Dancing About Architecture

Musicians can be quite bitchy about critics. We all know the famous line “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” which has been attributed to several people, and then there’s David Lee Roth’s quip about music journalists liking Elvis Costello because they all look like him.

But the most common thing they say about them is that rock critics are just failed musicians. They weren’t good enough to do that so they take out their frustration criticizing those who were. I don’t know enough about the lives of rock critics to know how much truth there is in this, but I do know there are a few — like Neil Tennant and Chrissie Hynde — who went in the other direction and became stars after being rock writers.

Then there are ones like legendary scribe Nick Kent who lived like a rock star even when he wasn’t one. Besides being one of the best writers at the NME during it’s glory years he played guitar in an early version of the Sex Pistols, hung out with Iggy Pop and Led Zeppelin, dated Chrissie Hynde (pre-fame), wore leather trousers, and did mountains of drugs. On top of that Sid Vicious beat him up and Keith Richards threw up on him. He also made one record that was really, really good.

The Subterraneans were a band he formed with Rat Scabies and Bryan James of The Damned who put out just the one single “My Flamingo” in 1980. It’s terrific, jangly pop not unlike the music his former main squeeze was making with The Pretenders the same year. Though Kent isn’t as great a singer as Chrissie (few are) his voice is surprisingly good.

The reason this was their only single is following its release the band had an important gig lined up in London which Kent didn’t turn up for and disappeared for several weeks. According to those involved, Kent just bottled it and that was the end of the band. He had a bad heroin habit at this time so I’m sure drugs were partly to blame too. He may have looked and lived like a rock star but it seems he didn’t really want to be one.

Download: My Flamingo – The Subterraneans (mp3)