LETTERS
Autogeddon
Edinburgh readers, smugly ridiculing the 1966 Inner Link Road Plans (The List 162), spare a thought for your Glaswegian cousins. We’re 25 years older but it seems no wiser, as Strathclyde Regional Council’s dreams for a ‘motorway box‘ through Central Glasgow are remarkably similar.
Spare a fiver? ‘Glasgow for People’ (bruised, but alive) is trying to stop
this dinosaur. Clive Kempe 3 Glasgow For People
34 Royal Exchange Court
; 85 Queen Street G13DB.
'j Belt up
Risible though some proposals made by planners in the 1940s may be (The 1 List 162), they at least left us with the
Green Belt: that area around
Edinburgh which protects us from the nightmare of a coast-to-coast megalopolis and ensures we all have a slice ofcountryside close by. Full marks then, to the Lothian Regional Council for giving a unanimous thumbs down to Wallace Merger’s plan to breach the Green Belt with an out-of-town stadium complex last week.
Similar plaudits are not due to the Region’s transport committee who, the day before, failed to object to the Disney style ‘Younger Universe’ — proposed for the development site near Holyrood Palace. What ‘solutions' will the committee propose to the transport problems which will undoubtedly be created by the proposed development? Perhaps they will resuscitate the Inner Link Road!
Why do we have to have the mega-complex Younger Universe at all? Why not give the whole, not just some, of the site over to a new community: houses, local shops, offices, workshops, the odd small tourist trap, maybe some theatre space for festival events, or is such a suggestion hopelessly Utopian? If the Younger Universe does get the go-ahead, complete with fashionably green-tinged extras, how long will it last, two years, maybe three, before it is found to be uneconomic, pulled down and replaced with another conference centre and office block? Tim Paterson Drummond Street Edinburgh.
Naked Critic
Gloria Chalmers‘ letter (The List 162) condemning The List‘s
coverage of the Portfolio Gallery’s
Lee Friedlander exhibition is pure
art fascism. Ms Chalmers appears
not to be able to accept valid art
criticism full stop. On behalfofthose who believe in freedom of expression, I would like to exercise the gallery-viewer‘s right to reply. First. I would like to challenge the
assumption of the value of
t
88 The List 22 November— 5 Decem
Well, would you catch Keanu Reeves if he was plummeting to earth from 15,000 feet without a parachute? Celebrate 2000 years of Christianity by banging a Test Department drum perhaps? Or even ‘ spend six hours in the presence of Theatre Repere? Why not write to The List and tell the world. You never know, you might win a bottle of Jose Cuervo Tequila.
6’
Friedlander’s ‘contribution to contemporary photographic practice‘, certainly on the basis of his
' current mind-numbineg dull female
nudes. Ms Chalmers fails to enlighten us on the innovative qualities of these works. Perhaps this is because there are none. Certainly they are not apparent in his use of form, lighting and composition. Or is he yet another male photographer
. sticking his lens up women’s
genitalia? And just how ‘contemporary’ were these photographs? Late 70s. early
i 805?
Second, I would like to raise the
t ‘clichéd issue ofpornography’ that Ms Chalmers so dismisses. As a
woman. it is impossible not to have an emotional response to any depiction ofthe female form, perhaps especially if it is being
. placed on the art pedestal.
berl99l
Friedlander’s nudes, in common with Page 3 exponents of the genre. are empty canvases on which he insidiously projects his own sexual hang-ups. Sleaze ball or high art? Lee Friedlander's nudes may be touring London. Paris and New York, but this will not diminish their mediocrity. lfthe Portfolio wanted to impress us with Friedlander, then
reader’, I was quite nauseated by the use of the description of a football
examples of his more challenging
' work should have been shown. rather than these tawdry offerings.
His artistic stature and past glories should not presuppose that he is beyond criticism. No artist should be.
Ann Vinnicombe
West Preston Street
Edinburgh.
Shorely Shame Mishtake
l was almost moderately amused by
your Lisstake acronym send-up (The List 162). but rather more bemused by Gary Nelson‘s gripe about letter writers in the same issue. Of all your
regular correspondents. Gary
Nelson surely sums up Typically Humourless Empty-headed Letter-writer lncapable ofSerious Thought.
Fiona Eaton
Oueensborough Gardens Glasgow.
Eye,eye
Despite being a far from ‘sensitive
hooligan eating a policeman’s
; it was also gratuitous.
Glasgow.
too, to this ageing pop picker.
the sound is simply gunge rock, with
considering the possibilities for
impending tragedy when I read in
rock ofNeil Young.
eyeball in the article about Among the Thugs in The List 162. Not only was the use of this quote unpleasant,
lam sure that Bill Buford provided plenty of other nasty descriptions with which Tom Lappin could have started his otherwise excellent article. Buford is quoted as saying that this particular incident marked the point when he had had enough of his titillating trip down Nazi lane. Fair enough for him to use it in his book then. but not a good enough reason to include it in the article. David Mather Lawrence Street Hillhead
Manic word frenzy
I have been watching the rise and rise ofthe new ‘grunge’ movement on the Rock pages of The List for some time now — and most amusing they are
What. for starters. does your truly Grungy band sound like? Frantic successions of dissonating power chords spring to mind. Or perhaps
a bit more roll: Ebehard Weber meets Archie Shepp. I have been
weeks, so imagine my sense of
The List 162 that ‘already a thousand grunge bands are crawling back under their stones‘ at the loud. dirty
Not content with this portent, not one grunge band is mentioned in the Rock and Blues listings. We have ‘three-minute garage pop adrenaline‘, we have ‘thrash-punk quirkout gurus'. we even have a ‘fuzzed up axeman’. but nowhere do f we have grunge~rock. :
Why not? Where have they all gone? Is this somehow related to the non-appearance of The Words former wild child and heavily pregnant presenter Amanda de (‘adenet at the Skid Row gig in Edinburgh because she was too frightened? I think we should be told. No. l demandthat we are told. Please? Valerie Porter The (‘olonies Stockbridge Edinburgh
Tequila
Fear not Valerie. as you can see from the listings. there is plenty of grungyness around this fortnight. ()ur resident Rock ( ‘ritic muttered something about ‘a heavy bottom end with lots of prominent harmonic overtones thrown in because of the distortion, ' before dissolving back into his alcohol-induced swamp. ‘lts all in the guitars, ' he moaned, ‘its all in the guitars. Give her the tequila.’
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