Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived
A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?
Update: seemingly not
Update: Oh yeah!
Friday, April 09, 2010
I have seen the future and it ...
Interesting to see that John Lydon didn't, in the end, have a bad word for Malcolm McLaren after his death. It probably says more about Lydon than it does about McLaren though - the historical record does show that more or less everyone who ever worked with McLaren ended up with at least a little and usually a lot of bad feeling over the experience.
As far as I can see, McLaren was one of the first of a type of person that we're going to see a lot more of in the coming years - he had a genuine talent, for finding creative people and connecting them up to world culture in an interesting way. Which is clearly a very valuable thing, but it worries me that there are absolutely no safeguards or regulation on this sort of relationship (how could there be), and the potential for the creative party to it to end up being ill-used is very obvious. Like other forms of talent, this talent for editing and curating isn't always associated with very high moral standards (compare this situation; I have no opinion on the merits of the case, but I do happen to know that Michael Wolff once lied about his father-in-law needing open heart surgery in order to gain an advantage in a business deal, so I am not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt).
So, John Lydon has it right - we should miss Malcolm McLaren as a great entertainer. But there will be a lot of other Malcolm McLarens to come, and when you're dealing with one, keep a tight hold of your wallet.
Semi-related link
Edit: Jamie draws the obvious (in retrospect) comparison to Tony Wilson. Two things strike me: 1) the fact that for most of his life Wilson was beset by Manc whiners who thought they hadn't got a fair shake does make you realise that not every complaint by a 'creative' person about how much money they've got should be taken at face value, and 2) the comparison is indeed really quite unfavourable to McLaren - it's basically the difference between someone who builds a factory on the one hand and a Natural Born Resource Curse on the other.
this item posted by the management 4/09/2010 05:32:00 AM
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