Ian McDuffie

In case you are worried that I spend my time doing nothing (aside from listening to “Low” on repeat and watching Jon Pertwee-era Doctor Who), I am here to prove you wrong:

I’ve been working on a few different comic projects, some of which I have remarked on below (Happiness #3, Under Ice: Kate Bush Zine, and also the forthcoming Chromazoid 2). I’m also spending quite a bit of time writing. I write first, naturally, for the Number One Sliders Fan Site “Earth Prime,” where I’ve moved by Sliders blog, “Think of a Roulette Wheel.”

But more interestingly, I feel, I’ve begun a writing project where I’m taking on The Smashing Pumpkins’ 1995 opus Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, one song at a time. I’ve just made it to “Here is No Why,” which was, for a very long time, my favorite song. It’s not, anymore, but I’m very proud of the entry. Here’s a bit of it:

Rock & Roll, so often, is the misremembering of what’s come before. As generations pass on their influences, an aural game of “telephone” ensues. A kid today listens to a band who listened to this band who themselves listened to that band who themselves were influenced bythis band, who listened to The Beatles, who themselves listened to Elvis. But the band the kid today is listening to isn’t thinking of Elvis. He couldn’t care less about Elvis, though he’d be formless without The King.

Between the misrememberings also comes the response and recoils— The “alternative nation” was an offshoot of the grunge miasma, which was itself a response and recoil from the hair metal birds nest, which was a response and recoil from punk rock dystopia. But Punk Rockand Hair Metal were a response and misremembering of Glam Rock.

Hair Metal took the sexuality and guitar riffing, and put those above things like ‘taste’ and ‘subtlety.’ Glam Rock, certainly, was full of wanton sex and brilliant riffs, but it was also about liberation and pose, rather than posture and libation. Punk Rock took the revolutionary force of Capital-C ‘Change” from Glam, threw the glitter under the bus, and blunted Glam’s Social Sashay into a pimpled sneer. Punk & Glam shared a desire for the headline: Bowie declaring himself as ‘gay’ in the music press, or Rotten declaring himself the Antichrist.

Glam & Punk where also just as important for their eye-opening Image as they were their songs. Grunge, though, while a musically very much tied to Glam & Punk, were consciously anti-Image (thought this anti-Image posturing led to a ubiquity of flannel anyways). “We’re not fabulous,” their clothes said. “We’re just some guys.” Uncool was the new Cool.

Grunge’s child Alternative, though, re-embraced color and Image, reachingbackto the‘psychedelic 60s’ for inspiration. It was too soon to call it a resurgence of Glam Rock, though— Glam was still too tied to Hair Metal to even be considered ‘uncool-ly cool.’ But Alternative embraced the Uncool, the Slacker Chic, even more than Grunge did. Once Nirvana covered “The Man Who Sold The World,” (and once people realized Kurt didn’t write it), Glam was on the ascent.

There’s much more, if you’re interested.

“Graceful Swans of Never.”

In case you are also wondering, in an attempt to make this website an actual, y’know, website, I’ve updated the “Words” section to be a pretty decent-looking Writing Portfolio, where you can dig on all the writing I’ve been up to, man.

Diggeth.