It’d be nice to claim that I had an infallible eye for spotting a future superstar, but watching the ascent of the Gossip over the past two or three years, I’m reminded that there was a band I could’ve never have imagined becoming big. When I first saw them play in, what, 2002 maybe, I thought they were terrific. But they also seemed to be so tightly embedded in a post-riot grrl scene of fanzine elitists that, for all the strengths of Beth Ditto’s personality and pipes, they’d surely be more or less unintelligible to the mainstream.
Plenty of discussion on last week’s Neil Young blog, and also, more fractiously, over at Thrasher’s Wheat, about the value/usefulness/etc of “Archives”.
The last time I was on a boat on the Thames, The Sex Pistols were playing “Pretty Vacant” as we sailed downriver past the Houses Of Parliament. It was Jubilee Day, 1977, and the cruiser we were on had just been surrounded by police launches, their searchlights raking the upper deck of our craft, dozens of their baton-wielding colleagues lined up in sinister ranks on Westminster Pier, waiting for us to dock so they could storm aboard and crack heads, which they eventually did with painful abandon.
I suppose this is a bit rich coming from someone who gets most of their music for free, but a gentle reminder that tomorrow seems to be Record Store Day across Britain and the US, at the very least.
Some pretty big names in the mix this week, including a small rush of survivors from the American ‘80s underground: shame the Lemonheads’ covers album hasn’t arrived in time to complete the set.
