LETTERS
lETTERS
Heatwave
The List in issue 125 carried three editorial features that are ofsome relevance to M8 magazine. Each one has left me angry at the approach your magazine has taken.
Firstly. your feature on ‘I leatwave‘. M8‘s 1 l-day festival of dance tnusic. Your Avril Mair quoted extensively M8‘s Music Editor Dave (‘alikes. despite the fact that David has never spoken to Ms Mair about ‘l leatwave‘ or anything else. The foul language used. all ofit attributed to M8. has no place in our magazine. our offices or our attitude to publishing.
As a DJ. Dave Calikes is upset that you have straddled him with such quotes as "The 49ers are basically crap‘ and "The older Glasgow DJs. . . have their heads up their arses’. For the record. The 49ers appeared at M8‘s Land of Oz Easter Weekender and were superb.
Your article on lrn Bru Rox was more subtle but equally misleading. The practice ofgiving one side ofa story is not a journalistic habit I would have previously associated with The List. The truth. in our opinion. is that lrn Bru‘s PR Company failed to organise the very basic tasks set out for them and as such caused considerable damage to their client and a not insubstantial financial loss to M8. It is true that they spent money on t-shirts (which incidentally sit in the M8 Glasgow office awaiting collection) but not the case that our magazine gained financially from carrying Irn Bru Rox advertising.
The salt in the wounds is your comments on Scottish music magazines. ‘Unsure that there is enough support for a glossy well—produced publication'." Try reading M8!
Stewart Buchanan Director. M8 Magazine St Enoch Square Glasgow
The article on Heatwave was published as Tlte List wanted to support wltat we described in our
( 'lulis .section as the most significant event ofthe season anywhere. The quotes in the article were taken from a telephone interview with an organiser ofthe event who was speaking from .ll8's oflice. He understood the person we were talking to was Dave
( 'alikes but we have since been informed it was someone else. The List would like to apologisefor any misunderslanding that has arisen as a result oft/its cmilusion. A correction is included in the ( ‘luhs section ofthis issue.
Donnelly’s Dictionary
As you lot. particularly those funny chappies who write the film reviews still seem to persist with lots of jargon words and phrases. I thought the least I could do was to provide a translation for the ones you use most l commonly. So here you are.
The best letter next issue will win a pair of Jose Cuervo Slammer glasses. And, as a special treat, the best artist’s impression of what our star correspondent David M. Bennie looks like will win a VERY SPECIAL PRIZE. Your drawings, in black ink please, and letters, which may be edited for publication, should be sent to The List, Old Athenaeum Theatre, 179 Buchanan Street, Glasgow Gl 2J Z, or 14 High Street, Edinburgh,
EH1 1TE, not later than Friday 19 July.
MOIRA NK‘Ol.
Homo-erotic: the rugby club in the shower. Rites-of-passage movie: some daft wee boy gets a stiffie and becomes confused. Teenage angst: a kid goes greetin‘ to their mum. Post-modernist: the writer was too untalented to think up a plot.
There must be lots more — perhaps other readers could write in with their own translations.
James Donnelly Corstorphine Road Edinburgh.
: Filmed. T.J. replies: lfyou're
pitchingfor ajob. you just lost it. kid.’ TJ. also gets the Jose Cuervo for the most witty comment this week.
Bennie bites back Re Mr Bell‘s Ridleyesque letter of
. last issue. A: Why on earth should . Sheena Easton try living in the likes
ofC‘astlemilk‘.’ I would rather live in Corstorphinc than Castlemilk, as would the inhabitants of (.‘hateaumilch if they had any choice. Having been brought up in a single-end in Dennistoun. I don‘t need to be lectured on the spurious idea of poverty being morally cathartic. One doesn‘t get rid ofthe East End by demolishing the West End. . .
B: I‘m afraid I don‘t have a Sky satellite dish - I couldn‘t get planning from Embra‘s socialist council, since I live in a B-listed building. Maybe I should apply for a transfer to the tower block which is having satellite TV installed free ofcharge for all its council tenants. Otherwise I’ll have to pay to have cable put in, in order to see Italian football live on Sundays. the cost ofwhich will be met by reducing the bread ration for the urchins in my blacking factory (after which they‘ll no doubt complain to the National Union of Urchins).
C: The best thing to come out of (.‘umbernauld is the dual carriageway to Dullatur.
D: It‘s an interesting idea that art criticism ought to be objective. Does this idea also apply to art itself. Mr Bell‘.’ I‘d wager that you‘re not a fan of Canaletto. since he moved buildings around to fit in with his aesthetic vision. which is hardly very objective. But Antonio wasn‘t painting an 18th-century ordnance survey map of Venice!
E: Might I suggest you look up in a dictionary the meaning ofthe word ‘irony‘. I may overuse this literary device. but I credit the readership of The List with a certain non-literal understanding.
Finally. I‘m now off to Baby Albert‘s ‘Not Proven‘ party in the Big G. where I‘ll stand with glass of electric soup in hand in the parlour saying things like: ‘As David Hume observed, the tackle from behind is
crippling Scottish football.‘
Finally finally, I would refer devotees of my fortnightly letters to the personal ads column.
David M. Bennie Haddington Place Edinburgh.
Lost in the post
In reply to Robert Cathcart who wrote last issue to ask what post-modernism is. may I offer this simple explanation: in this post-structuralist, post-Fordist. post-manpat world of rapidly changing technology, psychology and homoeopathy. There are some who have resisted the relentless march of the post-modern aesthetic. but they are dafties. Post~modernism is. quite simply, the only coherent way of coming to terms with reality today. Honest. Through self-referentialism. the existential soul of the being itself is transformed into a work of art — life becomes part of the nihilistic fabric. As Nietzsche said ‘If you can‘t make art good, make it big. Ifyou can‘t make it big, make it shiny‘. Aileen Inglis Oban Drive Glasgow Lovely dahling, couldn't haveput it better myself. NEXT. . .
RIP OFF TIP OFF
One is prepared to tolerate the self-publicising ravings of the now-notorious Bennie. since they are presented with a degree of charm. and make no secret of their motives.
But I write to draw your attention to a disturbing undercurrent of opportunism which as insinuated itself into the midst of your innocent correspondence.
I refer. as your more astute readers will be now have percieved. to those contributors of mail for publication who have seized the opportunity afforded by a forum of this sort to introduce unsolicited advertising material for their non-epistolatory outpourings.
I shall not name the corresponents concerned. since to do so would merely gratify their insidious desire for further publicity. But they know who they are; and so too will you. if you take the trouble to peruse your previous issue's letters page with due diligence.
May I urge you to take this precaution in future. also. lest your otherwise enthralling platform for opiners decline in status to that of a newsagent‘s window“?
Yours as ever
Euripides P. McKechnie
Coates Gardens
Edinburgh
PS: E.P. McKechnie appears in ‘Letter Writing My Way‘ at Gogarburn Hospital for the spiritually impaired (Venue 220) for the duration of the Edinburgh Fest. . . (Enough is ENOUGH.’- Ed.)
84'l‘he l.is127.lu|y -‘) August l‘)‘)tl
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