Rock's Backpages

~ Chester Whelks tunnels deep beneath the sarcophogus of the Rock Writers' Mausoleum.

To celebrate Manchester Library Card Holders’ newly granted access to Rock's Backpages, a wonderful online repository of a wealth of material dating back to the birth of the Rock, the Roll, and the writing thereupon (but deserves special condemnation for containing not one article on The Daddy of Rock N’ Roll: Wesley Willis), a select number of diligent Manchester Library user-musos are gathered in an oak-paneled study room in the City’s makeshift Library in Elliot house on Deansgate, for a pub-quiz style competition. Sans alcohol, naturally. The idea behind this event presumably is that the loser could always bolster their woeful knowledge by accessing the aforementioned website. Leading proceedings is Brother John Robb – author of a Demi-Century of articles to be found on the site in question, on subjects ranging from The Roses to Rapeman and My Bloody Valentine.

The backpages of Rock magazines were always to my mind, the preserve of frustrated musicians seeking to make contact with likeminded individuals, isolated by geography or a fierce, alienating taste. While not, I imagine, the intent behind the title, its still very apt, considering music writers are supposedly just that: Frustrated, failed and embittered musicians. Jealousy is their Muse. Source of both their scorn and fauning. Her untouchable honeydewed mammilla swings pendulously, each extreme of a nipple's swing ticking away the seconds of their wasted lives, agonizingly out of reach of the frantic suck of their pucker. Not Robb, who has gorged himself to succor at bosom, bush and backdoor of the Floosie-Muse - a Renaissance Man-Jack of all trades.

Maybe I’m in the wrong job?

John Robb? What a job…

…but which one?

He does it all, having earned his Punk Rock chops in 1977's The Membranes. After their dissolution he osmosed his way into writing for seminal music mag SOUNDS, before forging Punk Soul combo 'Goldblade', for whom he acts as bug-eyed, hoarse-throated vocalist. He's also recognisable to a portion of the docile populace as a regular Talking Head on self-indulgent TV nostalgiagasms such as 'I Love The…(Past)'

He's a Mental Gentleman and a Rock N’ Roll Scholar. A riddle wrapped-inside an Enigma, and a Quizzical wizard, but tonight, he's pointing his throbbing, knotted wand squarely at us...

...but first, if I might be so bold as to foray into an alien vocation, I’d like to step off the beaten track into intimidating wilderness (where still looms the odd Barn casting a shadow the colour of dried-up blood) and impress upon you a poem.

THE 'GROWING-OLD' RADIO SHOW

A November 9am is worth just as much as a summer's 6,

Or at least, the skies plough their clouds with a similar, if chillier, indifference.

While last night's poos commute through the sewer…

I sit-up from slumber and enmesh myself headfirst in the switchboard-limbo of a morning radio DJ.

The delicious intern screens me like she did the comb segmenting her hair at 5,

Ironing-out any personality chasms that might house unforeseen twitches or nits.

A Tourette’s sufferer stutters at her inability to p-p-p-put him on the Nun-fucking Air,

Forgetting she’s in her Hitler-position based on knitting-pattern and fringe-skirting logistics.

("Of course I've fucked some ugly girls, the good-looking ones are too much hard work.")

Quarantined in the Leonard Cohen introspection of the anechoic chamber of a telephonic waiting area,

I beatbox-compete with my own tachycardic biorhythms,

Until the paterfamilias of the wheels of steel eventually lets me out and welcomes me in:

“Long-time caller, first time listener...

Even as a toddler I promised I’d never be here, providing the likes of you with your microphone goo,

The whooping cough of your infantile, mongoloid colic.

Using my aimless AM to populate FM radio with banality chatter for the work-bound jerks.

The grumpy sun screaming out from behind lung cancer cloud cover promising that, despite jobs to the contrary -



I was alive.

                        Dancing about Grave Architecture: “Fuck Art. LET’S DANCE!”

Look at these people: They don’t know either. 

Rock’s Backpages crystalizes a time when Music Writing was an invaluable source of information for bands that couldn't get mainstream airplay or TV time, gaining notoriety instead via reliance on fans’ mix tapes, festival attendance, resulting word of mouth. Now our information is trickled down the thighs of the go-to guys – from the Pitchfork, the Stereogum, disseminated by Twitter and cast to the digital winds. Rock’s Backpages is a familial Mausoleum for the Golden Age of Rock Writers, resplendent with various crypts, niches and sarcophagi, and I heartily recommend it as an indispensable reference pension.


But remember to siphon some life through your pipe.