Steven Wells
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Steven Wells (nicknamed Swells) is a British journalist and author currently based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
He began as a punk poet and stand-up similar to John Cooper Clarke. He would appear (sometimes under the names "Seething Wells" or "Susan Williams" - in this last guise, in which he would sometimes wear a dress, he received fan mail from Kathy Acker who saw Susan as a fellow radical female writer) as a support act to various Northern punk bands, such as The Fall, the Mekons, Gang of Four and Joy Division.
Later he moved to London and began to write for the NME, initially under the name Susan Williams. In this guise he championed American hardcore bands such as Black Flag and the Butthole Surfers. Later on he championed British bands which merged thrash, hardcore and heavy metal, such as Extreme Noise Terror, Napalm Death and the various bands that followed them. He also championed disposable pop artists, such as Daphne and Celeste, as successors to the punk aesthetic. In the 1990s he diversified, occasionally writing comedy (for shows such as The Day Today) and other non-music related journalism. His writing for the NME was infused with left wing polemic, being in equal measures irritating and confrontational. Memorably he castigated NME readers for being racist - as NME sales tended to fall when a black singer was put on the front cover - and for being composed of lonely male 'wankers' when writing up a review of one of the riot grrl groups.
In 1992 he formed GobTV, a music video directing partnership, with Nick Small. GobTV videos were characterised by extreme visuals, rapid edits, political agenda and humour. GobTV made promos for The Wildhearts, Manic Street Preachers, and Skunk Anansie amongst others and were the top UK directors in 1994 and 1995. The partnership ended in 1996, but the influence of the GobTV style is evident in music video some ten years on.
In 1999 he started the Attack! Books publishing house with the following mission statement:
"This generation needs a NEW literature - writing that apes, matches, parodies and supersedes the flickeringly fast 900 MPH ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK! velocity of early 21st century popular culture at its most mEnTaL! We will publish writers who think they're rock stars, rock stars who think they're writers and we will make supernovas of the stuttering, wild-eyed, slack-jawed drooling idiot-geek geniuses who lurk in the fanzine/internet shadows...
"The self-perpetuating ponce-mafia oligarchy of effete bourgeois wankers who run the 'literary scene' must be swept aside by a tidal wave of screaming urchin tits-out teenage terror totty and DESTROYED! ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK!"
His debut novel Tits Out Teenage Terror Totty (ISBN 978-1840680324) soon followed, written entirely in the same breathless style.
Currently Wells is active as a sports columnist for The Guardian, FourFourTwo, 90 Minutes, the PlayLouder music website and the Philadelphia Weekly, and is in the process of writing several books. In June 2006, he wrote in the Philadelphia Weekly about his treatment for lymphatic cancer, with characteristic venom and lack of self-pity.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Wells, Steven. "The English Patient", Philadelphia Weekly, 2006-06-21. Retrieved on 2007-11-18. "A man gets lost in the Philadelphia health system"
