TheQuietusStevenWells

x

self-loving,

knock-kneed,

passive aggressive,

dressed-up-in-

kiddy-clothes,

mock-pop-creepiness

peddling, smug,

underachieving,

real-pop-hating

no-talents

celebrating their

own inadequacy

Contents

it’s a crime that a

naked Sting and a

naked Sir Paul

McCartney aren’t

hauled around a

never-ending

loop-tour of US

Starbucks where,

every night, the

two old fools are

fed amphetamines

and raw meat

7

1

a beige coloured

and willfully

underachieving

fan/muso mutual

masturbation

industry that’s

been slowly and

dismally choking

on its own

vomit for

years

12

if you don't like

everything the

Beatles ever did

apart from some

of the filler on

the White album

then you have

the cocks of 50

corpses in your

mouth

23

trapped in a

demento-

Disneyfied

post-modern

Frankenstein’s

monster version

of the

subculture he

helped invent

27reality is the

base metal

anchor that

keeps us mired

in the fetid

shite of the

mediocre. I'm

an empire,

I make my own

fucking reality.

32

This is the start of

American music

taking over,

argued a reader

from an alternate

dimension not

entirely dissimilar

to our own, but

where rock’n’roll

was invented in

Croydon in 1995

15

to save you the

trouble of bending

over backwards

and twisting logic

like a demented

semi-sentient

spastic pretzel in a

Twister competition

to defend your

hero, we’ve

done it for you

vast hordes of

lighter waving, tit-

exposing, drooling,

overweight and

corn syrup addled

human dung beetles

eating up the shit

thrown at them by

the rock music

industry with a

gusto that borders

on the disgusting

42that's me virtually

stamping on your

virtual head until

your virtual brains

leak out your

virtual nostril.

With my cosmic

Skinheed from the

fourth issue of Viz

sized pop-powered

steel-toecaped

19-holer DMs

47

53

50

The world stands, yet again, on the brink of the nuclear war, while simultaneously frying, blowing, flooding and burning to a premature end.

How do twee band respond?

By jumping up and down, shouting 'Yay!' and drinking Cherryade.

1

Los Campesinos!

AGAINST WALLFIRST

the

IN

T.W.A.T.(The War Against Twee)

"Dad, it’s some old English cunt!"

screams my six-year-old daughter

Tracey Trotsky Spinoza Jones.

"It’s three in the fucking morning,"

I grunt, grabbing the phone.

"It’s only six months since the 14-

legged abortion that is Los

Campesinos! released their first

abomination," roars Quietus editor

John ‘Duran’ Doran on the line from

London, England, "and now they’re

already about to release their second

album."

He weeps as he speaks, and within

seconds I am weeping too.

The world teeters on the brink of

World War fucking three and Los

Campesinos! — an exercise in re-

verse engineered paedophilia — are

relaunching their Frankenstein's

monster twee revival showband with

a new fucking album and a tour en-

titled Wet Yr Bed — presumably a

Swells is unimpressed.

3

Suburban jungle warfare

4

fair warning to the UK's groupies

that this is what’ll happen if you take

one of Los Campesinos! home. I’m

sorry, I misread that, the tour’s called

Shred Yr Face. Which appears to a

glassing reference. Which makes no

fucking sense at all.

Last month Jilted John reformed

himself. This made me hard. It made

me yearn for the return of Plastic

Bertrand on the condition that he

only perform ‘Ca Plane Pour Moi’

It made me nostalglitoggle the Tele-

vision Personalities ‘Part Time

Punks’ and The Members ‘Sound of

the Suburbs’ on my punk pathetique

packed i-pod. But what it didn’t

make me do is yearn for a twee re-

vival. Are you fucking listening,

Pitchfork’s Nitsuh Abebe?

Nitsuh used to be a hero of mine.

He once defined twee as "Undra-

matic kids (who) saw an opportunity

to make music as themselves, for

themselves: regular middle-class

white kids in plain clothes, not espe-

cially sexy, not exactly musically bril-

liant, and more often sad than

angry." Which I thought was as

damning an explanation for the ex-

istence of these boring, unsexy and

stupendously dull Paddington Bear’s

tiny furry cocksucking cunts as I’d

ever read.

Indeed I thought it an even better

put down than John Doran’s sple-

netic "how does sucking your thumb

and listening to the Field Mice com-

bat sexism anyway? Fucking blink-

ered appeasers. Who the fuck sings

songs about running out of cher-

ryade at a party anyway? They're all

in their late 20s and the world is

about to end. Kill them. Kill them

all."

Or Tracy Trotsky Spinoza Jones’

comment that "twee is a way to make

dull, uninteresting and suburban

people feel good about themselves."

Or indeed my own description of

the loathsome Belle and Sebastian

and their irritating paedo-pop ilk as

"self-loving, knock-kneed, passive

aggressive, dressed-up-in-kiddy-

clothes, mock-pop-creepiness ped-

dling, smug, underachieving,

real-pop-hating no-talents celebrat-

ing their own inadequacy with music

so white it’s translucent."

Imagine my shock when the afore-

mentioned Mr. Nitsuh Abebe got in

touch to say that—while he stood by

his original quote about how twee

had basically skullfucked punk’s orig-

inal DIY aesthetic to death with its

rank cowardice—this was, in his

opinion, a good thing.

This provoked a flurry of corre-

spondence which ended only when

I ascertained that Mr. Abebe is

American and that therefore listen-

ing to his comments about twee —

as erudite as they were — was a little

like getting advice on the correct way

to play cricket from a Martian.

5

Not only does Mr. Abebe think

dressing up like a simpering ninny

from some 1930’s jolly hockeysticks,

barely-disguised kiddy-fiddler wank

fantasy is a good thing, he also — in

an article that is considered by many

to be the definitive piece of writing

on the twee phenomenon on Pitch-

fork — traced the gangrenous genre

back to The Television Personalities.

Fuck off. The Television Personali-

ties (and their alter egos The O Lev-

els) were not twee. The clue is in the

fact that they didn’t suck. They didn’t

simper. They didn’t peddle a drained-

of-all-ideology, passive-aggressive,

un-analysed and hideously ill-defined

porridge of cringe-worthy pederasty,

noxious nostalgia, oblique poet-

astery, tuneless fax-pop, bourgeois

arrogance (posturing as DIY sepa-

ratism) and right-wing anti-proletar-

ian middle-class smugness (posturing

as anti-macho anti-sexism).

Was twee ever genuinely radical? Was

it ever anything more than a cow-

ardly retreat from subversion, em-

powerment and experimentation

into a nauseatingly reactionary

paedo-aesthetic? Surprisingly, yes it

was—for about 5 minutes.

In Olympia, Washington State in

1984, a young man called Calvin

Johnson decides to rip the piss out

of the brutally macho, one-dimen-

sional, throw-the-baby-out-with-the-

bathwater straight white male

travesty that is American hardcore

punk with a superlimp pissrippery

called Beat Happening — the first

American twee band.

Beat Happening make also-on-the-

bill Henry Rollin’s superbly muscled

head hurt. He stares at this abomi-

nation like a confused dog. He

screams abuse. He reaches up and

grabs Johnson’s cock—at which

point Johnson deigns to notice him,

looks down at Rollins and says:

"Didn’t your mother teach you any

manners?" (It’s in the book Our Band

Could Be Your Life.)

But, as Joe Strummer never wrote:

"Those who fuck with nuns will later

dress up like seven year olds in a way

that is creepy without ever being

fun." Twee is a frequently reoccur-

ring herpes virus under the foreskin

of the popcock and Los

Campesinos! are the weeping sore.

Unless measures are taken to stop

them I predict a full-blown twee

pandemic by the end of the decade.

So the only question is — what are

YOU going to do in The War

Against Twee (TWAT?) I myself will

be breaking into the homes of all

eight members of Los Campesinos

while they are away on tour and uri-

nating in their empty beds. And plac-

ing razor blades in the orifices of

their suspiciously life-sized teddy

bears. It’s the only language they un-

derstand.

6

Swells

on

Topshop

Playlisting

The Rotted

Topshop, popular outfitter to the nation's youth,have recently added malignant grindcore types

The Rotted to their instore playlist.

Swells explains whythis means he should

have been an A&Rman, rather than

working in Morrisons,back in '77

In 1997 David Bowie flogged $55

million worth of 10-year bonds

backed by his album sales. These

bonds are now worth fuck all. Tramps

use them for toilet paper. Hurrah.

The scam that this is the music indus-

try is being gang-raped in every orifice

by millions of baggy-trousered cyber-

monkeys. Economists reckon that by

the year 2013 these stripey-jumpered

virtual burglars will have stolen all our

money back and spent it on lap

dances and sweets. This is undoubt-

edly a good thing. But what about all

the slack arsed chancers who blagged

their way into the music industry and

are now facing the screaming fucking

nightmare of having to get real jobs?

I feel their pain. I do really. I had a job

once. For three months in 1977 I

worked in Morrisons supermarket in

Bradford, stacking potatoes. It was

fucking murder. And so I feel obliged

to suggest some new music industry

jobs that desperately need doing but

are currently not being done.

1) Someone to stand onstage behind

Thom Yorke. Every time he looks like

he’s getting all angsty or existential,

their task is to shout: “It’s just pop

music, you pretentious cunt,” and

punch him really hard in the back of

the head.

2) It’s a crime that a naked Sting and

a naked Sir Paul McCartney aren’t

being hauled around a never-ending

loop-tour of US Starbucks where,

every night, the two old fools are fed

amphetamines and raw meat and cat-

tle-prodded into fighting with blunt

knives with Sting wearing Spock ears

and Sir Paul in a rubber William Shat-

ner mask, with that Star Trek fight

music blasting out of Motorhead

sized speaker stacks. Just think of the

jobs this menagerie could provide,

not least to the former A&R men one

can imagine sweeping up the blood

and shit smeared straw.

3) Someone could be hired to sit next

8

to whoever the person is on the Star-

bucks board who sticks up their hand

and says: “I know, why don’t we carry

the new Coldplay/Sting/Paul Mc-

Cartney/James Hunter/Alanis Moris-

sette/SonicYouth albums and then

play a looped mixtape of their com-

bined inoffensive beige doodlings

over the tannoy, or PA as we call it

here in America?”

The new employee’s task would be to

then hit that board member with a

baseball bat, just hard enough to

break their arm, and then say (speak-

ing quite loudly to be heard over the

screaming): “What my colleague

meant to say was we should play the

band Rotted (formerly

Gorerotted)"authors of such coffee-

to whoever the person is on the Star-

bucks board who sticks up their hand

and says: “I know, why don’t we carry

the new Coldplay/Sting/Paul Mc-

Cartney/James Hunter/Alanis Moris-

sette/SonicYouth albums and then

play a looped mixtape of their com-

bined inoffensive beige doodlings

over the tannoy, or PA as we call it

here in America?”

The new employee’s task would be to

then hit that board member with a

baseball bat, just hard enough to

break their arm, and then say (speak-

ing quite loudly to be heard over the

screaming): “What my colleague

meant to say was we should play the

band Rotted (formerly

Gorerotted)"authors of such coffee-

PopPrincess

9

played by Belle and Sebastian as a

warm up before they get down to

some serious kick-ass passive aggres-

sive mock pop. Which means some-

one at Topshop bottled the chance to

blast the track ’It’s Like There’s A

Party In My Mouth (And Everyone’s

Being Sick)’ at that oh-so-crucial

treats-buying-knickers-as-a-leisure-

activity demographic.

Or could ’A Brief Moment of Regret’

be the tiny but well lubricated thin

end of the most enormous industrial

jackhammer-powered fuck wedge?

Soon you’ll hear ’Only Tools and

Corpses’ in Homebase, ’Zombie

Graveyard Rape’ in Anne Summers,

and ’Kissing you With My Fists’ in

Boots. And it won’t stop there. Some

ex-Bradford Cathedral choirboy wins

Pop Idol with a falsetto cover of Can-

nibal Corpses’ ’Rotted Body Land-

slide’. Howard the geek from

NatWest charms us all by selling

mortgages to the tune of ’Vomiting

the Fetal Embryo’ by Dying Fetus,

while Carcass’ ’Vomited Anal Tract’

becomes the new national anthem

(74,000 England fans pack Wembley,

bulldoggish tears in their eyes, hands

on their pounding lionhearts, all pas-

sionately singing: “Liquidized oesoph-

agus mixes with bloodied excretion /

As you pathetically gasp for breath/

The stench of hot faeces scorch your

nose / As you violently vomit to

death |” and so forth. The sheer

tantric power of their concentrated

patriotism actually causing the watch-

RighteousBabe

10

ing Queen to actually vomit her anal

tract which is to torn to bits and eaten

by corgis. Live on TV).

Oh no, I’ve held it off long enough,

her it comes: OBLIGATORY OLD

FART THERE’S-NOTHING-NEW

UNDER-THE-SUN PUNK ANEC-

DOTE, JUST TO PISS OFF

EVERYONE UNDER FORTY.

It’s summer 1977 and I’m working my

arse of in Morrisons supermarket in

Bradford, England. Every two weeks

some godforsaken Muzak Corpora-

tion clone company sends Morrisons

an updated mock-muzak version of

the current top 20 that sounds like it’s

sung by Christian eunuchs on valium.

This is played on a continual loop, 12

hours a day, every day.

This particular week the top 20 con-

tains ’God Save the Queen’ by The

Sex Pistols, ’Gary Gilmore’s’ Eyes by

the Adverts, and ’Peaches’ by The

Stranglers.

“Gary don’t need his eyes to see, Gary

and his eyes have parted company”

billycoos the PA, or Tannoy as we call

it in England.

For the first 345 times this is quite

shocking (post modernism hasn’t

even been invented yet, we literally

have no defences). Then it gets bor-

ing. And then, at around play 9,458, it

quite literally drives me mad. Not

quite as mad as those poor cunts in

today’s Starbucks who have to listen

to the worst loop tape ever made

(while smiling politely at Morrissey

fan customers who, while in no way

racist, are prone to loudly express the

opinion that the baristas, with their

“vile” foreign accents, are undermin-

ing the unique culture of England)

but mad enough that I wasn’t ever

going to be offered a job in the music

industry.

Which is cultural tragedy. Had I been

made A&R Czar at the age of 18 and

been given unlimited emergency

power, almost none of the shit bands

you like would ever have been signed.

I could have kicked indie to death in

its cot. I could have chased it back

into the womb, ripped the egg and

sperm apart and forbidden them

from ever co-joining again. Which in

turn would have made you less of a

pop-hating cloth-eared cunt and the

world a much nicer place.

Curse you. Morrisons. Only two let-

ters away from Morrissey, the Lord

Voldemort of shit pop. Coincidence?

(All the Sub-Pop employees and many

of its band members worked for the

real Muzak Corporation in Seattle.

One of them, Kurt Cobain from the

band Nirvana, would later get so irra-

tionally depressed " despite the fact

that he had all the dosh, drugs and

swimming pools full of gold tits that

anyone could ever ask for " that he

blew his pretty brains out with a shot-

gun. That’s the power of muzak.) It’s

all connected man, it’s all connected.

11

DE

AT

H T

O C

OR

DU

RO

Y

Dulll American music mags

are dying in droves, and

Steven Wells cares not one

jot. Hark as he dances

around the bonfire in joy...

OMG it’s the indie mags. Man, it’s

some kinda horrible virus. They’re

lying in piles in the corners. Shak-

ing like shitting dogs, coughing up

their vile pink froth corrupted

lungs. It’s horrid, absolutely horrid.

It’s as if some hideous mass-mur-

dering heavy metal psychopath

had concocted an air-borne virus

that only killed those who like un-

challenging and comfortably con-

servative guitar music made by

white guys. Oh the horror. Oh the

humanity. What’s on TV?

Be serious. Show some empathy.

Middle of the middle of the middle

of the road US indie music mag

Harp (slogan: “For nice chaps with

beards, by nice chaps with beards” )

has just double-dropkicked itself in

its own incredibly unremarkable

and unmemorable face and

dropped down dead.

Oh no. Harp is the third unreadable

and entirely interchangeable US

indie print mag to traumatically

poop its hand-knitted cheese-

cloth colostomy pants in as many

months. January and February saw

the demise of the spectacularly in-

terestingly named No Depression and

Resonance magazines. Both, like

Harp, not so much the spunky

young inheritors of the revolution-

spewing underground press of the

late 60s and early 70s, as part of a

beige coloured and willfully under-

achieving fan/muso mutual mastur-

bation industry that’s been slowly

and dismally choking on its own

vomit for years.

Imagine all those whining epsilons

who have"over the decades"be-

moaned the fact that music journal-

ism isn’t more “about the music,”

imagine if those idiots actually

started their own magazines.

Dude, they did.

Imagine a music press without hate,

bile, anger, wit, imagination or atti-

tude. Congratulations, you’ve just

imagined Harp and No Depression

and Resonance and Paste. Actually

Paste is still going. There’s a maga-

zine called Paste. Christ but that’s

depressing.

Then there's Beige, Corduroy, Bland,

Blend, Blah, Pah, Meh, Huh, Mush,

Fridge, Magnet, Carpet, Desk and

Whatever. There really is a mag

called Corduroy. I might have made

some of the others up. I imagine

"corduroy" came up at an early

brainstorming meeting.

"What is corduroy exactly?"

14

All these dead and dying magazines

have one thing in common - they

all hold that the journalist is the

servant of the musician. And that

the writing is in and of itself with-

out worth.

Thus this cull is a good thing. But it

does not go far enough. Music

journalism needs to be scoured by

the righteous, flaming sword of

God. Fan-journalists need to be

driven from their stiff tissue filled

pits, blinking into the sunlight,

where they are set upon by gangs

of teenage girls armed with insou-

ciance, rocket propelled grenades,

AK-47s and attack dogs.

This is not a solution. The will-

fully insipid will always be with

us. They will use the internet as

both platform and mutual support

system. They will thrive and multi-

ply like maggots. I merely argue we

should organise and torture and

murder them for fun, and be proud

of our sport.

"It’s those horrible beige trousers

worn by sad bastards who look like

they’re still dressed by their moth-

ers. People like us, in other words."

"Awesome."

Founder Scott Crawford recently

described Harp as “a nice middle

ground between the indie-centric

Magnet and the dad-rockin' Paste”.

That sound you hear is the dis-

gusted ghosts of the surrealists, fu-

turists and dadaists spinning out of

their graves and converging on the

Harp farewell party with flaming

torches and gasoline soaked

tires.

The death of Harp fills me with joy.

I wrote for them for about a

month. They paid fuck all and they

cut the line "Joe Strummer must

be laughing his rotting cock off"

because it was "disrespectful".

Then they sacked the fool who

commissioned me. We’re talking se-

curity guards armed with garbage

bags. Irreverence had inadvertently

been allowed into the magazine and

was now being efficiently expelled.

Black Sky Thinking

Glastonbury : Aryan Folk Festival

Glastonbury : Aryan Folk Festival