I got around to reading the first issue of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s Phonogram today. It was a well-crafted comic, but not my cup of tea, unfortunately. The high concept of Hellblazer meets High Fidelity loses me on the High Fidelity part. I can’t help it; I fucking despise music snobs and their pretentious airs. It’s a deeply ingrained reflex -- whenever I hear terms like “rich tonal modality” used in a conversation about pop music, a blood red rage overtakes me and will not abate until my bony fist crunches into a be-soul patched jaw.
My own strain of audiophilia has more in common with the mystery archeology of Elijah Snow than with the phonomancy of David Kohl. Boston’s debut LP, a collection of 60’s pop song covers by a Korean ladies choir, or a tinny 7” from some forgotten punk act out of Tulsa -- it’s all wonder and novelty to me. I only ask that it not bore me.
One thing that did amuse me about the comic was the way the creators managed to shoehorn their love of Kenickie into the narrative. It reminded me a lot of the chapters in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho where Patrick Bateman launches into overwrought analyses of acts like Huey Lewis and the News and Whitney Houston. Self-justification via evangelism is never pretty.
Personally I like Kenickie’s fem-pop, but they were lightweights compared to other acts mining that same vein in the mid-to-late 1990’s: Elastica, Sleeper, Echobelly, and Republica, to name a few. Shit, if one was serious about the music as magic trope, why not take a trip though Lush’s discography? There’s at least three grimoires of material to be found there.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
it’s a strange world
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4 comments:
These music snobs that you speak of must be the same music geeks who stand in front of the stage at shows like the Epoxies waiving their digits to every beat making sure that the rest of us stuck behind them can see them, but not the band!!
Sure it's a run on sentence, but I hate them!
I think music snobs are the people who, rather than enjoying a song, must know not only the credits for each song (producer, studio, bagel boy), but also must have a clever anecdote about each to share in order to try and make you feel bad about just liking to listen to a song. (How's that for a run on sentence?!)
Checking referers so found here. On Kenickie... well, the referenced bands never got the absolute devotion of a fraction of their fanbase Kenickie did - which is why I used 'em. You didn't see people who were obviously Sleeper fans in nightclubs. My favourite review of the PG #1 - not just because he liked it - is Paul O'Brien over at the X-Axis who made the "What - 5 pages on Kenickie?" point and then went on to note that he couldn't think of any more famous band who could have been used to make the same point.
On Phonogram... well, I'd suggest you keep an eye out if we ever do another series. Kohl's only one sort of Phonomancer. Someone more akin to your mayfly archelogist will certainly turn up sooner or later, and will probably be signposted pretty heavily when they do.
(Indie Dave in issue 3 is a bit that way, but doesn't have the joy in him. Whatever I end up calling Johnny Casino has the mayfly glee, but is tied in to the faustian-fashion thing a bit too much.)
Er... Intergalactic, Planetary, Planetary, Intergalactic?
KG
Kieron, it's an American v. British popcult thing at work, I suspect. I know Kenickie did well on the UK charts, but were a minor footnote on this side of the pond.
I'll also concede that my own (many and varied) biases colored my "review". I know David is supposed to be a bit of a prick, but it's a type of prick I'm severely allergic to.
(Not being a bona fide comics blogger means I can be as unreasonable as I want to be...oh, wait..)
I included the link to you guys from my post because it was only fair, and I think some of my readers who lack my long-term emotional scarring would certainly dig the comic.
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