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(Steven J Wilson)

 I wrote a column called DITB (Down in the Basement) for the Tornado, the greatest community newspaper ever with a four-month lifespan. I didn’t exactly write reviews. I had other people do that; I edited them. Nope, I just kinda went on about whatever was on my mind at the time related to popular music. DITB was probably the first place outside of New York or London where someone raved at length about the Strokes. I went on for a few hundred words about Weezer once. I have no idea what inspired that. 

DITB did follow the rules of journalism. I did my best to research shit. Fact check. Include details. I guess that is where SPEW will divert from DITB. For SPEW I fully intend to forget names, get facts wrong, neglect to give complete titles, and otherwise write irresponsibly. 

Reverberations is the name of my music blahg. Reverberations dates from my days at the KC Free Press, the best online KC news and culture resource ever with a four-month lifespan. See a theme emerging? My late friend Greg Trooper (a wonderful singer-songwriter) used to joke that every label he ever recorded for went out of business. Anyway, I guess I’m the Greg Trooper of rock writing. If I am, being the Greg Trooper of anything is a pretty great thing to be. 

Sometimes I get together with my old pals Nate and Doug. We get addled and play music real loud - introduce selections breathlessly and profanely, prioritize bad humor over analysis, and generally have a gay old time blasting tunes. SPEW is rock writing in that spirit. Call it expressionism. Call it shit. Call it a waste of time. If you get a kick out of it, read it.


SPEW is made possible by Apple Music, which has saved me from the ignobility of illegal downloading. God knows I can’t afford all the goddamn records I intend to write about. 

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The people have spoken.

Wire is having a 40th anniversary. Yes, I feel old.

(Steven J Wilson)
"Editor's" Note: One Mr. Colin Newman of Brighton observes that it is he who plays most of the keyboards on recordings by Wire. I'm not sure where, or if, I indicated otherwise, but Mr. Newman's contributions (in the studio and to SPEW'S accuracy) are noted. He is certainly an authority on the subject.  Wire is celebrating the 40th anniversary of their debut Pink Flag with the release of their fifteenth studio album Silver/Lead.   Wire’s first three records, Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154 formed a blueprint for much of what came next in the wake of punk; showing how the drive and anger could be channeled beyond the roar and rage. Wire did, however, share with the Pistols a sense of the absurd. Uncomfortable with the conventions of rock, Wire set about reworking and subverting rock ’n’ roll. From Flag’s short, sharp blitz of songs to the more Kraut-Floyd atmospheres of Chairs Missing, to 154’s dark consolidation of Wire’s elements (immaculately...
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Mississippi: Old Times There are Not Forgotten

(Steven J Wilson)
The deeper you dig the more tenacious the lies. How could it be otherwise when you start with slavery as a cornerstone of the Southern and let’s be honest - American economy? Chattel slavery is the ethic of capitalism taken to its ugliest, terminal conclusion. If labor is a commodity to be bought, why not introduce the option to buy and sell and eliminate as much as possible the requirements of remuneration? It’s just business.   Once an economy is built on such a repulsive foundation what good could come from it? And now The Peculiar Institution lives on. Its legacy is mass incarceration, wealth inequality, housing discrimination, and other institutions and mechanisms of white superiority. My father’s family was part of it. I am saddened by my ancestors’ participation in slavery. Tracing my ancestry, I found documents confirming that my great-great-grandfather owned slaves. If the records I’ve found are indicative it appears that he had few, mostly devoted to household ...
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The death and future of punk, pt. 37, THE IDLES

(Steven J Wilson)
The Idles are from Bristol. The one in England, not Connecticut. They’ve been plunkin’ about since 2012, but their first album was released this year. It’s called Brutalism.   The cover features a photo of singer Joe Talbot’s mother, whom Talbot cared for in the last years of a long illness, mounted above a stark shrine constructed by Talbot and his father. These are placed in the corner of a bare room with brick floors and white painted brick and stone walls. It has the barren, but emotionally loaded austerity of Joseph Beuys work. It’s an eerily   perfect image for an album entitled and themed around the notion of brutalism.   Ever seen this movie called My Architect? It’s about the architect Louis Kahn, revealed through the eyes of his sometimes estranged son, Nathaniel Kahn. It’s heartrending, as a dad and lad tale, in its austere, sadly masculine way. The younger Kahn, as a budding filmmaker, with a heavy, still hurting heart find the beauty in his father...
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