The Shock of the Newcastle

 

Snapped off the TV from a YouTube British doc about Newcastle in 1966. Mostly about the vibrant youth culture there but it does show this architect's mock-up of plans for a revitalized and modernized pedestrian-only shopping center in the city.

Here's another view of the city from the wonderfully elegaic archi-critic Ian Nairn

I wonder if with that pained voice - he always sounds like he's wringing his hands, on the edge of tears  - Nairn could only have been an epigone? 

Or did the elegaicism condition and create the highly-strung voice? 

I've been to the city just once, in the early '80s - it is an exciting looking place. That bridge!

Three other things I remember from my visit:

Stotties

Pease pudding

A passer-by ejecting from his nostril into the gutter a long string of snot. Never seen that before, nor since I don't think. 

Contra Modernism

 

- Vladimir Jankélévitch

from Music and The Ineffable (1961)

Future Schlock

"Schlock" here used in the Yiddish-derived sense of "inferior or shoddy goods"

Oops, here's an earlier Hawkwind-related release one that isn't quite as eyeball-affronting  

Topic for discussion - the decline of record cover artwork. Every time I open a streamer and check out "Suggested New Albums for You", my eyes are assaulted. It's across the board, from obscure artists to prestige ones, major labels to minor labels. I can't remember the last time I saw a truly surprising or even attractive record cover. It makes sense that in the age of streaming it would have declined as a point-of-sale factor but... there's still this thriving vinyl sub-market, there's still artists who grew up with the notion of the beautifully packaged record and presumably care about how their releases manifest as objects in the world. 

These are today's offerings at Tidal 

The Jenny Hval one is tasteful and moderately intriguing... the Lucius dog-bared-teeth-snarl grabs the eye... There's a few that are so misconceived they become almost-interesting

Beyond the question of the revolting artwork, the algorithm's ideas of what might appeal on a purely audio level seem misconceived.... I can't correlate these suggestions with my recent listening apart from the inclusion of an ECM title

 

postscript: added this Prince album covers graphic in reference to a comment