RIP Poly Styrene

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13193968

Rest in peace.

Just saw this. Very sad news.

Heard Christgau reviewing her newish album on NPR yesterday. (Pause for a moment to let that one sink in). (Also, he described her as heavy and she's skin and bones in that video at least).

Germfree Adolescents was my favorite album for a solid year when I was a teenager. Another good one gone...

Sad news. Yup, Germ Free Adolescents is a fantastic album.

Has anyone heard that new album?

Poly Styrene made atrociously unmusical noise that was virtually unlistenable.

It was almost like a hydrogen bomb going off in a saxophone factory with the shriek-chanting of a particularly obstreperous polytechnic student/market stall holder dubbed over the infernal racket, thus making the aberration even more hellish on the cultured ear.

She will be greatly missed.

Glad to see you are a fan.

Shit. RIP

I really don't get Christgau's appeal.

As much as death is a great career move, sustaining is as well. Lester Bangs is loved because he lived hard, died young. Christgau is loved because he's still around, an elder statesman.

It's like with Obner: Radcliffe is an elder statesman, & OPA! is gone, more than likely victim of a batch gone sour, but still remembered, fondly.

To be fair, getting the 90 seconds once a week to tell aging hipsters on NPR about the solo careers of people their age is not the same as raging success of the snorting coke off the bodies of hot young things variety. I think he's semi-retired at this point.

How old do you have to be before it becomes unseemly to snort off the bodies of hot young things?

I don't think there's a cutoff so much as a sense that as you age you are more likely to be implicitly or explicitly paying for that part of it, and paying for sexual thrills is on the unseemly side. If the 20 year old hotties are still lining up to have you snort off their ass for kicks, it may be mildly tacky but it doesn't have the vibe you're thinking of...

Good to know.

His stuff I've read just doesn't seem very good, or particularly inspired.

Anyhoo, didn't mean to derail the thread.

Christgau's writing in the 70s and early 80s was pretty great. Right beside Lester Bangs IMO.

Since then it doesn't really matter. We've seen the death of the critic at the hands of the internet, and even an uninspired, barely-interested Christgau can still shine amid all the amateur, illiterate assholes writing for P-fork and AMG and the like.