A Record Label With A Indifference To Profit That Bordered On Performance Art

And so, I finally finished Paul Morley’s Joy Division: Piece By Piece. Mind you, I didn’t start it until last week (which makes my frantic hunt for it last November a little laughable). It’s the book he’s been destined to write ever since he crossed the path of Warsaw, and yet at the same time, it’s an evasion of that book, an abdication of his responsibility to fulfil the role Tony Wilson appointed to him, while at the same time fulfilling it. Typical Morley, in other words (the bleak humour of Wilson and him battling back and forth on the question of whether Wilson really did pull him in to see Ian Curtis’s dead body is one of the book’s many highlights).

It repeats itself, and yet every repetition, every article showing something from a slightly different angle, sometimes off by only a few sentences, reveal a bit more of the story. Morley flips between the past and the present, between evasions and truth, evasions and lies, evasions, evasions, and the look back in the mirror, apologising to Alan Eramus over and over.

And then everybody dies.

Wilson, of course, had the temerity to do it while the book was being written; Morley even initially thinks that he's managed to pull off another wonderful publicity stunt to showoff the release of Control, before the reality sets in. I love how the book repeats itself in miniature at this point; a series of obituaries follows; all written by Morley, all different, and yet all the same. How this fool of a man managed to drag Manchester into the 21st century seemingly by sheer force of his own personality, like he knew it was his destiny all along. You couldn't help but love and hate him equally, it seems.

Sadly, I don't think Paul is ever going to write the book I want to read (not that I don't love everything of his I have, but I'm greedy). He talks a little about how he spent the 1980s trying to avoid Joy Division, to escape Manchester in the folds of New Pop and ZTT. I really want to hear this story, as the machinations of ZTT, Frankie and The Art of Noise are still somewhat shrouded (as, obviously, ZTT never had a Paul Morley quite like Factory had Paul Morley). And a collection of the Morley/Penman years? I would swoon. Get to it, somebody!

It's like when everybody laughed in 24 Hour Party People when we lost money on every copy sold of Blue Monday because of the expensive sleeve. I thought, you bastards - that's my life, that is, that really happened!
Bernard Sumner

currently playing: Lovage - Strangers On A Train

Tomorrow

No politics! Instead, the happy subject of Joy Divison!

Ah, do we remember 2003?

It has been a long time coming, but finally, the Senate Intelligence Committee speaks:

  • Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
  • Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
  • Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
  • Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
  • The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
  • The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

currently playing: Saint Etienne – People Get Real

We Call It...Blanguage

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This would never have happened if Strom Thurmond was President.

currently playing: The Brunettes – B-A-B-Y

Is It June 3rd Already?

Just under six months ago, I was saying how the Democratic primary would be wrapped up quickly and the Republicans would be dragged into St. Paul tearing themselves apart trying to find a candidate that wouldn’t cause half of the party to stay at home in November. Clinton would obviously wrap up the nomination fairly quickly.

Then Obama won Iowa. Since then, the Democratic campaign seems to have stolen Gallifreyan technology and sent the start of the electoral cycle back into prehistory; a primary stretching out to infinity. Or so it felt at times.

But after the settling of the Michigan and Florida delegates at the weekend, the end has been in sight. Strictly speaking, the end has been in sight ever since Super Tuesday, but it's taken this long for the Clinton camp to notice. Today is the last day of voting. South Dakota and Montana. Every state got a say. The superdelegates are beginning to make their final move to push Obama over the top, Clinton's disingenuous talk of winning the popular vote notwithstanding. At long last, the three-way race is whittled down to two.

There is talk of a GOP implosion this November. Having lost three safe seats this year already, Elizabeth Dole is looking shaky in North Carolina, Ted Stevens in Alaska may be rueing the day that he described the Internet as 'a series of tubes', and Al Franken may replace Norm Coleman as Senator for Minnesota.

This all bodes well. But never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to screw it all up…

currently playing: Johnny Foreigner – DJ's Get Doubts

Hang In There, Peppermint Patty

“We Black Kids believe in brevity…although some might say that’s because we’ve only got five songs…”

D-D-D-Data Ghost!

Oh yes. My biggest fear? That he’ll go the same way as RTD when he has to run the show, but in Series 1,2, and 3, he wrote the best episodes, and he’s got the best of 4 right now. Long live Moffat!

currently playing: The Long Blondes – Giddy Statospheres

It Begins.

It begins.

currently playing: Special AKA – Guns Of Navarone

Thought For The Day: The Least, And Yet Most Crucial.

currently playing: The Mighty Wah! – Story of the Blues, Pts. 1 & 2

Anybody Got A Spare £7.5bn?

The US Department of Defence would like to hear from you.

currently playing: Sébastien Tellier – Divine