Words Dept.

Help me. I’m worried I may be one of those “Morrissey apologists” you sometimes hear about. None of my best friends are Morrissey, yet I can’t help empathise with the erstwhile Smiths frontman. To make matters worse, I’ve got form in this area. Three years ago when, in an NME interview, Morrissey expressed some rather [...]

I’ve just got back from Bolton, where Unite Against Fascism have organised a counter-protest to a demonstration by the English Defence League in the town centre. I’m making a film about someone on the UAF side, so I was there as an observer. It was my first time at a protest of this sort and [...]

A selection of my latest bookmarks. You could visit my Tumblelog for more stuff I’ve seen on the web. Spotify for iPhone – Clever use of PR. Spotify says the app is ready, whacks ball over to Apple for a response. Mobile Industry Review: Can SpinVox spin their way out of this? – “Hi-tech voice [...]

Another day, another Tory using an absurd racist phrase. This time it’s Lord Dixon Smith, who used the term “n— in the woodpile” in a debate about the Housing and Regeneration Bill in the House of Lords on Monday. The comment, and his apology, is recorded in Hansard. Looking at the Hansard excerpt, I noticed [...]

Finally, Morrissey has opened his gob about the NME interview on the Guardian blog (where else?) It’s delightfully long-winded but immensely pleasurable to read. Predictably, he denies wholeheartedly the trumped-up charge of racism and launches into a spectacularly single-minded tirade against the “new NME” and, most mercilessly, its writer, Tim Jonze. I do not mean [...]

Turns out Tim Jonze, the NME journalist who interviewed Morrissey, didn’t ask for his byline to be taken off the piece because it was an anti-Morrissey stitch-up by the NME – but because NME wanted to tone it down! Writing on Comment is Free last night, he says: …it’s been something of a PR coup [...]

There’s an interview with Morrissey in this week’s NME that’s credited in a way I’ve never ever seen before. It says: Interview: Tim Jonze Words: NME How? What? HUH?!!! It turns out that Jonze, the writer of the piece, conducted two interviews with Moz but the NME decided to rewrite his copy. Jonze says “virtually [...]