was right. But there was never anything even remotely careless about this talk, and in this modern age that was reason as much to cherish it. If you buy the final issue, and you have any interest in pop music at all, you'll walk away with a dozen new albums you'll desperately want to pick up. And, even better, until you opened its pages you'll have had virtually no idea they existed at all. CTCL managed to reclaim the idea of music press as an otherworldly thing - voices from beyond, speaking of events diverse in the spirit world.

I still recall my first memory of the Inkies. In Smiths, scanning the shelves, I notice them for the first time. I look at them, absorbing the fairly-badly shot image of a band on the cover. I remember reading the coverlines, and not recognising a single band name - or at least not feeling as if I was worthy enough to own a record by any of them (Christ - at this particular age I thought that if I tried to buy - say - Public Enemy record, the clerk would stop me, grab it from my hands and say "Sorry, son, not for you. Take this Megadeth album instead and be gone, eh?"). But despite that, it was nonchalantly cool to stick in my memory. Even if it wasn't for me, I wanted it to be for me. And one day, it was.

Reading my stuff in the final issue I had the sharp realisation - always surprising - that I'm not actually bad at this music writing stuff when I try. Which is unusual, as mostly I feel like a piece of fucking shit at best. This doesn't stop me sneering at most music writing, of course, as I tend to think while I'm clearly a piece of shit, at least there's plenty of fibre in my diet and it's a firm and shapely turd, instead of liquidly smeared at high-velocity over a backstreet bog. I throw in a handful of short reviews, and a couple of thought pieces. One a live review on Ladyfest Bristol (The Cringe-death pun of WHITE MAN IN CLITORIS PALACE. But I couldn't stop myself.) and another trying to cut through the rewriting of history that's beginning to happen around the British Popscene 94-97 (RUE BRITANNIA). For those with a vague interest in my comics, the former is what the first episode of PHONOGRAM is essentially "about", and the latter the basis for the entire first story arc.

There's plenty more to see in the issue, of course. CTCL always managed to scavenge a number of Old Skool writers of note, finally getting Taylor Parkes' words into this one - where he brings a surprisingly quiet authoritorial voice to his review of the Can re-issues. Everett True and Stevie Chick's features regularly hold the entire magazine together, with the latters voice seeming stronger than ever. In terms of writers first given a big stage in CTCL, take the immortal and much-hailed Miss AMP. She appears in the finale with an off-handedly perfect Peaches interview. Dan McNamee continues his nervous breakdown-as-music-reviews and it appears, after two years, that I've finally realised his name is "Dan" not "Dave". Houghton doesn't write enough, but when he does he's equally cerebral and funny, all the more distinguished in that he despises the majority of the IndieShit - God knows magazines with a divided internal voice are some of my favourite things. And many others, who I won't mention to try and avoid making this paragraph seem like a name-checking list.

Good magazine. Good writers.

If you haven't got hold of one yet, for God sake buy this one.




What's next? Updates on CTCL's site, but essentially Steve Gullick and Stevie Chick is heading up a quarterly high-production-value photo-lead music magazine called "Loose Lips Sink Ships". Everett and McNamee are editing a monthly (no, really) word-lead magazine called "Plan B". I'll probably be writing something or another for it.

Song of the moments: "Left To My Own Devices", Pet Shop Boys.

I probably would, y'know.



(0) comments

11/05/2003

 
Just found out who's doing the art for my next 40K comic.

It's so good I'm resisting the urge to e-mail back saying "Is that the same geezer I'm thinking of, or are there two artists with that name?"



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11/03/2003

 
More when I get my copy. However, just so you can start looking out for it.




Careless Talk Costs Lives #1.

End of the Road. And what do we find there? Another Road.

Special prizes if you can scan the contents list and work out what I've written from the one-line synopsis. One of them is distinctly guessable. The other probably isn't.


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Random bonus for Blog readers. Concept review I wrote for a magazine that's been bounced by Editorial process. Which is fine - part of writing something close to the bounds of a commission is the knowledge they may just ask for a rewrite. Normally I check before writing one, but since this was 280 words I didn't.

It's for the GTA3/VICE CITY Double pack.

*****

SCENE: Back room of a seedy bar in an unspecified Crime-addled city. A fat crime lord who looks a bit like Marlon Brando, only not quite enough to be able to be sued, sits and smokes an equally fat Cigar. Two men enter. It’s GTA3 and GTA: VICE CITY. GTA: Vice City is wearing a puce shirt, a turquoise suit and shoes with no socks. GTA3 is dragging a man behind him and carrying a base-ball bat.

CRIMELORD: Whlcome Gys and...
VICE CITY: Take the cotton wool out your mouth, man.
CRIMELORD: Muh... much better. I’ve brought you guys here together for a reason. You’re both good. BLEEP! that. You’re the BLEEP!ing best. But I want to put you both together. Yeah – I know you haven’t changed at all. But together... think of it. It could be huge! It could be big! It could be more violent that you could possibly believe. You interested?
GTA3 NODS AND STARTS SMASHING UP THE BAR RANDOMLY
VICE CITY: Not interested, man.
CRIME LORD: Watcha mean, you’re not interested? It’ll be the best. He’s the man who thought up all your style. Free-form city adventure. Hard-edged urban music. Yeah, he didn’t have bikes or your eighties style, but he’s still an amazing gamefella. What’s your problem?
VICE CITY:I don’t work with no monosyllabic dude. He’s got the look of a Twisted Sister fan.
CRIMELORD: I’ll give you this pair of fashionable Legwarmers.
VICE CITY: Hmm...
CRIMELORD: And this fine copy of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”.
VICE CITY: On CD?
CRIMELORD: Oh yes.
VICE CITY: Done.




(0) comments

11/02/2003

 
Posted in This Thread on Billy Bragg on the Brian Wood Forum. Cross-posted here on a whim.

"I saw two shooting stars last night
I wished on them... but they were only satelites.
It's wrong to wish on Space-Hardware.
I wish, I wish, I wish you care"

Writing a genuine, emotionally effecting love-lyric in the modern age is the hardest thing in the world. The words "I Love You" stinks of comodified lies in a the vast majority of pop songs - and it's a sign of a truly great one which can still say that and get away with it (Recently Dexy's kicking out "I Love You" was a reminder it's still possible).

That lyric nails it. Starts on a cliche. Plays with it... and then in a delirously sung rush of words, having trouble fitting the actual song, brings it into worldly confusion. Next line is kitchen-sink wry humour, playful. A laugh. And then, just as suddenly as it turned into comedy, you're back into the simplest forlorn love words. The triple iteration on the I wish is a killer too.



 

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