Police in Cheshire, England are investigating the theft of Joy Division vocalist Ian Curtis’ tombstone. Local police estimate the stone was stolen between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning.
A spokesman said: “There is no CCTV in the area and there are no apparent leads as to who is responsible for the theft. This is a very unusual theft and we are confident that someone locally will have knowledge about who is responsible or where the memorial stone is at present.”
According to the Telegraph, Curtis’s widow, Debbie, in “is in a state of disbelief and shock” and was informed of the theft after returning from a holiday.
Joy Division/New Order drummer Stephen Morris said he suspected the stone had been taken “as a sick souvenir,” adding, “We’ve all been wild and reckless in our time, but surely this represents a new low. It’s probably a fan who has taken it, and I would appeal to them to return it or leave it at the nearest police station.”
Police urged anyone with information to contact them on 0845 458 0000.
Our UK editor Oliver Guy-Watkins has relocated to Berlin for the summer (we think). In the first of a series of video reports, Oliver documented the Fete De La Musique street party which attracted punks, techno kids and skaters.
The struggle between editorial and advertising departments date back to the age of Gutenberg. More recently, in 1996, then Rolling Stone editor Jim DeRogatis was fired after going public about publisher Jaan Wenner nixing his negative review of Hootie & The Blowfish’s Fairweather Johnson. Last year, the editors at Gawker.com raised a brouhaha when they discovered the site’s colors had been switched by the sales department from black to pink and blue, the colors of an upscale water advertiser. Now accusations of shenanigans are being made by two former staffers against the owners of Australian based dance music website Resident Advisor.
According to an e-mail statement yesterday, RA Editor-In-Chief Tami Fenwick and Reviews Editor Jeremy Armitage resigned when a review of John Digweed’s Transitions 4 was pulled—unbeknownst to them, they claim—from the site in favor of a newer, more favorable critique.
Said the editors, “The back story behind the switch is that Renaissance is a long term advertiser on RA, and Nick [Sabine, the sales representative of RA and also one of the owners of the site] decided to commission and publish a more favorable review as he was worried that Renaissance would read the original review and withdraw their advertising contract.”
Fenwick and Armitage describe the incident as “the final nail in the coffin of an ongoing struggle to separate editorial and advertising” that dates back to 2006. They state that their threat to resign if the new review was published was taken up by the site’s owners.
They added, “Unfortunately, after months of haggling, explaining and re-explaining why this is necessary for the success of RA, we haven’t been able to convince the guys at the top of the wisdom of this approach.
“Of course, we are reasonable people, and we have gone out of our way to accommodate advertising concerns where we can, for example by writing news items on client parties and releases which we don’t feel are in any way in touch with the magazine’s readership, and working with sales to try to find a place for client-sponsored features on the site. We’ve even gone out of our way to match writers with reviews so as not to rock the advertising boat too much. But all of these steps have been taken with a view to eventually separating advertising from editorial. In the end we couldn’t come to an agreement with the owners of RA about this philosophy. Thus the parting of ways.”
Big Shot contacted RA’s management for comment on Thursday night. We did not receive a response as of Friday night EST.
Irreverent comedian George Carlin died yesterday. His “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” comedy routine featured on his 1972 album Class Clown brought the issue of indecency to the Supreme Court and later defined acceptable free speech in America. Carlin was arrested after performing the routine in Milwaukee in 1973; a judge ruled that his routine was indecent but protected by the First Amendment. When the words were later aired on New York’s WBAI, a legal ldispute resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.
Carlin, who was arrested several more times for performing “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” went on to act (The Prince of Tides, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Dogma), host television programs (he was Saturday Night Live‘s first host) and one-man shows on HBO, release 23 comedy albums (he won four Grammy awards), and write three books, including Brain Droppings. No subject was taboo for George Carlin. He talked about religion, sex, fat people, war, rape and politics in the same act. Like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, Carlin’s offcolor, politically incorrect humor pushed the envelope. His satirical musings were so much more than rants; he made people laugh and think. Though this counterculture icon was skeptical about religion and politics, he wasn’t a nihilist. “Scratch any cynic,” he said, “and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.”
Police in Cheshire, England are investigating the theft of Joy Division vocalist Ian Curtis’ tombstone. Local police estimate the stone was stolen between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning.