WOEBOT

Post Punk Post.

Jay and Nik "hipped" me to the controversial recent issue of Mojo which has succeeded in making quite alot of folk feel old. Along the lines of: "*this* in MOJO, what next?" There is also an EXCELLENT piece on Arthur Russell in it written by my mate Dave Mandl, which manages not to double up any of David Toop's exhaustive (and also great) portrait in The Wire. I've now heard it on two personal accounts that the material which Audika is about to release (and I'm talking here about the hitherto unreleased stuff) is quite astonishing. The major domo of Audika keeps calling a friend up, practically in tears, lost in disbelief at the treasures he's sitting on. The thing about the Soul Jazz record (nifty as it was) was that nutters like me already have that material now. In my case (natch) on original 12"s, not on the admittedly enticing bootlegs which have been subsequently in circulation. The only track on there I didn't have was "Pop Your Funk," which was once only available as a 7". That Soul Jazz record should have come out in 1995 (at the very latest) and mopped up after David Toop's Ocean of Sound. At the time I remember Phillip Glass was rumored to be releasing the entire back catalogue through Point Records, but in the end all we got was "Another Thought", which (if you'll forgive me for being frank) isn't THAT great. It'll be fascinating to see Russell's cache go through the roof with all this mooted bounty; actually I can't wait, I think he's going to reach a new plateau of adulation, the kind of one Can are resting on, rather than languishing in the eaves as a highly-respected curiosity.

The main reason I wanted to pick up on the MOJO thing was to quite gently throw a little mud, to break that other of my New Year's Resolutions, that of not engaging in professional envy. You see now I've succumbed to a spot of "Bumfighting" the dam has burst! I'll try and be even-handed. Anyway, Jon Savage has just about all the respect he could possibly muster. His "England's Dreaming" account of Punk is regarded as the best book on Punk. He's even described elsewhere in the same magazine his "C-30! C-60! C-90! GO!" Post-Punk breakdown featues in as: "probably (that) movement's most astute chronicler." I'm afraid I'm not that keen on his chart which the editor's strapline rather crudely describes as "the ultimate Post-Punk Tape." In fairness Savage's own description of it is much more muted: "a companion volume to the excellent Rough Trade Shops compilation, Post Punk 01."

Firstly there's an awful lot of B-sides in there (I'd say four too many, not including Eno & Snatch's cut-up "R.A.F" which does quite justifiably merit inclusion). Sorry but this fills me with dread. Secondly, and this is really the fulcrum of my argument, WAY too much rock-ism. I 'spose this is wholly justifiable after a fact, there was a lot of rock swilling around at the time, but what made the whole phenomonen worth re-investigating in the 21st Century (as far as I was concerned) was it's NON-rockness. I'm sure The Screamers, Subway Sect, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Metal Urbain, The Sleepers, The Urinals, The Prefects, Wire and Joy Division (yes them too) are very fascinating (and I wont pretend to have heard all these tunes so am clearly talking out of my arse to a certain extent) but they seem a bit plodding and pubby to me. On reflection maybe Savage's trajectory, *though* Punk and *into* Post-Punk is what defines his angle, maybe it's MOJO's editorial line. Where's Mark Fisher when you need a helping hand? I'm afraid that the whole PP exhumation is going to leave us with two concrete things; Junior Senior on TOTP and The Face's barometer showing The Cure rising.

I think I made EXACTLY the same comments about the Messthetics series of Bootlegs last year (yay there's one New Year's Resolution I'm gonna be able to keep, repeating myself). That collection was too rockist too. You find one or two diamonds on each of those CDs, the rest of the tracks are johnny-come-lately three-chord wonders. Yikes. And while I'm having a whinge I thought it'd be worth mentioning that there was quite a stale aroma to some of the tales surrounding Post-Punk dug up elsewhere in the mag (mercifully not in the cheerful and sparking Savage piece). It felt like some accounts were not third-hand, but eighth hand, passed down as oral tradition in the tar-stained pubs of Camden. For this reason, amongst others, I'm particularly relishing Reynolds' book, which hearsay suggests is absurdly deeply researched, with an exhaustive set of new interviews conducted, most of which won't even fit in the book, so vaste is the amount of fresh material which has been generated.

I was hoping to be able to identify with confidence the track which Savage has said he's omitted from his selektion. I was SURE it was implog's "Holland Tunnel Drive", I happen to know he has a fondness for it too. I was anticipating being able to completely ruin the competition as it's been organised. But then I spotted it's one of the tracks he's confessed to not finding room for. I'm genuinely curious to find out what it is.