Steven Wells, late agent provocateur

[Carvill, John]

> Approach it with a pinch of salt and you might find a few grains of truth ...

> http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/jun/14/unseen-swells-sacred-cows

Heh. I remember Steven Wells well from the heady late-80s/early 90s NME, before that venerable and much-cherished magazine imploded. The problem with Swells's shtick was, was that his shtick was all he had. That and the fact that it was a second-rate re-tread of other, more witty and intelligent shtick-purveyors such as Hunter S Thompson. It's not so hard to attack sacred cows like Dylan or Led Zeppelin, or to dismiss (as I recall) Kerouac's 'On the Road' as 'crap'; but the sort of stuff Swells actually enthused about was usually pretty mediocre fare. I doubt he'd have been a Pynchon fan, or at least he probably wouldn't had admitted it in public.