As I say during the broadcast, I was having a hard time deciding whether I wanted to play ambient music or disco. So I played both. I have trouble with decisiveness, with finality.
To force a segue here, I am confident that someone like Morrissey would have hated this program, and that doesn't bother me in the slightest. This was the night after the day we Found Out (I guess?) about Morrissey through that horrible softball interview on his own website. Finally freed from wilful misinterpretation and journalistic malfeasance, he reveals that he...is Douglas Pearce, basically? Truly uncanny. Being an aesthete, I used to think Death in June was ripping off the Smiths' visuals; I didn't realize it was an exchange.
Hero worship will enable and force you to do some mental gymnastics, and to cling to mere possibilities. Saying that reggae is vile might have been a reference to its patriarchy and homophobia. It's possible that the chorus of "Panic" wasn't about lynching black people. There's a chance that "We'll Let You Know" and "National Front Disco" are not endorsements. [In my defense, this is more of a probability. But there I go. Or do I? I can't tell anymore.] And so on. But that's my problem all along. Post-1976 we are not supposed to have heroes, I guess, but I do. I've never "gotten it."
I could write a paragraph about when I got "woke," because part of me had to know, but who cares? I've been wrong.
Was he ever anything but "devious, truculent, and unreliable?" I would like to think that the person who wrote "Well I Wonder" and "I Know It's Over" was a great chronicler of loneliness. Even fascists get lonely! It didn't occur to me at the time that perhaps he was lonely because he'd preemptively ruled out the possibility of companionship with most of humanity. I'm still struggling with this reckoning. Those Smiths songs must have been the work of a different person. Right?! Sigh.
I would have been better off seeing Morrissey from the start as many of my friends did, as a Ridiculous Person. [And I did, sort of, but I just loved him anyway.] Or just being on Team Robert Smith, though I never quite understood that beef. But things didn't happen that way. As I've written elsewhere, the Smiths came along when I needed something to come along.
What to do now? I wonder if, after a few more similar interviews, Smiths records will become like Death in June records, a kind of eBay contraband. [I'm thinking also of Spotify's new policies regarding hateful speech and hateful behavior.] Probably not, I guess. But they are a kind of emotional contraband. Will I jettison mine? I told you I have trouble with decisiveness and finality.
BOMBAST playlist, 2018 April 18, 2100-2300:
notebooks out plagiarists
https://www.facebook.com/radiobombast?ref=hl
https://twitter.com/KidCatharsis
Forgive Me, Forgive Me: Transmission 420, 2018 August 15
Past Lives in Warmer Climates: Transmission 419, 2018 August 11
Still Life with Ample Parking: Transmission 418, 2018 August 8
U_D_M Detour 32, 2018 August 4
We'll Keep Heaven Rolling Along: Transmission 417, 2018 August 1
Lost in a Permanent Dream: Transmission 416, 2018 July 18
Maybe Heaven Is All That's There: Transmission 415, 2018 July 15
You Will Have an Experience That Will Seem Completely Real: Transmission 414, 2018 July 4
Lights Flicker, Time To Start The Show: Transmission 413, 2018 June 27
Distant Sounds Inside Your Head: Transmission 412, 2018 June 13
Astonishing Empathy, or So It Says Here: Transmission 411, 2018 June 6
No Need for You To Cry: Transmission 410, 2018 May 30
Got the Tools but Don't Know the Rules: Transmission 409, 2018 May 23
Circa Nineteen-Eighty-One: Transmission 408, 2018 May 16
Every Fool Will See His Madness Crowned: Transmission 407, 2018 May 15
Sees the Stars at Lunchtime, Says He Has a Plan: Transmission 406, 2018 May 9
Undaunted I Will Be: Transmission 405, 2018 May 2
Tough Kids Love Sad Songs: Transmission 404, 2018 April 25
Looking into the Void, You're Reckoning with a Question: Transmission 402, 2018 April 11
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