David Lipsky of Rolling Stone magazine is amazing. All the writers for Rolling Stone magazine are amazing. Is that not itself amazing? Ray Davies of The Kinks is amazing too. Terri G grows ever more amazing. I so desperately wish that I was amazing…
09h04-UTC Saturday 01 March 2008-UTC
David Lipsky is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine. He writes the tribute to Heath Ledger (1979-2008) in the issue for 21 February 2008 (#1046). Here is a paragraph that I find stunning:
“We count on our performers for many things -as demonstrators of excellence, as figures of monstrous envy -but we rarely expect to feel luckier than they are. Stars embody our dream lives. And Ledger was a star in a very particular way. To stare at him was to receive a sense of power, and potential, a kind of perfectly vivid health and youth. That’s why his death feels wrong, and why the response has felt primitive, tribal. It means youth and vitality aren’t enough. It’s like losing a season.”
Terri Groes (spelling?) and Ray Davies of the Kinks are in conversation, recorded in 1995, on National Public Radio (via Hotbird) whilst I write this. I get a most engrossed feeling I get when I hear a dude whom I perceived as awesome and incomprehensible back in the 1960s (in my 20s) now yapping about how he did it.
I could not understand, at the time, how scruffy, hairy, blokes could think of these words. Actually, many of them they turned out to be intelligent and gifted, despite not looking like Keats, but looking like working-class low-life.
“I was barely formed as a human being. I grew up in that band…”
“There has been [a fashion of] ageism… I am [very comfortable with my age]… When I was 16 years old, I was buying Sonny Boy Williamson. And I think that smart kids of today [likewise] buy the music that interests them and it’s not all dictated by charts and what they see on TV.”
I have just learned that Ray Davies is a tall guy and that he was shot one time (not the 1960s) when he ran after a low-life who grabbed his girl-friend’s handbag in New Orleans. The guy stopped and turned at the getaway car and Ray knew he was about to be shot. We all know who the guys are that need to be shot, do we not?
Now I learn that the last bit of the interview was recorded in 2006. This must be why, when Terri thanked him, he replied “My pleasure as always.”
I saw The Bank Job at the Empire, Tower Park, yesterday. They refuse to let you see the seat plan (“we’ve got one somewhere but we can’t find it”) but they give you a numbered seat anyway. Nobody ushers you to the seat with a torch. I take my own.
I found the movie very impressive. However, the movie critic in The Guardian for Friday 29 February 2008 (I forget his name, the paper is in the recycling plastic carrier bag but I cannot be assed to dig it out) thought it was trash. I think he is a jaded jerk Wait a minute! Should I go to the kitchen and transfer The Guardian from the recyc bag to the garbage bag?
FIN 10h04
4 March 2008 at 17:38
Thanks for liking it, and thanks for the compliment. it was a very sad piece to write. And I agree, there are a bunch of great writers at the magazine. I hope you you liked Vanessa G’s Britteney piece, and Rich Cohen’s tremendously funny look at Clive Davis.