Shots From the Hip by Charles Shaar Murray now an e-book

At last, the new long-overdue edition of Charles Shaar Murray's coruscating collection of journalism — Shots From the Hip (I told him his next one should be called Shots From the Hip Replacement) — first published in 1991, with a new introduction by Joel Nathan Rosen and a new afterword by CSM himself.

It puts together Murray’s writing on music and much, much more from the 1970s and 1980s in New Musical Express and elsewhere, edited and introduced by Neil Spencer. It shows just why Murray acquired the reputation of being the most intelligent and acerbic popular music critic of his generation.

His witty and beautifully crafted pieces – a mix of reviews, interviews and extended critical essays – are as readable today as when they were first written. He was always ahead of the game, noticing up-and-coming artists (and recording sad declines of the once-great) before anyone else. And, almost without exception, his judgments stand the test of time remarkably well.

Shots From the Hip is a classic of its genre, essential reading for anyone with an interest in popular culture, funny, perceptive and energetic.

WHAT THEY SAY

‘One of the best British writers on pop music, and this is a compilation of HIS best.’
SIMON NAPIER-BELL, GUARDIAN

The reason I write is Charles Shaar Murray - collected NME works available again. The R Newman, P Smith & Macca truly great.
DANNY BAKER

‘Charles Shaar Murray was always the best read’
TONY VISCONTI

‘The New Musical Express was one of the big things in my life … there was outrageous writing by Charles Shaar Murray, Nick Kent and, later, Julie Burchill — what they were writing was unbelievable! The NME was so important for lonely suburban kids. It was a lifeline.’
DANNY BOYLE

‘This is an extremely intelligent man who happens to find expression and pleasure in a genre that many comparable intellects dismiss as worthless. For those whose love of rock music has survived their apprehension of its partial absurdity, this book is there to be savoured, to be read slowly and with a great deal of relevant musical accompaniment.’
THE TIMES

‘Murray’s work is particularly impressive because it was written at the time. Murray ragged on Blondie and the Clash, for example, before anyone had heard of them.’
MICHIGAN DAILY

‘“Some people are born dull,” starts a piece on George Harrison and his 1974 ballad Ding Dong, which the author calls a “hideous piece of garf”. Madonna is “Our lady of hard work”, whose 1990 Blonde Ambition tour was a “Broadway musical in all essentials except for its lack of plot”. This irreverent and colloquial collection of British pop-music criticism spans 20 years and tosses in hundreds of musicians, insights and insults.’
ST PETERSBURG TIMES (FLORIDA)

Published by Aaaargh! Press.

Charles Shaar Murray starts a summer course of his Hothouse Project "Journalism as Craft And Art" writing masterclasses in West Hampstead — eight Thursday evenings from 29th May. 

Charles Shaar Murray on Resonance FM discussion on the state of music criticism

A most enjoyable evening was had on Monday night with the Resonance FM crew for a fundraiser in support of London's best arts radio station. The Slaughtered Lamb, which is much how freelance writers often think of themselves nowadays, was the Clerkenwell venue.

Neil Denny from Resonance FM's Little Atoms series chaired a panel discussion on music criticism with Jude Rogers, David Stubbs, Andrew Mueller and Charles Shaar Murray.

For anyone who'd like to know more about the nuts and bolts as well as the soaring imaginative heights of great journalism, CSM's next fabulous Hothouse Project writing course — Journalism as Craft and Art — begins 20th February in leafy West Hampstead.

Jude Rogers, David Stubbs, chair Neil Denny, Andrew Mueller and
Charles Shaar Murray at the Resonance FM discussion.

The Hothouse Project alternative counter-culture education group now on Facebook

Charles Shaar Murray's Journalism as Craft and Art writing course goes live tonight in NW6 for eight weeks.

The Hothouse Project is now on Facebook and here's what amounts to our manifesto:

Charles Shaar Murray's "Journalism as Craft and Art" writing course is the basis of our alternative education group, The Hothouse Project, featuring the best of the ideals and artistic values of classic counter-culture. We share rigorous, hard-headed journalistic craft, to bring literary quality into even the most mundane journalistic tasks, and offer an inspiring alternative to the flatlining culture, showing you how to inject style and subversion into a timid, conformist media landscape. We'll skill you up, sharpen your claws, broaden your bandwith and widescreen your horizons. Covering writing skills from journalism to poetry and publishing.

Don't worry if you missed this one — there's another one along in the Spring — details to come. Get in touch if you wish to know more or reserve a place.

China expels Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan

Why can't the Chinese authorities stop shooting themselves in the foot?

If you are going to expel a journalist, it had better be for a more pertinent reason than reporting events accurately.

It looks as if Al-Jazeera's only English-language reporter Melissa Chan is guilty of the crime of uncovering scandals such as the perennial one of corruption, including the public officials who've smuggled US $123.6bn out of the country in the 15 years since the mid-1990s to the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Based on a report by the Chinese Central Bank, you'd think Chan's coverage was doing the government a favour in helping to name and shame and stem the flow. The final straw may have been an Al-Jazeera documentary — not made by Chan — alleging that China uses forced labour in its prisons.

Chinese Foreign Ministry officer Hong Lei announced that Chan's accreditation would not be renewed but he would not be drawn on the specifics of her infringement of the law, stating blandly instead that: "China addressed this problem in accordance with laws and regulations. The media concerned know in their heart what they did wrong".

Except that we don't. Did she lie? Did she invent these scenarios? Chan may have goaded them with a sharp stick over the years with her investigations, but the government fails to make a strong case as to why this constitutes breaking the law. This is journalism, not PR.

The government is smarting from the unflattering exposure wrought by the Bo Xilai case, but this knee-jerk clampdown just digs them deeper into the same old hole. The world wants China to smarten up, loosen up and address the issues raised, rather than simply shoot the messenger pour encourager les autres.

What's wrong with the mainstream media? Westminster Skeptics debate

That comatose science fiction writer and his dystopian fever dream I keep writing about has been stirring of late. Giant solar flares and supermoons exert malign invisible forces. Planet Earth splits apart and shifts its axis. Middle Eastern tyrants cling on to power while the West short-circuits itself into a state of paralysis: to act or not to act? All that oil would come in handy now that nuclear is screwed and we await the outcome of Fukushima. But how do we justify armed intervention in Libya's civil war while turning a blind eye to Saudi Arabia sending troops into Bahrain? Oh and Niall Ferguson continues his long march back to Empire on Sunday night TV, gland in hand, enlightenment values in retreat.

Monday's Westminster Skeptics debate turned its attention to the media that brings us the news and shapes our views about such events. Just how bad is the mainstream media? asked our host, David Allen Green, judge in this year's Orwell Prize for blogging.

On call to answer him at the Old Monk Exchange pub were journalist Laurie Penny, columnist Suzanne Moore, lawyer Mark Lewis, resigned Star writer Richard Peppiatt, and yours truly.

Bumped at the last minute into going on first, I opened with my personal experience. I had wanted to talk about the shameful way the media had allowed the Tories free reign to rewrite history and blame the deficit on Labour (only partly true), as bankers and global recessions were forgotten, leaving us with perhaps the biggest class fight our lifetime. Expecting others closer to the student fightback to take this up in their contributions, I pursued another line that disturbs me: the hypocrisy of the media when it comes to free speech, and growing sinophobia. Niall Ferguson may have featured.

I am a Chinese dissident. In late 2009, I found myself banned in the media for arguing a line oppositional to the state’s agenda. The state happened to be the UK under Labour, the media was the Guardian, and the isssue was climate change as thrashed out at the Copenhagen summit. (More here and here.)

Banned by both the Guardian Comment is Free (har!) and the Great Firewall of China, I was once mightily pissed off but am now beginning to understand what a great position this is to be in. Skint and with my skills underexploited, at least I don't have to toe no steenkin' party or editorial line, or court an audience. My mind is free (as far as false consciousness under capitalism will allow, comrade), and my opinions are my own.

I gave further examples of the Yellow Peril fears that stalk academia nuts and the media, not just the blatant China-bashing diversion away from the Danish treaty stitch-up by the rich nations, or Niall Ferguson suggesting the Chinese were responsible for the opium wars, but the sniggering fit on Twitter from one Guardian editor who thought the photo of Morrissey having a cat on his head was the most remarkable thing about a prominently plugged article in which he said the Chinese were a subspecies. And that Sherlock episode.

The point I was trying to make was that the liberal media are slipping in all kinds of poison, whereas we sort-of-know what the tabloids get up to, as Richard Peppiatt would tell us most entertainingly.

After a long enough time of being compelled to act like a champion prick on the Daily Star, with no regard for the truth or harmonious race relations, Peppiatt finally bit the hand that had fed him and wrote this resignation letter to proprietor Richard Desmond, copying in the Guardian.

Funny and self-deprecating, Peppiatt deserved a somewhat warmer welcome than he got from Laurie Penny, who tore him off a strip for his past behaviour. While collusion with PRs who service the slebs is pretty nauseating, he had, after all, added to the gaiety of the nation by getting up Richard Desmond's nose, and provided some parties with the opportunity to pressure the PCC to investigate claims of Islamophobia. Better late than never.

There followed contributions about the truly awful state of phone hacking by the press, mention of Chomsky from Suzanne, and tales of careers tainted by fancy canapés, the dangers of being recognised as a famous person, and how anything more than a basic living wage is spoiling journalists.

So what are the aims of the media in these interesting times? In the second half, when the discussion was opened to the floor, I said I thought they were supposed to hold power to account, comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I quoted my friend Dan Hind, who'd noted that the US government had said, 'communications is not just a business ... the mass media transmit and help establish the country's shared values.' Dan also wrote, 'The broadcast & print media have amply shown that when they are faced with determined and powerful lobby groups. they cannot provide the bulk of the population with a tolerably accurate account of the world.'

So what do we have instead? In my notes, I wrote 'STIR-FREUD CHINESE PENIS' because it appears that dark unconscious compulsions are at work. It does look as if the liberal media is terrified of the Chinese male penis. Maybe even the Chinese female penis, coz we are evidently built differently.

When a top British intellectual can call for Westerners to 'Lock up your daughters' because testosterone-maddened Chinese are headed this way and no-one thinks this even worthy of comment, then we have already hit the skids and have no rubber left to burn.

Not that what I thought mattered a toss. No-one on the panel or in the audience or anyone who commented in the blogs or on Twitter picked up the fact that one of their own had been banned in the very mainstream media which was under discussion. So I shall consider hiring myself out as a Ninja pundit in future.

And fuck the mainstream media.

Apart from BBC Radio 4 which is lovely and has commissioned two more programmes from me.

Thanks to Louise for taking the pic.

Wilko Johnson presents Charles Shaar Murray with journalism award: Record of the Day 2010

The lovely readers of Record of the Day voted Charles Shaar Murray winner of the prestigious Outstanding Contribution to Music Journalism Award at last night's bash at the Idea Generation Gallery in Shoreditch.

Following an almost clean sweep of the awards by the newly rebooted NME, Charles's old alma mater — thanks to editor Krissi Murison who won the Editor of the Year Award — he impressed on the journos in the audience the importance of writing, not just about the music, but about what the music is about, including the political, spiritual and cultural landscape of the time. Which is largely what led to the success of the NME in its 1970s heyday.

As Charles said in his blockbuster speech, if you stick around long enough, you get your props.

Also getting his props since featuring in the Julian Temple film, OIl City Confidential, about the history of Britain's finest blues rock band Dr Feelgood, was the magnificent Wilko Johnson, guitarist, songwriter and singer, who was there to present the award to Charles. Two legends on one ticket — it doesn't get much better than this. (Shame they played "Milk & Alcohol" as his play-on music when it was recorded after he left the band.)

Lucky gurl that I yam, I got to talk to Wilko beforehand. He's very excited about the HBO series, Game Of Thrones, he's making for American TV in which he plays the mute villain Ilyn Payne (geddit?). Possessed of a rubbery face it was a delight to watch Wilko animatedly describing the role, the full-length chain mail suits, and the swords he has strapped to his back, poor lamb, making sitting down belween takes an impossibility. How we laughed, though, when he told us about how Sean Bean fares in confrontation with our hero/villain, which I can't possibly divulge here as that would be an almighty spoiler.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer writer Jane Espenson is also involved so this will be one to watch.

Charles and I urged him to sort out merchandise so we can have an articulated action doll of him in full regalia. Either that or we take him home.

UPDATE: For everyone outside the UK who's visiting this blogpost via the Winter Is Coming site, a bit more about the gorgeous much-loved Wilko. You may already know that he was the super-talented guitarist and songwriter with Dr Feelgood, the uber British pub-rock band of the 1970s who played up a storm with their hyper-energy blues rock. Not only that, his chiselled features made him one of the most beautiful men on the planet. If you haven't seen it, check out Julien Temple's documentary film, Oil City Confidential. This may help explain why there are guys of a certain age (40s and 50s) who, even though they may be stern upright citizens, turn into babbling fifteen year olds when talking about Wilko. I have never seen so many straight men go so silly over a rock hero. It's quite funny and sweet to watch.

Anyhow, we are all thrilled that Wilko's multiple skills have been revealed to a new audience across the Pond via Game Of Thrones, and hope you come to love him as much as we do. If you are lucky, you may even get to see him play. On New Year's Eve his band (with Norman Watt-Roy and Dylan Howe) plays London's 100 Club which is now under threat, supported by Crosstown Lightnin'. Hope there's a US tour next year. Go see.

Charles Shaar Murray and Wilko Johnson (pic Record of the Day)

Charles Shaar Murray and Wilko Johnson (pic Record of the Day)

Wilko Johnson, Anna Chen and Charles Shaar Murray

Wilko and Anna