Plan B publisher Everett True is done sorting through his desk. This week, he's written to tell you about how he fell off the wagon (sort of), baffled an entire Cardiff club, and just discovered Amy Winehouse. Apparently, this UK-based author of Nirvana: The Biography (da Capo Press) is magically impervious to the tabloids. A rare specimen, indeed.

Hugs and Kisses

The Outbursts of Everett True

THIS WEEK: Everett True visits Cardiff in the company of a few genial antifolk types

Larry Pickleman was the man.

Late Monday means another SOTC dispatch from Everett True, publisher of Plan B. A while back, he wrote about antifolk, not anti-folk. This week, he's writing about it again. Send him more things to write about at everett@planbmag.com. Read all his Sound of the City columns here.

photo by Cami D

The Outbursts of Everett True

This week: More on antifolk, the movement that's not sweeping a nation

I played an antifolk fest the other night.

Antifolk (UK), that is--not to be confused with anti-folk (US). One is shamelessly a rip from the other; but oddly, the other is at least several years past its sell-by date. Isn't that always the way: cultures borrowing from other cultures and reinvesting with meaning something that long since ceased to be relevant. (As a great 'for example', look to the Eastern Bloc's appropriation of rock music as a tool of revolution during the Nineties--something that the kids of America and Britain always aspired to, but never managed.) So anyway, to recap: antifolk (UK) is filled with misfits and outsiders, folk who want in but know there's no earthly way they'll ever be allowed so they might as well start their own party and hope that someone, anyone, turns up. They nicked the word antifolk cos at least it seemed to be in opposition to something, and yes, it also implied that musical ability wasn't a pre-requisite.

Back to those weekly columnists. Returning again for his second installment is none other than Everett True, author of Nirvana: The Biography (da Capo Press)--like anybody really needed another book about one of the most overrated bands of the Nineties--and publisher of Plan B Magazine, a title dedicated to writing about music (and media) with barely a nod towards demographics. Last week, True said goodbye to Punk Planet. This week, he says hello to antifolk. E-mail Everett at everett@planbmag.com.

Antifolk bloke Filthy Pedro, who is coincidentally playing a show tonight at Goodbye Blue Monday in Brooklyn.

Hugs and Kisses

There's a new movement in town.

It's British, predominately. Wouldn't translate to the States or Europe, let alone any of those countries where they object to the cultural hegemony of a bunch of rich white corpulent complacent war-mongering tastemakers. It's too rooted in the humour of the culture: the ways it is and isn't acceptable to express (male, mostly) feelings within that culture. It exists on that weird crossover point where laddish working-class male humour meets downwardly-mobile public (US: private) school banter: it's not below taking pot-shots at itself (in fact, it frequently does) and it's both pissed off and alienated by the current prevalent mainstream, both at its reliance upon NME-sanctioned guitar bands that ceased to have any resemblance to being a tool of the revolution in about 1982 (and yet still fucking pretend that they are!), and its reliance upon pumped-up elongated talent shows where cynicism and the ability to bully someone in a less fortunate situation than yourself are seen as pluses.