Steven Wells Can Make Anything Appear To Be “Rock N Roll”
You know, for a while there, we used to really have it in for Steven Wells (pictured, wonder if he’s going to Leif Ericson Day). But these days, we’re a little older, a little wiser, and he kinda reminds us of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins what with all that cute cockney flibberdygibbet he’s always spouting. Wells, you’ll recall, moved here to write for the Philadelphia Weekly after he was kicked out of England for the crimes of making Manic Street Preachers videos and contributing to the NME during its darkest period ever (unless you count, like, right now). Typical Wells columns are akin to those scenes in Warner Brothers cartoons where Foghorn Leghorn creeps on that hangdog’s doghouse and rings a big bell or whacks the poor fucker over the head, and then runs like hell, getting away just before the dog’s chain yanks and strangles the dog. Only, in Wells’ world, the “dog” is always religion, Americans or “hipsters” (Wells has a realllllllly esoteric view of what a hipster is) and nobody ever gives chase because, come on, it’s 2008, who gives a fuck. It’s a literary magic trick for which Wells has become sort of well-known, but in a column for the Guardian last week, Wells has resorted to a hack device we frankly thought was beneath him: The “______ Is So Rock N Roll” Gambit. Allow me to illustrate:
· Vincent Van Gogh was so rock ‘n’ roll because he just fucking cut his ear off and was like, “WHAT? I can’t hear you, dick!”
· Napoleon Bonaparte was so rock ‘n’ roll because he was short and therefore oppressed and misunderstood. Hence he took his rage and turned it into HISTORY, man!
· Adolf Hitler was so rock ‘n’ roll because he said, “Fuck this stuffy PAINTING career, man, I’m gonna make an INSTALLATION with CIVILIZATION!”
You can pretty much do this with anybody. (Trust me, I know, I worked at the Weekly, too.) So it was inevitable that Wells would fall into this contrarian trap with Sarah Palin. Here, he draws comparisons to famous rock ‘n’ roll career suicides, invokes Pete Doherty, U2, Boy George and so on. Wheeze. But man, you know who is really rock ‘n’ roll? Steven Wells. I think Steven Wells is rock ‘n’ roll. You know, in that rock ‘n’ roll is also a sleepwalking corpse that nobody but middle-aged white men care about. And their moms. Rock AND Roll! Woooo!
Guardian: If It’s Too Palin, You’re Too Old!
October 10th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Perhaps Sarah Palin is the Creed of rock ‘n’ roll.
October 10th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
“I think Steven Wells is rock ‘n’ roll. You know, in that rock ‘n’ roll is also a sleepwalking corpse that nobody but middle-aged white men care about.”
Let it be known that A Feculent Rainbow is actually posting a positive comment on Philebs:
That was funny.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
I used to think that only PW was pathetic enough to give this knucklehead a forum for his pointless ranting and they therefore deserved each other, but The Guardian still prints this tripe? Embarrassingly bad. Come to think of it, if he got paid for this drivel, I’m in the wrong line of work- guess the joke’s on me.